Positive Ventures’ new impact fund will be triple its flagship fund

Positive Ventures, a São Paulo–based venture capital firm, secured $25 million in capital commitments for its impact fund. This represents a tripling of its previous fund, toptechtrends.com/2021/04/27/brazils-positive-ventures-closes-on-10m-fund-for-impact-investing/”>raised three years ago.

The firm, which also has an office in San Francisco, invests at the pre-seed and seed stages in Latin American founders building tech-driven solutions in climate change, education, healthcare and financial services in underserved communities.

Andrea Kestenbaum, partner and CEO, told TechCrunch that this new fund represents a tripling of its assets under management in less than two years, which amounts to an aggregated market value of $1 billion.

Fábio Kestenbaum, partner and chairman, said in an interview that backing the new fund is a group of limited partners, including large institutional investors and family offices, as well as Fabio Barbosa, CEO of Natura & Co.

From its flagship fund, Positive Ventures invested in such companies as carbon credit provider toptechtrends.com/2021/04/30/as-concerns-rise-over-forest-carbon-offsets-pachamas-verified-offset-marketplace-gets-15-million/”>Pachama and social commerce startup toptechtrends.com/2021/10/06/tiger-global-backs-favo-which-is-building-an-easier-way-for-latin-americans-to-order-groceries-online/”>Favo, pioneering the social commerce revolution in Latin America.

By last October, the firm had raised toptechtrends.com/2022/10/06/atman-capital-cross-border-vc-firm/”>$20 million of the second fund and co-led, alongside Collaborative Fund, in the pre-seed round of Ruuf, a Chilean marketplace connecting homeowners, solar panel installers and lenders.

More recently, it invested in Apprenty, which provides shipping high-quality apprenticeship programs that combine work, training and community in Brazil.

Overall, with the new fund, Positive Ventures intends to invest in between 20 and 25 companies at the pre-seed and seed levels, Fábio Kestenbaum said. Average check size for a pre-seed company will be around $250,000, and for seed rounds, $600,000. The firm is also exploring minority stake opportunities where it will take between 5% and 10%.

“We want to team up as early as possible to develop a nice acumen, business-wise and impact-wise, and be super founder-centered,” he added. “We’re gonna double down on climate investing, AI and all the nature-based solutions popping up especially since Latin America is the world’s hotspot for nature-based solutions and carbon, so we really want to be first movers here.”

toptechtrends.com/2023/06/07/positive-ventures-impact-fund-venture-capital/”>Positive Ventures’ new impact fund will be triple its flagship fund by toptechtrends.com/author/christine-hall/”>Christine Hall originally published on toptechtrends.com/”>TechCrunch