Julio Lavalle for MiBolsillo App

At MiBolsillo we help financial institutions in LATAM by providing them with lots of low risk clients through an AI-Powered Financial Advisor that gives, to the formerly unbanked, access to the financial services they need.

👋🏽Hola/Oi/Hello and happy Tuesday everyone. As we wind down (at the airport sending you this update) after intense weeks in Denver & NYC with Techstars, I'm particularly excited and full of energy to turn the MiBolsillo ship into a rocket.

• We made it through Techstars! 13 weeks with the brick and mortar of the masters building global startups. Our biggest takeaway definitely comes down to the 3 words Lesa Mitchell highlighted: focus on revenue! The program pushed this mentality to quickly test on the product/business strategies. And understood the potential we could add to the big players, as we iterate a potential PoC with Western Union.

And by the way, while we were there:

• We officially joined Via (the leading retailer in Brazil) as they become not only commercial partners but also investors. Excited with the team we're working with to run 3 pilots with the Via's companies and our Brazilian brand Poupa Certo by the EoY.

• Entering phase II with Mibanco (biggest microfinance institution in Peru) that is consuming our AI-Powered Financial Advisor (AI-PFA) for micro/small business owners in its platform Yevo. For the next 12 months, new target of 1mi active users.

• We are officially launching our Seed Round this November 1st. Let's have a chat or reply with any questions you may have at [email protected]

• Ronald Solorzano is now leading our product team, we couldn't be moving faster! Since he took over, engagement/retention KPIs are trending upwards: 87% 🔼more users finish their account set-up + 34% 🔼more users are going back to the app this last month.

• Launching v.2 of our AI-PFA for micro/small business owners. And to quickly measure its impact on loan repayment, a nano-loan campaign for selected users will be out on Nov 1.

• Common Cents Lab will host Victor and Ronald from our product team to keep enhacing the way we build engaging digital products with state of the art behavioral theory applications.

• We keep building the team to reach our 1 million user mark. Check out the profiles we onboarded in the last 2 months:

1. Arturo Herrera, Mobile Tech Lead
2. Guillermo Angel, CMO
3. Ronald Solorzano, Product Manager
4. Andrea Diez Canseco, Digital Partnerships LATAM

• 5 clients
• 5 PoCs to be implemented by EoY
• 6 business meetings + 5 proposals sent in the last week

• We're looking for a Digital Partnerships PM for Brazil to manage projects in the ground. Check out the job description here and please help us by socializing it.

• We can't appreciate more the help of our mentors Justin, Cherie, Andres and of course the power of Elle and Josef @ Techstars. To our fellow cohort founders, your energy, focus and passion made this experience blissful.

• To Holberston School for providing us 2 teams of students to develop together innovative in-house projects (thanks Andres for the intro).

• To Peter and Ant @ Earthtech for pushing convos with potential investors. And for the Global Good Fund peeps to the intro to Earthtech.

• MiBolsillo was featured in Gestion (the biggest business and finance newspaper in Peru) and was recognized for our work helping microfinance institutions to reach more clients in the un/underbanked segments.

• Also, our Brazilian brand Poupa Certo was featured in CNN and Exame given the boost of Via's investment.

Hope this update was helpful. Please do feel free to reach to [email protected] with feedback, ideas and more.

Abrazos/ abraços /hugs! 

Julio Lavalle