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A Day in the Life at Capria

Written by Juan Luis Palma Dominguez
November 9, 2016

Working at Capria is contributing to improve the world we live in on a highly scalable way, while also learning through a holistic multicultural experience.

Morning has broken like the first morning / Team members have spoken like the first bird.

I started the day (in Seattle) on a video conference call with the Capria Investment Team, with team members calling in from Lagos, Singapore, Mumbai, and New York City. We do travel. Everyone was interacting real-time contributing to our online fund manager pipeline dashboard adding updates as our vibrant discussion progressed. The person in Mumbai had just finished a meeting with a promising fintech entrepreneur aiming to bring payments to small merchants leveraging India’s 1-billion-person biometric database. The person in NYC was on iPhone video walking to a fundraising meeting with a major emerging market investor. The person in Lagos was struggling with power outages so had to re-join the call a few times. The person in Singapore just finished a dinner meeting with an interesting fund manager and was finishing up a long day meeting with investors and other.

We shared a lot of info & opinions and debated for an hour — we don’t always agree, which is great. At Capria, different opinions are heard out, and we debate in a very friendly and open way to come up with the best plan of action — then we all agree to take it forward. We learn from each other, from our different backgrounds, perspectives and personalities. Have you seen the American Presidential debate? Well, think of Capria’s way of debating as the opposite of that :).

After learning from the varied insights contributed by our diverse team, my day followed having calls with potential fund managers from different places varying from Africa to Latam to SE Asia. Listening to each fund manager’s impact thesis, investment strategies, portfolio & fundraising traction and getting to know them better is really exciting. At the end, this journey is about people, about teams and how we can all together improve the lives of millions through a profitable scalable model.

Since fundraising is on top of mind for impact fund managers, and the meaning of the word Capria is “flow of capital”, I spent the next two hours connecting with HNIs and family offices around the globe representing over US$15B in net worth. They are interested in the market rate returns our funds can deliver while creating a significant positive impact. They are attracted by the fact that Capria partners with funds managed by local teams, who have a good understanding of the best local investment opportunities and what impact means in their specific places and at the moment in time. Impact investors also value the opportunity we give them to invest in our US$100M multi-manager Capria Fund that takes both GP and LP positions in early-stage venture & private equity funds targeting the missing middle finance opportunity in emerging markets. The fact that Capria is supported by global minded people like Bill Gates, Jim Sorenson, Diane Isenberg and IFC also gives you a good idea of the level of the impact we are seeking to create at Capria.

Lunch time in Pioneer Square reading article about Capria in Seattle Times.

After a stimulating morning, I ate a well-deserved burrito from the diverse variety of food trucks near Capria’s office in the historic Pioneer Square area of Seattle. I ate my tasty Mexican feast while reading an online article about Capria at the Seattle Times newspaper. The picture in the first page of the business section, was about Alitheia Identity, a woman-led fund that invests in high performing diverse teams in Africa to achieve superior returns by leveraging the gender effect. This team had just participated in a multi-week grueling Capria Accelerator “Intensive” program, that wrapped up with the teams pitching their funds to over 60 investors from around the world with US$40B+ AUM. Having experienced how much the teams improved during the Intensive, and how much they value what the Capria team members and external experts shared with them, was impactful.

Evening awareness and reflection about the many bridges created and doors opened.

The day continues after lunch with a call with our fund manager in Guatemala who connected with an investor we introduced him to, then reading applications from fund managers in Africa, and following up the many doors opened and bridges built in only one day.

This day in the life at Capria finished with our performance driven team enjoying our Capria unwinder at the office, like every Thursday, tasting wines from around the world, while sharing updates on what we’ve all been doing and learning and planning in Capria and family life.

Capria is not only advancing the next generation of impact fund managers in emerging markets, but it is also advancing its own team.

Annex – Not finished yet – Proud night.

At 6pm, I arrived back home near the lake, and spent quality time with my Chicago-born elder son Juan Luis, who grew up in London but has hot Chilean blood in his veins. We built some legos together with my youngest London-born son Arturo, now raised in Seattle who also has a warm and strong LatAm character. Trying to negotiate with them about what to build with our legos, was certainly the most difficult task of the day (and much more difficult than what I have learnt about negotiations at my MBA!).

Together with my Santiaguinian – Seattleite wife, we sit next to the fireplace, happy and proud to be contributing to improve the world our children will grow up, immensely grateful and working together so that many more millions of people can have the great opportunities we have had.

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This plane fuselage was crafted in Asia, arrives to Seattle by ship and then is transported by train to Boeing to be assembled. Several different means of transportation, great ideas and people from all over the world allows this miracle steel tube to fly and brings us all closer. I took this picture two blocks from Capria offices.

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