Paul Passoni y Shu Nyatta, two investment managing partners from SoftBank's Latin America practice, have left the firm to start their own investment firms. As they communicated “now they advance towards the achievement of our own dreams. Our way. With our own culture.”
The duo's departure follows SoftBank's announcement that it would turn its Latin American practice into an independent firm, Upload Ventures. The new entity incorporated the managing partners Rodrigo Baer and Marco Camhaji, hired by SoftBank in 2021, to start managing the operation independently.
Nyatta and Passoni are doing the same. In a matter of weeks, four of SoftBank's managing partners have left the Japanese conglomerate to work at their own companies. Additionally, chief operating officer Marcelo Claure, a native Bolivian who was in charge of SoftBank's efforts in Latin America, left the firm over a compensation dispute just a few months ago.
Notably, Nyatta was involved not only with SoftBank's efforts in Latin America, but in recent months led SoftBank's opportunity fund for underrepresented founders, which Claure had also spearheaded. Nyatta took over after Claure resigned after months of negotiations over 2 one billion dollars that he thought they owed him.
In the future, it is not clear who will take the reins of the opportunity fund; SoftBank declined to answer questions about who would manage the strategy in Nyatta's absence. He also did not address questions about whether SoftBank, which has already shifted gears and said in 2020 that it was committing $100 million to the strategy, and then declared last year that it was operating the opportunity fund as an "evergreen" vehicle, would receive more funding.
As for Nyatta and Passoni's new signing, expect to see fundraising in the coming months. The duo had experienced investing in historically overlooked founders in the Latin American region, so a continued focus on this line seems appropriate.
“I am extremely grateful to Masa and SoftBank Investment Advisers for the incredible opportunity to reshape Latin America's growth and venture capital lines over the last 3 years,” said Passoni. "I received the greatest gift of all: I learned in 3 years what would otherwise have taken me 10 anywhere else in the world."
Alex Szapiro and Juan Franck will lead the initiatives of the firm in Latin America after these departures.
