Copec WIND Ventures: Doubling Down on the “Unfair” Access to Latin America
By: Brian Walsh, Head of WIND Ventures
At WIND Ventures, we are kicking off 2025 by celebrating our fifth anniversary of investing in global startups across energy, mobility, and convenience and working with founders to realize “unfair access” to the rapidly growing Latin American (LatAm) markets.
Five years ago, WIND Ventures was just an idea about delivering distinctive, compelling, and real market expansion value to global startups while facilitating and accelerating new growth opportunities for Copec and acting as the primary global innovation bridge into Spanish Latin America, namely Chile. It is fulfilling to see that our CVC, Copec, and regional value aspirations from 2019 have been met with great success, undoubtedly due to the excellent work of the WIND Venture and WIND Garage teams as well as the support from Copec’s top leadership and Board.
Our “global-to-local” innovation model has corporate innovation roots but includes a unique developed-into-developing region dynamic that aims to enhance Latin American emerging economies by unfairly importing the world’s most exceptional innovative solutions. Copec is the enabler, and WIND Ventures is the facilitator.
Not your average CVC
Two things are particularly significant related to our fifth anniversary. First, WIND Ventures has surpassed the average life of a Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) unit, routinely cited as four years. I have many thoughts about this four-year average lifetime benchmark and what it signifies about CVC in general. Still, it is one indication that WIND Ventures is not “average,” so we are celebrating that we must be doing some things right and well.
Second, the end of 2024 marks the end of building out Portfolio #1 (vintage 2020), and 2025 marks the start of building out Portfolio #2. While we no longer build Portfolio #1, we will continue to nurture and deliver our value-add to portfolio companies. We are super proud of Portfolio #1, where we deployed over $150M through 46 transactions supporting 23 portfolio companies headquartered in over eight countries. Portfolio #1 includes many “unicorns,” four exits, and many significant partnerships that deliver our “unfair access” into Latin America for the startup. Annual recurring revenue from these portfolio partnerships has grown over 400% since 2021, and we know that we are just getting started.
Select case studies from Portfolio #1:
Doubling down on LatAm
As we enter 2025, we are energized and excited to start Portfolio #2 by staying focused on our unique model. The attractiveness of global startups entering LatAm with a world-class strategic partner has only become more compelling since 2020. The LatAm region has double the population and is equal to urbanization in the United States. It is experiencing a massive cultural shift towards digitalization. The region, especially Chile, is also a world leader in clean energy, having the cleanest electric generation mix in the world and the world’s second-largest fleet of electric buses. As part of our efforts to continually make our unique “unfair access” as real as possible, we are starting Portfolio #2 after some self-reflection to identify opportunities for further improvement. As part of Portfolio #2 efforts, we will formalize our proprietary playbooks developed over the past five years, lean into partnership opportunities where our five-year experience shows outsized outcomes for startups, do more fund investments, and likely do more “further afield” investments to inspire and help assess innovation applicability in LatAm in the future.
A look ahead
The team and I are excited about 2025 and will be very active in nurturing Portfolio #1 and positioning Portfolio #2 well with its initial new investments. With our value-added capabilities matured and ripened, I anticipate an even bigger impact for our portfolio companies in the coming years.
About Brian Walsh
Brian Walsh is the head of WIND Ventures, the CVC arm for COPEC, a leading energy and retail corporation and one of the most valued brands throughout Latin America. Brian has two decades of venture capital experience in the San Francisco Bay area and, most recently, was a Senior Expert at McKinsey & Company, where he advised Fortune 500 clients on how corporations can best engage startups.
About Copec WIND Ventures
Copec WIND Ventures is located in the San Francisco Bay Area and is the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of COPEC, one of the leading energy companies in Central and South America and one of the most valued brands throughout Latin America (LatAm). WIND Ventures leverages COPEC’s significant resources to accelerate growth, primarily within Latin America, for startups and scaleups across the world within the new mobility, energy and retail sectors.
