LATINO INVESTOR MARKETPLACE It is not a hidden fact that Latino owned businesses have the highest growth rate, and that the Latino community is highly entrepreneurial. However, there’s many more businesses that never start, or take too long because of lack of seed money or investment capital. Everybody has known for years, how bad is the situation when it comes to Latino businesses to access capital; lack of assets, lack of collateral guarantees, poor relationships with bankers, low awareness on funding solutions, and other are often cited as obstacles to start a business. On the other hand, we have an ever-increasing number of capital looking where to invest. Private equity, seed money, angel investors, and many other forms of funds are looking, sometimes desperately on where to invest. Not all this money in focused on Latino owned initiatives or businesses, actually the proportion is too low to
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even reflect the population, however some of these experienced investors claim there’s a problem with the “deal flow”, in which there’s a lack of good fluid communication between the two parties: the ones with the money and the ones with the need of it. In an initial effort to create more bridges between these two ends, we wanted to interview three investment funds and three entrepreneurs with the same set of questions each. Basically, what are they looking for and what are their needs. Also, what are their best qualities and strategies for their investments and operations. What kind of opportunities are they looking and what kind of investment is required. This is just a small sample of three great cases. We will continue to build these bridges on the future.
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