Franco Varona
speaker
1,024 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2025
last heard 1 Apr
Franco Varona’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Fund one was vintage twenty nineteen, fund two was vintage twenty twenty-one.
Um between both of those funds we made forty three investments.
And fund three, we just actually announced our first close just about a month and a half ago uh of about thirty million uh of thirty million dollars.
And we've already made two investments there as well.
So I'm excited to share some announcements with you uh today about those.
Thank you.
I mean, it wasn't easy.
I mean I you know, I think I I I I would be remiss to say that it was a very easy fundraise.
Um I think everybody in in in Southeast Asia has really had a tough time recently.
We were very lucky, I think I told you this offline, but we were very lucky to have our anchor investor come in quite early, the Dutch Good Growth Fund.
And from there I just it it snowballed quite well, right?
I mean I think it's 'cause it's good timing in general.
The Philippines itself is ascendant, very interesting for any type type of private capital to to the Dutch Good Growth Fund just so happened to have the Philippines as one of its priority countries, was very supportive in our mission.
And then yeah, like I said, we had we had a bunch of our old LPs from Fund One and Fund Two come back in, uh mostly locals.
And of course we had a great let me let me put it this way, a full circle moment with Grab corporate ventures coming in, which of course as as most people know, I I did spend a little bit of time at Grab about ten years ago.
So it was nice to have them come in and show some support back into the Philippines as well.
Yeah, you know, I mean I think there's a lot of there's a lot of reasons why today the the Philippines is ascendant.
But you know, if we just look back a few years and what you'll see is actually that the Philippines has really been kind of overlooked, right?
If we look back even five, six years ago, the Philippines oftentimes wasn't even in the top three investment destinations of Southeast Asia, despite having the second largest population.
You know, the the thesis for fund two, our prior fund, was really about the digitization of the country.
Showing 581–600 of 1,024 · page 30 of 52
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