Fluent Ventures Backs Play Starting Models in Developing Markets
A new risk company aims to prove that the most successful startup ideas should not be born or scaled in the Silicon Valley.
FluidGlobal fund at an early stage, supports the founders, reproducing proven business models from the Western markets in Fintech, Digital Health and the trade in emerging markets. The more cynical can describe this as a cloning factory but founder and managing partner Alexander Lazarow He calls the strategy of the geographical alpha.
Fluent’s prerequisite is that many of the most precious startups in the world are not entirely new concepts that have not been tested before, but more simply, local adaptations of models that have already succeeded elsewhere.
The San Francisco -based company, founded in 2023, has $ 40 million in a fund, incubator and a structured vehicle for joint investment with limited partners. He wrote initial checks from $ 250,000 to $ 2 million from pre -seed to Serie A and plans to make 22-25 investments, with subsequent ones.
“We are in our heart,” said Lazarou, who previously invests in Omidyar Network and Cathay Innovation. “We believe that the best innovations in the world are not the exceptional competence of the Silicon Valley.”
Fluent does not work exactly in the balloon: there has been a large -scale decentralization in the technology industry in the last decade. In 2013, only four cities produced a unicorn. Today, this number exceeds 150.
And this is on the back of rinsing and repetition, with many of the best technological players in developing markets, reflecting successful startups that have been built elsewhere, such as Amazon Clones in e-commerce, strips of clones in payments and non-willch apps at Fintech. The first neon of the breakthrough was Tinkoff from Russia. “This movement was scathing globally and (to) was one of the insights that motivated my investment in Chime in the US and Banco Neon in Brazil,” Lazarow said.
Lazarow insists that Fluent not just copy paste.
“This rarely works in our opinion. The local adaptation is crucial,” he said.
The company points to a ride as an example. Uber may be a pioneer in the category, but in Indonesia, Go-Jek localizes it by including motorcycle taxis and the functionality of super applications similar to Chinese WeChat. Now Uber Eats is essentially chasing that evolution, Lazarrow claims.
At this point, Fluent Ventures, in addition to finding adapted models, screens for local adaptation of the product market and alignment of the founder’s market.
While the company was passing to several construction markets worldwide, this Supported Brkz in Saudi ArabiaLocalized absorption of Indian infra. The founder, former Carem CEO, was a strong operator in a region with increasing demand infrastructure, Lazarow noted.
Although he calls himself a global fund, Lazarow says Fluent does not strive for equal distribution in any geography. Instead, she goes deeper into the regions, where he sees the most important potential. Currently, this means a focus on Latin America, Mena, Africa, Southeast Asia and the electoral markets in the United States.
His current portfolio includes MyMexican employees’ wellness platform; He sayslaunch of Nigerian B2B trade; Prima, an industrial market based in Brazil; and Baton, a M&A platform in the US for SMB.
The company says these companies have collected numerous subsequent circles since the early Fluent inspections. The collectively launching companies from Lazarow’s previous and current portfolios have generated over $ 30 billion in value of the enterprise, with the seven reaching unicorn status.
Skeptics still question the output landscape of developing markets, perhaps especially since the estimates have increased in these markets, with more unicorns than a decade ago. Still, Fluent sees the construction of inertia. IPO of startups as Nubank., Uipth., Swiggyand Talabat Prove that global results can appear outside the US and Europe – and then, as in the case of Nubank and Uipath, these companies can still become publicly available in the USS If they decide.
“The starting markets are also ripening in these regions,” Lazarrow notes. “The new secondary companies are increasing. The stock markets are looking to build local opportunities for inclusion.
Fluent has built a different network around the types of founders in which he invests. More than 75 Founders of the Unicorn and the HCC Back Fund, including David Veles (Nubank), Nick Nash (Sea Group), Akshay Garg (Kredivo) and Sean Harper (KIN), along with LPS institutional offices and family from around the world. According to Lazarow, many of them are active associates helping portfolio companies with talent, fundraising and expansion.
The company also relies on a small group of risk partners from Zenbusiness, Terminal, KIN and Dell, bringing both depth to the sector and geographical scope.
In a world where risk capital can be rethought the US and China overexposition, Fulient believes that its approach offers LPS something that few companies can: diversify.
“We believe that the best ideas come from everywhere and scales everywhere,” says the partner, whose company claims a place in the index of the Kaufman Fellows Top Records, thanks to its lighter personal bets in Chime, Zenbusiness and Sidecar Health.
English