Startups

Accel backs Mexican startup Flink’s effort to bring consumer investing to Latin America

Comment

Image Credits: Flink

Here in the U.S., we take for granted the ability to invest and trade in the stock market. So while we can get in an uproar about the various ways Robinhood may or may not be acting responsibly, it can be easy to forget that not everyone in the world has the same access to potentially making — or losing — money via trading as we do.

For Mexico City-born Sergio Jiménez Amozurrutia, the fact that in his country of more than 120 million people, only a tiny fraction of the population have the ability to invest in the capital markets just didn’t seem right. To him, the lack of widespread participation in investing is an example of the rich getting richer as part of an infrastructure “that is built for the wealthy.” The result of the imbalance is that a lot of people are locked out of making potentially wealth-building investments.  

So after selling Easy Credit, a consumer lending platform he’d built with Rick Rafael Bueno (whom he met in 2015 at a hackathon at Tech de Monterrey), Amozurrutia set out to give Mexicans access to something he believed they’d never had access to: an app-based consumer trading platform.

That platform, called Flink, attracted the attention of Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm Accel, which just led a $12 million Series A for the company. Mexico’s ALLVP, Clocktower, Kevin Efrusy and Oskar Hjertonsson and existing backer Raptor Financial Group participated in the financing as well.

The demand for what Flink has to offer is clear. Since launching its first brokerage product in July of 2020, Flink has surpassed 1 million users and 800,000 active brokerage accounts. This makes Flink the largest retail brokerage service in Mexico, according to Amozurrutia. It averages 6,000 new customers a day, mostly due to word of mouth, the company said. And, the app was recently ranked in the top 10 of all apps downloaded in Mexico via Google Play, surpassing Spotify and Facebook app downloads, according to Amozurrutia.

“Most legacy Mexican banks cater to less than 1% of the population — meaning most Mexicans don’t have a bank account, let alone a brokerage account,” he said. “At Flink, we’re guided by the belief that Mexico’s financial system should work for everyone — not only a select few.”

The fact that Latin Americans are underbanked is not new news. In Mexico in particular, there are far fewer banks than the thousands the U.S. is home to. Those banks, Amozurrutia believes, make it challenging for most people to make investments by charging high fees, among other barriers to entry, such as large minimum deposits.

“Also, here in Mexico, the population is not that sophisticated like in the U.S. in terms of investing in the markets,” he told TechCrunch. “The banks and incumbents take advantage of that and make people feel like they’re not smart enough to manage their money. They say, ‘Give me your money and I’ll invest it and charge you fees.’ ”

Flink is out to not only give Mexicans a way to invest, but to help educate them as well. Ninety percent of its users are first-time investors, and many are millennials.

“When you compare this kind of product with Robinhood or Acorns for example, the difference with us is that we need to be even more responsible with the kind of information and access we are trying to provide,” Amozurrutia said. “We need to educate on a basic level.”

Image: Flink

Flink has also built a community around the product so that people can share ideas and try to help each other, including a Facebook group made up of more than 35,000 people.  

For Accel partner Andrew Braccia (who was also an early investor in Slack), the most interesting thing about Flink is that in many ways it is “creating a market,” rather than building an offering in an already large and sophisticated market.

“A high percentage of customers are a younger demographic that has never invested before, and never had the tools or opportunity to use a product like Flink,” Braccia said. “It’s a responsibility we take very seriously so we’re trying to make sure there’s a tremendous amount of education and transparency in the process.”

He also believes Flink’s story and the larger opportunity of what’s happening in Mexico “is one centered around accessibility and hope.”

Demand for Flink’s product is not only coming from Mexico, but from other Latin American countries such as Colombia, Chile, Peru and Argentina.

Flink can’t yet enter those markets due to regulatory constraints, but getting licenses to do business in Latin American countries is something the company plans to use some of its new capital to do.

“When you try to understand the deeper issues around financial services in Latin America,” Amozurrutia said, “you will see the status quo is really similar.”

Accel’s Braccia agrees.

Flink, he believes, has already created a level playing field for those who want to participate in investing in Mexico.

“The fact that the vast majority of their users are first-time participants in the stock market speaks to the significance of their vision of financial accessibility—a vision that we believe will continue to resonate with other markets throughout Latin America,” Braccia told TechCrunch.

Flink also plans to use its funding in part to continue improving the user experience and product offering, as well as to add to its current headcount of 60 to be able to meet rising demand.

“Our goal is to get to 4 million users by the end of 2021,” Amozurrutia said.

Meanwhile, backing Flink fits into Accel’s overall investment thesis. The firm has also put money in other fintechs globally, such as France’s Lydia, London-based Monzo and WorldRemit, Galileo and Braintree/Venmo, among others.

More TechCrunch

Jasper Health, a cancer care platform startup, laid off a substantial part of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.

General Catalyst-backed Jasper Health lays off staff

Live Nation says its Ticketmaster subsidiary was hacked. A hacker claims to be selling 560 million customer records.

Live Nation confirms Ticketmaster was hacked, says personal information stolen in data breach

Featured Article

Inside EV startup Fisker’s collapse: how the company crumbled under its founders’ whims

An autonomous pod. A solid-state battery-powered sports car. An electric pickup truck. A convertible grand tourer EV with up to 600 miles of range. A “fully connected mobility device” for young urban innovators to be built by Foxconn and priced under $30,000. The next Popemobile. Over the past eight years, famed vehicle designer Henrik Fisker…

13 hours ago
Inside EV startup Fisker’s collapse: how the company crumbled under its founders’ whims

Late Friday afternoon, a time window companies usually reserve for unflattering disclosures, AI startup Hugging Face said that its security team earlier this week detected “unauthorized access” to Spaces, Hugging…

Hugging Face says it detected ‘unauthorized access’ to its AI model hosting platform

Featured Article

Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps

Using stalkerware is creepy, unethical, potentially illegal, and puts your data and that of your loved ones in danger.

14 hours ago
Hacked, leaked, exposed: Why you should never use stalkerware apps

The design brief was simple: each grind and dry cycle had to be completed before breakfast. Here’s how Mill made it happen.

Mill’s redesigned food waste bin really is faster and quieter than before

Google is embarrassed about its AI Overviews, too. After a deluge of dunks and memes over the past week, which cracked on the poor quality and outright misinformation that arose…

Google admits its AI Overviews need work, but we’re all helping it beta test

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. In…

Startups Weekly: Musk raises $6B for AI and the fintech dominoes are falling

The product, which ZeroMark calls a “fire control system,” has two components: a small computer that has sensors, like lidar and electro-optical, and a motorized buttstock.

a16z-backed ZeroMark wants to give soldiers guns that don’t miss against drones

The RAW Dating App aims to shake up the dating scheme by shedding the fake, TikTok-ified, heavily filtered photos and replacing them with a more genuine, unvarnished experience. The app…

Pitch Deck Teardown: RAW Dating App’s $3M angel deck

Yes, we’re calling it “ThreadsDeck” now. At least that’s the tag many are using to describe the new user interface for Instagram’s X competitor, Threads, which resembles the column-based format…

‘ThreadsDeck’ arrived just in time for the Trump verdict

Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin confirmed on Friday that it had been the victim of a hack resulting in the theft of 4,502.9 bitcoin, or about $305 million.  According to…

Hackers steal $305M from DMM Bitcoin crypto exchange

This is not a drill! Today marks the final day to secure your early-bird tickets for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 at a significantly reduced rate. At midnight tonight, May 31, ticket…

Disrupt 2024 early-bird prices end at midnight

Instagram is testing a way for creators to experiment with reels without committing to having them displayed on their profiles, giving the social network a possible edge over TikTok and…

Instagram tests ‘trial reels’ that don’t display to a creator’s followers

U.S. federal regulators have requested more information from Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving unit, as part of an investigation into rear-end crash risks posed by unexpected braking. The National Highway Traffic Safety…

Feds tell Zoox to send more info about autonomous vehicles suddenly braking

You thought the hottest rap battle of the summer was between Kendrick Lamar and Drake. You were wrong. It’s between Canva and an enterprise CIO. At its Canva Create event…

Canva’s rap battle is part of a long legacy of Silicon Valley cringe

Voice cloning startup ElevenLabs introduced a new tool for users to generate sound effects through prompts today after announcing the project back in February.

ElevenLabs debuts AI-powered tool to generate sound effects

We caught up with Antler founder and CEO Magnus Grimeland about the startup scene in Asia, the current tech startup trends in the region and investment approaches during the rise…

VC firm Antler’s CEO says Asia presents ‘biggest opportunity’ in the world for growth

Temu is to face Europe’s strictest rules after being designated as a “very large online platform” under the Digital Services Act (DSA).

Chinese e-commerce marketplace Temu faces stricter EU rules as a ‘very large online platform’

Meta has been banned from launching features on Facebook and Instagram that would have collected data on voters in Spain using the social networks ahead of next month’s European Elections.…

Spain bans Meta from launching election features on Facebook, Instagram over privacy fears

Stripe, the world’s most valuable fintech startup, said on Friday that it will temporarily move to an invite-only model for new account sign-ups in India, calling the move “a tough…

Stripe curbs its India ambitions over regulatory situation

The 2024 election is likely to be the first in which faked audio and video of candidates is a serious factor. As campaigns warm up, voters should be aware: voice…

Voice cloning of political figures is still easy as pie

When Alex Ewing was a kid growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, he knew how close he was to home based on which billboards he could see out the car window.…

OneScreen.ai brings startup ads to billboards and NYC’s subway

SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket could take to the skies for the fourth time on June 5, with the primary objective of evaluating the second stage’s reusable heat shield as the…

SpaceX sent Starship to orbit — the next launch will try to bring it back

Eric Lefkofsky knows the public listing rodeo well and is about to enter it for a fourth time. The serial entrepreneur, whose net worth is estimated at nearly $4 billion,…

Billionaire Groupon founder Eric Lefkofsky is back with another IPO: AI health tech Tempus

TechCrunch Disrupt showcases cutting-edge technology and innovation, and this year’s edition will not disappoint. Among thousands of insightful breakout session submissions for this year’s Audience Choice program, five breakout sessions…

You’ve spoken! Meet the Disrupt 2024 breakout session audience choice winners

Check Point is the latest security vendor to fix a vulnerability in its technology, which it sells to companies to protect their networks.

Zero-day flaw in Check Point VPNs is ‘extremely easy’ to exploit

Though Spotify never shared official numbers, it’s likely that Car Thing underperformed or was just not worth continued investment in today’s tighter economic market.

Spotify offers Car Thing refunds as it faces lawsuit over bricking the streaming device

The studies, by researchers at MIT, Ben-Gurion University, Cambridge and Northeastern, were independently conducted but complement each other well.

Misinformation works, and a handful of social ‘supersharers’ sent 80% of it in 2020

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Okay, okay…

Tesla shareholder sweepstakes and EV layoffs hit Lucid and Fisker