Los Angeles-based venture capital firm VamosVentures is looking for Oregon investments and its eyes on the ground belong to Portland entrepreneur Juan Barraza.
VamosVentures has a $50 million fund that it closed earlier this year. It is focused on backing Latinx founders and other underrepresented entrepreneurs.
Barraza is part of the fund’s inaugural scout program. This means he and other 11 other folks around the country are meeting with entrepreneurs and funneling deals to the VamosVentures partnership as well as learning the ropes of venture capital.
“For me it’s two things. Being able to connect founders that I know with people that will actually cut checks and (they) understand the cultural nuances and why we (the Latinx community) do things the way we do,” said Barraza. “I get to have conversations with founders here in Oregon that are doing pretty cool things but they haven’t been able to find the sympathetic ear to even take a meeting or give a straight answer right away.”
Unlike some other scout programs that give the scouts a small amount of money to invest as they wish, Vamos’ program is hands-on training for the scouts who then make funding recommendations to the firm's partnership.
“They are investing in us and our understanding of how to structure a deal and do investment memos and what to ask and how to look beyond the emotion and passion of investing in Latinx founders,” said Barraza. “It’s like acquiring an MBA in VC while doing it.”
For VamosVentures they get the visibility into a geographically diverse pipeline while also working to set up a new generation of investor.
Marcos Gonzalez, founder and managing partner at VamosVentures, said he intends to be in Oregon regularly to build relationships with companies. This work started for him in 2019 when he began talks with the state of Oregon to be an investor in the fund. The state is a limited partner in VamosVentures. According to minutes of the July 2020 Oregon Growth Board meeting the state committed $2 million to the fund.
Between the backing from the state and watching the growth of Portland and Oregon as a startup hub, Gonzalez is excited about the prospects here. He hasn't made any investments in Oregon yet. The fund has made 10 investments so far, with half in California.
As a scout, Barraza has already been talking to Oregon founders. He is in deep discussions with three companies:
- Holo Footwear, which is making a line of sustainable shoes made from post-consumer recycled materials.
- BladeRunner Energy, which has developed technology for micro-hydro power from the natural flow of water.
- Woppa, which makes alfajores, an Argentinian cookie.
These companies in footwear, clean tech and food represent three areas where Oregon is strong. Barraza said he is in talks with other companies as well. The VamosVentures scouts meet every Monday with the partnership to talk about potential deals.
Barraza sees this work as an extension what he has been doing for years: connecting founders to people who can help them. Barraza himself was a founder and started VDO Interpreters, providing language interpreters in health care. It was his experience with VDO and first tapping into the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Portland that ignited his passion for bridging that ecosystem with the community of Latinx founders.
He is now director of student innovation at Portland State University and the PSU Center for Entrepreneurship.
For Gonzalez, he wants the training the scouts receive to help them join the venture capital industry and diversify the decision making leadership at firms.
“We have two goals. First is generate market rate returns,” said Gonzalez. “The second is to accomplish the first one by investing in diverse teams and creating wealth and social mobility in diverse communities. Part of the mission and spirit in the impact is building a pipeline of diverse investors and entrepreneurs.”
