SB

Sebastian Buenaventura

Senior Associate at Flori Ventures

Colombia

Work Experience

  • Senior Associate

    2023

  • Visiting Partner

    2022 - 2023

    Flori is a seed-stage fund backing founders who are building solutions to tackle two of the biggest challenges of our time: the climate crisis and create an inclusive financial system. We invest/support outstanding people building in: - Financial inclusion in Africa and Latam (ex. Credit/ Loan management, hedging, scoring, insurance) - Sustainability Markets (Carbon markets, circular economy, clean energy) - DAOs and community efforts Contact: https://airtable.com/shruhvQVl0NHhSl0E

  • Partner

    2023

    Credit Collective is a debt and market making fund. We partner with RWA projects that have already proven their underwriting and tokenization but are too small for traditional debt funds. We stake positions ranging from $75k to $300k in stablecoins at affordable rates and connect them with the necessary infrastructure to access more liquidity. Furthermore, we offer support from a global community interested in bridging the liquidity gap in emerging markets.

2021 - 2022

  • CEO, Co-Founder

    2021 - 2022

    B2C wallet for hedging against local currencies devaluation in Colombia. My biggest achievements: - Led product growth, achieving a +92% week-over-week increase in Assets Under Management (AUM). Generated USD 830K within 3 months, acquiring over 2,000 active users and 8,000 waitlist. - Community building and education: Built and led a community of 3.5K active users at Telegram by the end of June 2022, where people joined to learn about Web3 benefits. Notably, 80% of Simpol's active users were introduced to crypto for the first time. - Risk management and Customer protection: Safeguarded customer funds during crisis when the chosen stablecoin (UST) experienced a 90% value loss within two days. We closed ops without customer losses - Push regulatory innovation: Successfully navigated a legal review by Colombia's financial regulator, even in the absence of clear regulations following the UST crash. Demonstrated Simpol's commitment to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and fiduciary responsibilities. - Team leadership: Built and led a cross-functional team of more than 20 professionals spanning product growth, community development, finance, and compliance. - Strategic fundraising: Secured a $800k funding round from investors like Flori Ventures, Allegory Capital, Celo Founders, Startup Chile, and Parallel18, alongside angel investors.

2020 - 2022

  • CEO, Co-Founder

    2020 - 2022

    Freelance marketplace, connecting companies from USD-based markets (US, Puerto Rico, Panama, and Ecuador) with talent from markets with weaker currencies (Colombia, Venezuela, and Argentina). Achievements: - Led the product growth: GTV 26x in 2021. Achieving $600K/year and CM1 positive. - Fundraised USD 300K pre-seed round from Parallel18, Startup Chile and Rafael Vivas (App Lovin Co-founder). - Built a community of 4K freelancers and 220 active companies.

2019 - 2020

  • Growth Hacker & Ecommerce Specialist

    2019 - 2020

  • Digital Marketing Supervisor

    2017 - 2019

    Managed digital acquisition and retention strategy for IQOS (Reduced Risk products - "RRPs") - For more information visit www.iqos.com.

2016 - 2017

  • Digital Account Manager

    2016 - 2017

    • Head of the digital team, responsible for digital accounts and strategies • Managed budgets for all digital accounts • Developed and executed SPR's own strategy to identify and manage growth opportunities • Managed client relationships and provided strategic planning and direction to clients such as HP inc, 3M, MediaTek, Absolute Software, Dell-EMC, Sindoni Group and Education New Zealand • Managed partners relationships (IT support and BI Software) in order to offer 360 strategies that improve all the digital experience of the clients • Developed and implemented CRM strategies to improve the ZMOT, customer experience and customer journey of the companies • Managed the website and information systems of the agency • Promoted in 3 months as Account Executive Achievements: • Re-launched the company’s website with improved front-end functionalities which enhanced the users’ experience and led to an increase in website visits by 50%. • Open de Digital department in the agency • Lead and develop new business that improves the profit margin of the agency by a 30%

2015 - 2016

  • Co-founder and CEO

    2015 - 2016

    1st augmented reality platform in LATAM. 5000 projects created, more than 500 active users. 1st Spanish speaker partner for the Layar Partner Network.

2015 - 2016

  • Growth analyst

    2015 - 2016

    • Planned, designed, and implemented acquisition strategies for SMBs in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to succeed in highly competitive tourism markets.

2015 - 2015

  • Internship Trainee

    2015 - 2015