Atman Makes the 1st Closing of a BRL 150 Million Fund
Atman Capital – the new venture capital manager of Pedro Sorrentino, co-founder of ONEVC – has closed its first fund, raising R$47m from a vehicle expected to reach R$150m.
The financing was done through institutional investors – Brazilian and international – and also relied on a group of entrepreneurs who had previously organized their own liquidity events, including Israel Salmen, de Méliuz, Tiago Dalvi, Olist and Alexandre Liuzzi, from Remessa Online (acquisition approved by EBANX).
Atman will invest in pre-seed rounds in startups in Latin America and the United States. The amount of the check will vary from $700,000 to $1.5 million for a minimum share of 5% of the share capital.
Atman should invest in startups in the enterprise software sectors; development tools (such as APIs and infrastructure); e-commerce and marketplace solutions; urban mobility; financial technology; and cryptocurrency/blockchain.
Sorrentino founded Atman after spending four years at ONEVC, the management company he co-founded with Arthur Brennand and Bruno Yoshimura and which was an early investor in Rappi and Kovi.
The manager left in early 2021 after a disagreement with the partners over the manager’s new fund thesis. “They wanted to keep focusing just on Brazil and Latin America, and I wanted to keep looking at the United States,” Sorrentino told the Brasil Journal.
To found Atman, the investor teamed up with Pedro Dias, who made a career at JP Morgan in San Francisco and New York. (Pedro was a banker who helped founders of pre-IPO companies and helped entrepreneurs with financial planning.)
Atman’s idea is to offer this same service free of charge to entrepreneurs in its portfolio. “Let’s help the founders at D+0”, said Pedro. These are the people who are still short of money, which is why they are off the banks’ radar.
But we really want to help them get started with the financial planning, which keeps the founders loyal.” According to him, Atman will not have a wealth management department, but he will connect entrepreneurs with private bankers, lawyers and wealth managers. “It’s won. It won’t generate revenue for us, but it will be a differentiator and it will generate loyalty with the founders, which is essential.”
Atman will also have a kind of “scout program” for the limited partners (LP) of the fund. If an investor points to a startup and Atman invests, the person who put the pointer gets 15% of what the manager earns by holding that investment. “The reality is that founders talk to other founders before they talk to investors, and the level of competition for good deals is very high today,” Sorrentino said.
“So knowing about the deal months before it happens is a huge differentiator, and that only happens when we align our interests with the founders who are investors in the fund.”
