Marta Cruz, investor in six Latin American ‘unicorns’: “I have never seen imposter syndrome in men”

When she was already 50 years old, Marta Cruz (Saenz Peña, 67 years old) decided to leave her position as regional vice president at the McCann Erickson advertising agency and take a sabbatical year. It lasted just a month. Together with one of their current partners, Ariel Arrieta, they began a path that would end in the creation of the NXTP investment fund, with which over the last 15 years they have invested in more than 150 emerging companies (start-ups, in the jargon), of which six became ‘unicorns’ by reaching a private valuation of more than 1,000 million dollars: Auth0, Tienda Nube, Betterfly, Satellogic, Mural and Frete. In the first stage, they raised money from those who had been the most successful Argentine entrepreneurs of the late 90s and early 2000s—Marcos Galperin, Wenceslao Casares, Alec Oxenford—and also asked them for support for the projects in which they invested. «We offered little money, but a lot of added value. After a year and a half we made our first sale and multiplied the capital by five. When we saw that it was working, we went to present to the multilaterals,» Cruz reviews. With the support of organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the fund grew, also driven by an entrepreneurial environment that in Latin America was becoming increasingly dynamic. According to data from the Association for Private Capital Investment in Latin America (Lavca), the total entrepreneurial capital invested throughout the region went from around 150 million dollars a year in 2011 to more than 15 billion in 2021, triggered by the digitalization caused by the pandemic. After that peak, it moderated and closed 2025 around $4.3 billion, a reduction that Cruz does not identify as a crisis but as the natural adjustment of a maturing market. In 2023, NXTP closed its third fund of almost 100 million dollars, of which 40% has been invested in 17 companies. It is not that until then it had not been reported of the existence of many women who create value but remain in the shadows – she herself grew up accompanying her mother in the garage that served as a base for the different ventures with which she sought to strengthen her railway father’s income – but it was a photo of her own company’s New Year’s Eve party that It prompted her to do more to bring them to the fore. Of the eighty people in the NXTP photo, only three were women: an entrepreneur, an employee in the Marketing and Communication area, and Cruz herself. Together with Nora Palladino and Susana García-Robles, she created Emprendedora LAC in 2013, a community of technology-based entrepreneurs in Latin America and the Caribbean. —We started holding events, inviting women who could serve as successful models for others. We prepared women for their pitch [presentación breve en la que se cuenta un negocio] and we also forced them to be the ones to present it. The condition was that the woman always came, because in general the male partner is the visible face of the company because he is the one who feels most comfortable, the one who is supposed to pitch better, the one who has better English… Beyond the context, do women have to work on that aspect to not be relegated? The truth is that it is a perverse game that we play on ourselves. I haven’t seen imposter syndrome in men, for example. And we, all or the vast majority, have this syndrome of believing that our abilities are not up to the task. That makes us withdraw and tell the investor only what we are sure we will be able to accomplish, but investors are interested in the big dream, because we invest money and we need to multiply it. The man tells you, “I am going to reach a 100 million dollar company in the next eight years” and the woman, “with this investment I am going to increase turnover by 10%”, which is something that does not serve me well and that puts a ceiling on the opportunities that may arise. We also have to learn to sell the dream. Does investors’ approach to entrepreneurs also change depending on whether they are dealing with a man or a woman? There is research based on the observation of dozens of pitches that shows that male investors ask male entrepreneurs promotional questions — for example, “And when you raise this round, where is it going to take your company in terms of turnover?” — and ask women preventive questions — “If you don’t raise the round, how are you going to continue to survive, given that you have four months of cash left?” This determines the result before the negotiation begins. That is where our network comes in to prepare women so that they can turn around a negative question. Only 2.3% of global entrepreneurial capital is allocated to projects led by women and 62% of investment funds do not have women in decision-making positions. In this scenario, Cruz also thought about building a community to detect women investors in Latin America and promote positive synergy. This is how WeInvest was born in 2019, a network of more than 420 investors in 24 countries, with more than 240 funds represented and participation in more than 1,000 companies globally. Collectively, female investors linked to the community manage more than $390 billion in assets.—The entry of women is beginning to be an important driver in all funds, because institutional investors evaluate gender diversity in funds when investing. But at this point I am going to make an important reservation, so that people do not think that it is about filling a quota: if I do not find well-prepared women for the team, it is impossible for me to incorporate them, because I need to have stars. The same with entrepreneurs; We need companies to give us high returns. The Argentine Minister of Economy, Luis Caputo, with the businessmen who participated in Argentina Week in New York, on March 12. Endeavor Argentina Those talented women exist, but on a tilted field they usually need more merits than men to receive the same attention. To account for this, Cruz refers to another more recent photo, the one taken at the Argentina Week that took place in New York last March, in which there was only one woman out of 33 people.—You can’t wait until a woman already has a billion dollar company to look at her. We must listen to women now, because they are already generating a lot of value and impact to the region, standing out in biotechnology and health projects. In that photo from Argentina Week there were a lot of entrepreneurs who did not have the stature of a super company and the reality is that I know a number of women who could have been there. Cruz is excited about that day when there is no need for initiatives to promote women and that in sectoral events they are mixed with men, in a decent proportion, giving their opinions at technical tables and not around gender agendas. “When they invite me to participate I tell them ‘I’m going but don’t put me on a panel where I have all the women talking about the issue of women,’” she summarizes. “’Let’s talk business.’”