A decade-plus-old team driven with entrepreneurial experience, a high-performance culture, and empathy for the founder’s journey
At Cometa, we cultivate a diverse, globally-focused team, recognizing that diversity fuels better decisions and innovation.
With 50% of women in the investment team and diverse professional backgrounds, Cometa believes that a mix of perspectives leads to stronger decision-making. We prioritize generalism as a tool for flexibility, allowing us to navigate different business models and uncover unknown opportunities.
We invest in long-term relationships, ensuring every team member has the potential to become a partner. Our entrepreneurial mindset fosters deep empathy for founders, helping us build founder-friendly practices that support sustainable growth.
II. Market
The Spanish-speaking world represents a powerful economic force, ranking as the world’s largest, single-language economic bloc after the United States and China
Spanish-speaking markets comprise 21 countries, representing a combined GDP of $8T USD and a population of over +600M. With an average age of 31 and 80% internet and smartphone penetration, the region presents a dynamic, tech-savvy market primed for digital transformation and innovation.
The region’s geopolitical positioning enhances its attractiveness. Benefiting from nearshoring trends, relative political stability, and abundant resources, it’s a prime destination for global investment. A growing talent pool and competitive labor costs make it an ideal hub for tech and manufacturing.
Structural challenges create massive opportunities for tech solutions. Cash dependency, SME digitalization gaps, and inefficient supply chains hinder growth. Limited government infrastructure and climate threats further exacerbate inequalities, opening doors for disruptive startups to drive scalable, high-impact change.
III. Thesis
1.
Cometa’s investment strategy contemplates three key dimensions regarding data and AI readiness
III. Thesis
2.
Cometa targets processes that involve medium to high human intervention.
a) This dimension evaluates how data is gathered, organized, and stored within a company or industry.
b) It measures the degree of automation, affecting AI, machine learning adoption, and the use of automated solutions in money movement.
c) The output typically results in a data warehouse.
III. Thesis
3.
Cometa focuses on solutions that create potentially proprietary data in industries where digitized data is scarce
a) Focuses on how automated data is used to create value, assessing its accessibility, quality, and potential for driving actions.
b) The goal is to build a robust engine for precise targeting, knowing when and how to engage consumers.
c) In financial services, it measures how well systems enable ownership transfers.
III. Thesis
4.
Cometa prioritizes industries where data is critical for humans or business needs.
a) This dimension assesses the criticality of data for both the end user and the client.
b) The more fundamental the data is to basic human or business needs the more critical it becomes.
c) Typically, industries dealing with highly critical data are also more heavily regulated.
III. Thesis
5.
Cometa’s Investment thesis
a) We strategically focus on the intersection where significant human interaction, potentially proprietary data, and high data criticality converge. Cometa invests in AI readiness enablers.
IV. History
COMETA is a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies targeting Spanish-speaking markets globally.
The firm was founded in 2012 as VARIV Capital by Diego and Ernesto Vargas who subsequently invited Rafael de Haro as the third co-founder. This marked the establishment of a venture capital firm for the technology sector in Mexico and Latin America.
The first fund, VARIV I, which started making investments in 2013, was focused on e-commerce and its enablers, namely, payments and logistics. Over 10 investments were made in those categories expanding the geographic scope from Latin America to Spain.
In 2015, the Firm raised a second fund, VARIV II, to capture the emerging opportunities in fintech, marketplaces, and first-generation enterprise businesses founded by local entrepreneurs. Pepe Bolaños, who joined the Firm as a Principal in 2014, became a Partner in 2017. Throughout the four-year investment period, sixteen companies were added to the firm’s portfolio, and the scope broadened to include the US.
In 2019, the firm rebranded to COMETA. That same year, once the investment period of VARIV II ended, Diego and Ernesto decided to step down from their operational roles in the fund to focus full-time on their holding company VARIV. As Co-founders, they remain advisors and LPs of VARIV II but, as of the third fund, they are no longer part of the GP (in 2023, they reached an agreement to sell their stake to Rafael and Pepe for all future funds).
In 2021, COMETA III, the Firm’s third fund, was launched to continue investing in the founders that are building the category-defining companies in the Spanish-speaking world.