Marta Cruz
Co-founder of NXTP, one of the earliest structured venture platforms in Latin America, and a longtime advocate for and backer of founders across the region.
Track record
NXTP
Co-founded NXTP, which combined an accelerator model with direct investment and became one of Latin America’s first genuinely regional early-stage venture platforms, working with founders across Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and beyond.
Regional, not single-country, focus
NXTP’s model — running programs and making investments across multiple countries rather than concentrating on a single domestic market — was ahead of much of the region’s ecosystem when it launched, and helped establish cross-border early-stage investing as a viable model in Latin America.
Recognition
Regularly cited among the most influential women in Latin American tech investing, reflecting both her tenure in the industry and her role helping build one of its earliest institutional platforms.
How she invests
Cruz’s investing activity has been primarily channeled through NXTP’s platform model — combining structured programs with direct capital — rather than purely personal angel checks, giving her visibility into a large volume of regional deal flow over an extended period.
As with most platform-based investors, the specific current-day portfolio and check sizes are not fully public; her public profile is best understood through NXTP’s broader track record and regional focus rather than any single disclosed investment.
What an angel can take from this
Institutional early-stage investing arrived before angel capital did
In much of Latin America a formal early-stage fund existed before a deep base of individual angels did, which is the reverse of the usual sequence. That order still shapes the market: founders often meet a small fund before they meet an angel, and angels frequently invest alongside those funds rather than ahead of them.
Networks matter more than individual cheques here
The practical route into early-stage investing in the region runs through organised groups — angel networks, syndicates and small funds — rather than solo deal-by-deal sourcing. That is partly a deal-flow problem and partly a diligence one: a single individual rarely sees enough companies to calibrate what a reasonable price looks like.