Thomas Roggio He is Argentine and both his grandfather and his father brought him since he was a child to vacation in east end. When in November 2020 she finished her MBA in London, United Kingdom, she took a plane to land at Carrasco airport instead of Ezeiza. That was how she settled definitively in the flagship resort of Uruguay.
“I decided to come to Uruguay and not to Argentina because we found (with his family) a place very close to affection and customs, but with first world components: a country that works well, with macroeconomic stability, politics, security and incentives to do business,” Roggio described in dialogue with Coffee & Business.
Thanks to the remote work modality —which became popular during the pandemic—, Roggio manages from his home the Latitude investment fund for companies from all over the continent. “I really enjoy nature and the good infrastructure” of Punta del Este, a city that the businessman already defines as “a regional technological pole”.
Latitude is a company with a hub in United States and another in Latin America. Within the second axis, Brazil is the main destination of the company’s efforts, due to the size of that market, although they are present in the rest of the countries and intend to strengthen the scope of Latitud.
While in London for his master’s degree, Roggio worked as angel investments (invest with own money) in small technology companies. After completing the MBA, he collaborated for a short time in an English fund, but everything changed when he met Brian Requarth, one of the founders and current CEO of the technology. In this way, the company that today is two years old began to operate. Latitud already has an investment fund of US$ 13 million.
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Punta del Este, Uruguay
dynamic company
Latitude provides a solution package for startup of the continent. According to Roggio, this leads to three fundamental pillars that structure the company. The first is a remote mentoring program for entrepreneurs, called Latitud Fellowships. Second, technology offers a early investment fund for companies, which can be defined as seed capital or “pre-seed”. According to Roggio, with this fund they support some of the projects that go through the mentoring program or others that are selected by Latitud. Finally, this technology is developed different products: a software also dedicated to recent entrepreneurs and a fintech for early Latin American companies. The products will be available in Uruguay “in the coming months,” said Roggio.
During the last year and a half, 1,500 entrepreneurs went through the mentoring courses and Latitud has invested US$9 million in 90 companies in Latin America, of which six are from Uruguayan founders. Among them is Datanomik, the fintech in solutions in open banking founded by Sergio Fogel and Gonzalo Strauss, and Strike Security, a company that analyzes and enhances the security systems of organizations started by Santiago Rosenblatt.
Roggio explained that this number of Uruguayan companies is a differential presented by a country on the scale of Uruguay, although for the entrepreneur “it will be possible to invest much more in startup Uruguayans because you are seeing a whole litter of young entrepreneurs that have come from leading companies, such as dLocal Y orders now”.
“Uruguay is going to bring out entrepreneurs of excellence in the next decade,” said the businessman. He added: “One of the most interesting challenges facing the country is retain local entrepreneurs and the main office, while they scale their companies to other markets; something that is inevitable,” said Roggio.
Parallel to this trend, the businessman believes that Uruguay should continue to attract founders or large entrepreneurs to the countrybeyond those who come from Argentina.
The head of Ventures of Latitud was one of the speakers at Technology and New Businesses, the first summit of El Observador Events supported by Zonamerica and Latin Securities, Quantik, Fenicio, Andersen and Sunpartners.
