Introducing Base Bird Dog: Our approach to seed investing in Brazil and broader Latin America

By: Eduardo Latache & Fernando Spnola

08.11.2021 | Firm news

Over the past four years, as we helped the best global technology companies expand into Brazil and Latin America, we witnessed an unprecedented flourishing of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Now, as the opportunity to disrupt the local market idiosyncrasies grows bigger and deeper, we feel it is only natural that we expand our investing efforts to help create a new future in Latin America by backing those who can make it happen.

If you are thinking about starting a company, or if you have just started one, we would love to meet you.

Our mission

Base Partners was formed in 2017 on the premise that, despite being a vibrant and emerging part of the global internet, Latin America was largely overlooked by most tech companies expanding globally.

Our belief was that we were uniquely positioned to create an investment firm that would partner with the world’s best private technology companies and help them understand, quantify, and win Latin America, Brazil first.

Since then, we have obsessively executed on this mission. Today our portfolio includes Zoom, Bytedance, Stripe, Klarna, UiPath, Nubank, Figma, Kavak, Netskope, Getir, TripActions and Wildlife.

We could not be prouder of the partnerships we have forged with the founders at the helm of our companies.

The way ahead

Most of our investments were made when these companies were at later stages of growth. But our paths crossed with Sai Srinivas, Eric Shoykhet, Justin Hauser, Sanket Shah, Rubens Zanelatto and Matheus Goyas much earlier in their journeys.

As we developed these relationships, we discovered how invigorating it is to be deeply committed to a small company and a young team of founders who are out to do something incredible.

Such joy sparked our desire to commit to this new chapter of our firm: Bird Dog.

What is Bird Dog?

Bird Dog is our way of doing seed stage investing.

What are we looking for? We are in search of founders who have a shot at greatness and are on a crusade to build something amazing in Latin America.

We believe that founding a company takes extraordinary courage, drive, discipline, and conviction; raising capital is by far the easiest part.

Bird Dog is not just about the first check. It is about the early choices, the key hires, the first customers and the strategic alliances. It is about the unfair advantages that can set a company up for success.

We’ve been fortunate to have such backing from a group of exceptional business partners who have contributed their time, credibility, relationships, experience, and capital from the earliest days of our firm.

Such support was instrumental in shaping the foundation of our firm. We would not be here if not for them.

We hope one day you will say the same about us.

Base Partners

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• Our goal is to be the first check into our companies and support them over the years to come.
• We favor a high conviction concentrated portfolio; we are not believers in “spray and pray”.
• Our investments will range between $1M and $2M.
• In addition to making the round happen, we are happy to leverage our global network of venture investors to help assemble the best partners around the table.
• We value referrals from people we know and trust. That is the rationale behind our aligned network of scouts.
• Founders who lack inroads to us through our scouts should reach out to us directly at birddog@basepar.com