Dimitri Zaninovich, Founder of Ventu explains about the pre-seed round:
We are happy to share that we met our pre-seed goal and are now full-speed building Ventu. Our mission is to bring the benefits of blockchain to facilitate international trade for SMEs in Latin America. Based on this technology, Ventu offers a smarter solution to build trust, make payments, integrate entire supply chains, and give access to trade-related financial services. We have earned the trust of investors like Nido Ventures, 99 Startups, Bridge Latam and other founders and business leaders in Latin America.
Ventus's story began almost a year ago at Stanford when a friend introduced me to Santiago Bustamante Villa (my co-founder and CTO). He knew we were two Colombian students who wanted to build a startup and generate impact in Latin America. In my case, I came to Stanford to reflect on and prepare for my next big personal and professional project: a technological platform that could bring the benefits of international trade to SMEs in my region. I had previously built a firm in project finance, worked at Citibank facilitating international trade, and faced my biggest professional challenges as Vice-minister and CEO of the National Infrastructure Agency of Colombia. Now, I was ready for a new challenge that could combine my experience and vision with state-of-the-art technology from Silicon Valley.
Santiago has a different but complementary story: a 20-year-old entrepreneur who has already built an ed-tech company and was struggling to pay his suppliers along the region. From day one, Santiago stood out to me as exceptional. He has the character traits of a successful entrepreneur: energetic, hardworking, ambitious, and stubbornly obsessed with solving this problem. He brought his profound product and technical expertise from working at Bitso, as part of his stack of abilities to ideate a new product for Ventu. I also found out that at his age, Santiago is already paying for his tuition and living at Stanford with the proceeds of the profitable company he’s built. I wished I had done that when I had his age, and that was enough for me to know that he was the partner I was looking for.
During the spring, we took a class together and interviewed customers who were also facing challenges with their cross-border payments in five countries, confirming our thesis. Over the summer, we decided to turn the idea into reality. We incorporated and hired a fantastic team of experienced builders of fintech companies in LatAm (eg. Oscar Salas / Kevyn Franco). Now, we are building a product that will generate efficiency, transparency, and ownership for SMEs living from imports and exports.
With this pre-seed round, we gladly announce the beginning of our BETA launch for Mexican and US clients and the pre-registration site for our growth and expansion plans: https://www.ventupay.com/. Thanks to all our investors and clients for their trust and engagement. This journey is just beginning.
Dimitri Zaninovich, Founder of Ventu explains about the pre-seed round:
We are happy to share that we met our pre-seed goal and are now full-speed building Ventu. Our mission is to bring the benefits of blockchain to facilitate international trade for SMEs in Latin America. Based on this technology, Ventu offers a smarter solution to build trust, make payments, integrate entire supply chains, and give access to trade-related financial services. We have earned the trust of investors like Nido Ventures, 99 Startups, Bridge Latam and other founders and business leaders in Latin America.
Ventus's story began almost a year ago at Stanford when a friend introduced me to Santiago Bustamante Villa (my co-founder and CTO). He knew we were two Colombian students who wanted to build a startup and generate impact in Latin America. In my case, I came to Stanford to reflect on and prepare for my next big personal and professional project: a technological platform that could bring the benefits of international trade to SMEs in my region. I had previously built a firm in project finance, worked at Citibank facilitating international trade, and faced my biggest professional challenges as Vice-minister and CEO of the National Infrastructure Agency of Colombia. Now, I was ready for a new challenge that could combine my experience and vision with state-of-the-art technology from Silicon Valley.
Santiago has a different but complementary story: a 20-year-old entrepreneur who has already built an ed-tech company and was struggling to pay his suppliers along the region. From day one, Santiago stood out to me as exceptional. He has the character traits of a successful entrepreneur: energetic, hardworking, ambitious, and stubbornly obsessed with solving this problem. He brought his profound product and technical expertise from working at Bitso, as part of his stack of abilities to ideate a new product for Ventu. I also found out that at his age, Santiago is already paying for his tuition and living at Stanford with the proceeds of the profitable company he’s built. I wished I had done that when I had his age, and that was enough for me to know that he was the partner I was looking for.
During the spring, we took a class together and interviewed customers who were also facing challenges with their cross-border payments in five countries, confirming our thesis. Over the summer, we decided to turn the idea into reality. We incorporated and hired a fantastic team of experienced builders of fintech companies in LatAm (eg. Oscar Salas / Kevyn Franco). Now, we are building a product that will generate efficiency, transparency, and ownership for SMEs living from imports and exports.
With this pre-seed round, we gladly announce the beginning of our BETA launch for Mexican and US clients and the pre-registration site for our growth and expansion plans: https://www.ventupay.com/. Thanks to all our investors and clients for their trust and engagement. This journey is just beginning.