Dear reader,
We recently published Demystifying Venezuela's startup ecosystem, an extensive interview with Valentina Silva, a Venezuelan VC at Carao Ventures.
That gave us fascinating macro insights such as:
"[Venezuela] used to be one of the richest countries in LatAm, enjoying one of the highest GDP per capita in the region. If politics align, the country has a credible path to reclaim much of that position.
Beyond its natural resources (ED: Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world), the country stands out for its population of around 30 million people, even following the mass exodus it has suffered in recent years. It is highly urbanized (five cities of over 1 million inhabitants), houses a consumer base accustomed to high spending (historically one of the highest in the region), and has a meaningful local talent pool.
This is complemented by a growing number of highly-educated Venezuelans from the diaspora moving back or willing to return."
Today, we get a Venezuelan founder's perspective on the ecosystem.
Below is an exclusive interview with Enrique Rivas, co-founder of Fina.
Fina provides various SaaS tools and credit for Venezuelan SMEs. According to Enrique, they're doing over $1.5M in ARR and serve over 4,000 clients.
We speak about:
- Fina's genesis
- How Fina integrates with Venezuelan banks' APIs
- How Fina reflects its clients' cash transactions on their dashboard
- How Fina charges subscriptions in a country where digital payment gateways are nascent
- What has worked and hasn't worked in terms of growth
- Why Fina believes they're better positioned than local banks to provide credit
... and much more.
Please enjoy.
Biography
Enrique Rivas is the co-founder and CEO of Fina, a Venezuelan startup building the OS for Venezuelan SMEs. Fina provides accounting, inventory, analytics, and other business management tools. The company is now venturing into credit products.
Launched in 2023, Fina currently serves more than 4,000 clients. They’ve raised more than $1.3M in funding and claim more than $1.5M in ARR.
Prior to Fina, Enrique founded Caracas Ron, an alcohol e-commerce website serving the Venezuelan market.
Pains experienced in your first company led to the founding of Fina. Can you elaborate?
I launched Caracas Ron when I was 18 with my brother-in-law. At the time, the only food/beverages you could order online in Venezuela was Dominos Pizza and Chinese food. We launched an e-commerce website where consumers could order alcoholic beverages and get it delivered to their homes.
Operations were archaic. Everything ran in Excel, we lost track of inventory, got confused in our accounting… It was also a nightmare for employees. Ours was a business of high volume and low margins, so those operational deficiencies badly damaged us.
We wanted to buy software designed for companies like ours: a small, growing e-commerce operation in an emerging market. We found none. All options were clunky, expensive, and too complicated for our use case.
We started Fina to build relevant software for SMEs in emerging markets, starting with Venezuela.
Can you explain the Fina product?