Central American Players Supporting Startups

In collaboration with Cuantico VC, we’ll present a detailed overview of the key players driving startup development in Central America. We’ll explore a range of profiles, from venture capital funds that finance promising ideas to startup accelerators that provide strategic support to ambitious entrepreneurs. We’ll also highlight support organizations that foster ecosystem growth and offer valuable resources for business development.

Whether you’re looking for funding for your startup, strategic advice, or simply interested in learning about the vibrant world of startups in Central America, this map will provide relevant information and guide you through the region’s most prominent players.

We also interviewed José Kont, a member of CAFI (Central America Angel Fund Initiative), who experiences Central America’s ecosystem firsthand every day as an angel investor.

A perspective on Central America’s ecosystem

1. What are the main challenges facing startups in Central America, and how are they being addressed? The biggest challenge is one of vision and market. While there are many entrepreneurs with disruptive ideas, skills, and talented teams, the context often leads them to focus on a very limited vision in terms of scaling. They also face a challenge of vision, often designing solutions that are narrowly tailored to the market they’re in, where size is a limiting factor. We can’t expect startups to achieve exponential scale if they think only about serving the Central American market. It’s a good place to start, but should be seen as just one part of the journey. 
2. Given the region’s circumstances, in what industries or areas could Central American startups stand out and become leaders? Without a doubt, areas include technologies geared toward the B2B segment, logistics, the future of work, and financial inclusion. Central America has a large young population that can join startups serving larger, more strategic markets such as Mexico and the United States, with which we share time zones. Our region also has a strategic location as a logistics hub, which can be leveraged to provide technology solutions that integrate not only SaaS, BaaS, and similar models, but also infrastructure to serve global manufacturing supply chains with cutting-edge technology. Fintech, in the area of inclusion, is another opportunity for startups in our region to stand out. There’s an assumption that a fintech can only work in a massive market like Brazil or Mexico. However, even though Central American markets are small, fintechs are already doing some very interesting things that could scale using negative-CAC models. 
3. What trends have you seen in Central America’s startup ecosystem? Without a doubt, it’s a nascent ecosystem that doesn’t yet have the systematic capacity to generate startups. As a result, the trend has been to start strengthening synergies among the different countries and players through regional efforts that enable more coordinated progress. As in any early-stage sector, we’re experimenting to discover how to scale more efficiently from small markets and integrate our startups into global innovation networks, as Israel and Estonia have done. El Salvador is an interesting example, having made good progress in this regard.
4. What are some examples of successful Central American startups, and what can we learn from them? We have several examples. In Guatemala, there’s Sento, a SaaS/future-of-work startup that recently got into Platanus Ventures thanks to its technology, which boosts call center efficiency with AI. In El Salvador, IntMax is building a new Ethereum protocol to offer more competitive transaction costs on the network; this year, the startup raised USD$5M in its seed round. In Honduras, there’s Doctor7, a HealthTech startup that has improved patient management efficiency by focusing on physical and mental health. In Costa Rica, there’s Avify, a startup specializing in e-commerce and inventory automation. What we can learn is that all the success stories in our region focus on solving real problems. 

Investment funds:

• Innogen Capital (El Salvador) - Innogen Capital is a venture capital fund that invests in early-stage companies, with a focus on Central America, Colombia, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
• Invariantes (Guatemala) - Invariantes Fund is venture capital's gateway to the Americas.
• Amador Holding (Panama) - We provide our investors with unique access to Spanish-speaking Latin America’s best digital technology companies in financial services, mobility, logistics, e-commerce, healthcare, education, and proptech.
• Carao Ventures (Costa Rica) - Carao Ventures is an early-stage VC firm for small and medium-sized markets in Spanish-speaking Latin America. We invest in startups at the Pre-Seed, Seed, and Series A stages, with the goal of creating valuable and competitive companies across most industries. 
• Cacao Capital (Guatemala) - Conscious angel investment and venture capital firm based in Central America, focused on helping amazing entrepreneurs with impactful projects in emerging markets.
• CAFI (Guatemala) - CAFI (Central America Angel Fund Initiative) is the angel investor network of Central America, supporting entrepreneurs who use technology to solve Latin America’s biggest challenges.‍
• Ulua VC (Honduras) - Ulua VC is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage Latin American companies with the potential to create transformative socioeconomic impact. Ulua VC supports the region's entrepreneurs as they build businesses that will drive positive change in Latin America. We're based out of Miami, but our roots are in Central America.‍
• Pomona Impact (Guatemala):  Impact investment fund investing in innovative, for-profit companies with a social purpose in Central America, Mexico, Colombia, and Ecuador, in the sectors of agro-processing, basic services, and the digital economy (e-commerce, fintech, logistics). ‍
• Centro Fund (El Salvador) - Centro Fund is a venture capital and growth fund designed to leverage and cultivate the momentum of the region’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, a critical element for progress. If you are building in Central America or looking to access the Central American market, we are here to help. ‍
• Caricaco (Costa Rica) - We are a startup accelerator. We believe today’s startups will lead Central America’s economic and social development. We invest in teams that want to change the world. We seek very early-stage (Pre-Seed) startups that use technology to provide better service in any industry.

Accelerators:

• Parque Tec (Costa Rica) - Parque Tec is an accelerator that invests in startups, helps them go international, and scales them through its global network of partners.
• Multiverse (Guatemala) - A regional platform that seeks to create and structure tools and processes for the entrepreneurial ecosystem, raising the standard of innovation and investment opportunities. 
• SNBX (El Salvador) - El Salvador’s first innovation center, promoting corporate innovation and supporting emerging startups by helping entrepreneurs across the region.

Support organizations:

• Cuantico VC (Guatemala) - Cuantico is the first research and venture capital firm in Central America. It focuses on 4 areas of work: 1) research and analysis of the VC industry in the region, 2) promoting entrepreneurship as a positive force, 3) CVC, and 4) VC in the Fintech, Impact, and NewsTech verticals. 
• Volcano summit (Guatemala - Event) - Volcano Innovation Summit is a global initiative that acts as a platform for exchanging future visions and experiences. Driven by the mission of integrating Latin America into the global network of innovation, science, and culture, it connects business leaders, entrepreneurs, creative leaders, and investors for conversations and inspiration across sectors. It takes advantage of Guatemala’s location as a bridge between North, Central, and South America, and its setting in the land of volcanoes in Antigua, Guatemala.
• CAPCA (Regional) -  Promoting venture capital in Central America and the Caribbean. CAPCA (Capital of Central America) is the association that brings together the region’s venture capital funds and institutional investors. 
• Tech4DevHN (Honduras) - An initiative that seeks to strengthen the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Honduras and the region, primarily by providing technological solutions for the health, education, and security sectors.