Podcasts Technology Crossing Borders with Nathan Lustig Claire Díaz-Ortiz, Magma Partners: Investing in Latin American Female Founders, Ep 123

Claire Díaz-Ortiz, Magma Partners: Investing in Latin American Female Founders, Ep 123

Published: Oct. 14, 2020, 3:33 p.m.

Claire Díaz-Ortiz, Magma Partners: Investing in Latin American Female Founders, Ep 123

 

Claire Díaz-Ortiz has been passionate about investing in women and supporting the underrepresented since her days at Stanford, where she completed an undergrad in Feminist Studies and History. However, it wasn’t until later in her career as an angel investor, and now as a VC Partner, that she truly understood the business case for investing in women. 

 

Having spent the last 6 months working in stealth mode, Claire joined Magma Partners as a Partner to lead both Southern Cone and Brava, an initiative that seeks to invest in more Latin American female founders. Brava is committed to investing in at least 20 female-founded Latin American startups through Magma’s fund III. 

 

I sat down with Claire to officially welcome her on the team and talk about the importance of investing in women and doing business in emerging markets. We touch on topics of privilege and the biases that exist in the world that are reflected in the venture capital industry. We also discuss Claire’s career trajectory, from starting a nonprofit organization in an orphanage in Kenya, to becoming one of Twitter’s early employees and famously ‘getting the Pope on Twitter’. Claire also talks about her decision to move to Argentina where she has been living for the past ten years.

Being a “wandering delinquent”

After graduating from Stanford, Claire says she spent the next 5 years living her life like– what her father jokingly called– a “wandering delinquent”. In her first year, she moved to a town in Mexico and started building an international life that would lead her to an orphanage in Kenya. There, she started a non-profit called Hope Runs. In hindsight, the difficulties she encountered while trying to start an organization has helped her empathize with LatAm founders and understand the resilience that is required to start a business in an emerging market.

 

Learn more details about this nomadic chapter in Claire’s life in this episode of Crossing Borders.

“The Woman who got the Pope on Twitter”

Right at the time Claire was blogging about her nonprofit on Blogger.com, the website was incubating what would become Twitter. A series of events and encounters landed Claire an internship at Twitter which would extend to a career of over 5 years at the company. When she entered Twitter, there were a little over 50 employees, and when she left, the headcount was at 5000. Undoubtedly, one of Claire’s career highlights was working with the Vatican and getting the Pope on Twitter.

 

Check out this episode of Crossing Borders to learn about Claire's experience working with the Vatican through Twitter. 

The business case for investing in women

It was later on in Claire’s career that she started to think about investing in women from a business standpoint rather than solely from a social impact perspective. In the last five to ten years, she’s seen a wave of studies stating that teams with female founders or female co-founders in the C-suite end up performing better. For instance, studies have found that female founders generate 2.5X more revenue per dollar than their male counterparts. The data also shows that despite the obvious business case for them, we are not investing in enough women.

 

Listen to this episode of Crossing Borders to learn more about why diversity on a team can be beneficial for a business and the statistics that back that claim.

 

We are so excited to have Claire Díaz-Ortiz join Magma Partners as Partner and Head of Brava. Her passion for investing in the underrepresented and her advocacy for female founders makes her the perfect fit for Brava. 

 

Outline of this episode:

  • [2:00] - Claire joining Magma
  • [2:34] - Brava’s first four investments 
  • [3:28] - About Brava
  • [4:25] - The business case for investing in women
  • [11:15] - Magma’s diverse team
  • [12:30] - Working with the Vatican
  • [20:55] - Lessons learned from running a nonprofit 
  • [24:40] - Investing in US versus LatAm
  • [27:12] - Books, blogs, & podcast recommendations
  • [28:22] - Advice to Claire’s younger self
  • [29:37] - What’s next for Brava + Magma Partners?

 

People & resources mentioned: