Susana García Robles
A pioneer of institutional venture and angel investing in Latin America, whose work helped build the region’s early-stage ecosystem before most of today’s prominent founder-angels had even started their companies.
Track record
IDB’s Multilateral Investment Fund
Spent close to two decades at the Inter-American Development Bank’s Multilateral Investment Fund (now IDB Lab), where she helped design and deploy some of the region’s earliest institutional programs supporting venture capital and angel investing infrastructure.
Capria Latin America
Co-founded Capria Latin America, part of the global Capria network, backing fund managers and startups across the region — extending her institutional-building work from the public sector into a private investment platform.
Ecosystem building over deal-making
Distinct from most other names on this list, García Robles’s public reputation centers less on individual startup bets and more on building the funds, networks and programs that made later angel and VC activity in the region possible.
How she invests
Through Capria Latin America, García Robles’s activity is oriented toward backing fund managers and investment platforms — a "fund of funds" and ecosystem-building approach — rather than only direct startup checks, reflecting her institutional background.
This makes her profile somewhat different from founder-turned-angel investors: her influence on Latin American startups is often indirect, through the funds and programs she has helped capitalize and design, in addition to any direct investments.
What an angel can take from this
Development-institution capital built the first funds here
A large share of Latin America's early venture funds raised their first vehicle with an anchor commitment from a multilateral or development institution. That history explains why regional funds often carry reporting and impact obligations that a purely commercial fund would not, and why some deals come with conditions attached.
Where the money comes from shapes what gets funded
Anchor investors influence mandates: geography, sector, stage and sometimes the composition of the founding team. For an angel co-investing with a fund, it is worth understanding whose money is behind it, because that determines what the fund can and cannot do in a follow-on round.