In 2019, SoftBank allocated $5 billion to investing in Latin American startups, then the Japanese investment conglomerate committed another $3 billion to startups there, which was further validation that Latin America was home to a formidable startup system. About $7.6 billion of that capital has been allocated overall across more than 80 investments.
APIs are the “A” in MACH, the architecture checklist that defines true composable systems. This Nylas survey shows why APIs matter: half (53%) of the developers who responded said they could build an email integration in one to five months to build without using APIs, but Nylas’ own experience shows it really takes one year with three developers working on the project. It goes a lot quicker if an API is used instead.
Small businesses in Latin America got another boost in lending support with the investment of $4 million in Kala, a Colombia-based company building fintech infrastructure for lending. Kala officially launched in July 2022 and within the first six months had three customers, two in Colombia and one in Mexico, using the product and dispersing it to over 50,000 customers. Kala charges a SaaS fee and is already bringing in revenue.
Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation. The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.