Shu Nyatta, Partner at Bicycle Capital and board member of Endeavor—the world’s leading community of high-impact entrepreneurs—runs a $500M growth equity fund focused on Latin America, with a vision that extends far beyond the region. In this conversation, he outlines the fund’s unique positioning and explains why “elsewhere”—a concept originally developed and promoted by Endeavor—has become a powerful investment thesis that he strongly embraces. He shares why he is drawn to investing in markets outside traditional ecosystems, particularly Latin America, and explores how the region, along with Europe and other undercapitalized markets, can build world-class companies by connecting with global innovation hubs such as Silicon Valley and China.
How would you describe Bicycle Capital’s investment thesis?
Bicycle Capital is a half-billion-dollar growth equity fund focused on Latin America. We’re not a traditional venture capital fund — when I say growth equity, it has a very specific meaning, especially in LatAm.
We look for fairly advanced businesses. They could have been startups very recently and are still founder-driven, but it’s not the same kind of risk you see in very early-stage companies. All our companies are either profitable or very close, while still growing fast. They’re all market leaders in their category, with a very low chance of disappearing.
In venture capital, you expect some of your portfolio to fail and some to become outliers. We’re not constructing a portfolio like that. We’re building one that will last — 10 to 12 companies, not 50. So it’s a very different capital allocation model because of the maturity of the companies.
Several of our portfolio companies are also cross-border. They’re not tiny anymore; they operate in multiple countries. And we think that’s an important theme in places like LatAm — but also in Europe, where to scale, you often need to address more than one market. We like companies that think that way from day one.
And then from the LatAm positioning, we talk about Latin America a lot, but it does not exist in a vacuum. One thing that’s very important to us is to keep Latin America plugged into the world — specifically into the two main engines of innovation: China and Silicon Valley.
Those are the real engines. Israel is also important, but the big ones are China and Silicon Valley, and they have different strengths.
China leads the world in fintech, credit underwriting, and the energy transition. The best battery, solar, drone, and electronics companies are Chinese. Silicon Valley leads in AI. I’ve spent a lot of time in San Francisco this year, and the amount of talent and capital flowing into AI is just insane.
What we want to do is be a bridge between LatAm and these two engines of innovation — making sure the region benefits from both.
I understand that LatAm is very open to Silicon Valley. But how open is it to Chinese innovation?
Massively open. Some of the most powerful disruption themes in LatAm today are driven by China.
In Brazil’s food delivery sector, the big battle is between iFood, Meituan, and Didi — two of those are Chinese. Didi is also big in Mexico in both food delivery and ride-hailing. BYD is everywhere, as are other Chinese EV makers. J&T Logistics is growing fast in Brazil. The list goes on.
From solar to batteries to e-commerce to logistics, Chinese companies are already operating in LatAm at scale. And when we go to China, the amount of energy and interest in LatAm is at an all-time high. I’ve been doing the Beijing–Shanghai–São Paulo–Mexico City circuit for seven years now, and I’ve never seen stronger mutual interest.
Why? Because the markets are similar.
LatAm founders have realized there’s more to learn from China than from the U.S. The markets are messy in the same way. The structures are messy. The way you build startups is messy.
In the U.S., you can build a clean, single-point solution startup. In LatAm and China, you often need a bundle of five products to make the economics work. That’s the Chinese approach — and LatAm founders recognize they can learn from it.
On the China side, Europe and the U.S. are increasingly closed to them. Southeast Asia is advanced, Africa is early. But Brazil and Mexico? Huge, underserved, and open. That’s why you see Meituan, BYD, Shopee, J&T, and others going all-in.
How can we bring Bicycle Capital’s approach to growth investing to the European setting?
It’s not just about size, it’s also a style of company.
We’re not going to invest in small, mid-market companies that do heating or ceiling repair — those are solid businesses, but not for us.
The word growth is the most important one in our model. Not everything in our portfolio is cutting-edge tech. We’ve backed a motorcycle leasing company, a food distribution company, a gym and wellness membership platform. None of that is “techy.”
What matters is:
They’re founder-driven, with a big vision.
They grow very fast.
And growth is your margin of safety in tricky markets. If you’re growing fast and the Brazilian real depreciates 20%, you still have returns. If you’re growing slowly, you don’t. For us, growth is a kind of religion.
Europe has strong cultural ties to LatAm. Why isn’t there more investment flow between the two?
Part of it is perception, shaped by headlines.
We did a review of four years of headlines in the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. LatAm barely features — much less than India, China, or even Africa. And when it does appear, the headlines are negative: corruption, cartels, inflation.
People absorb headlines, not full articles. And because they don’t vacation in LatAm, they don’t balance that with lived experience. So the perception is: risky.
The one thing that changes perception is money. If you make investors money, they come back. That’s what has happened with some U.S. and Middle Eastern LPs who’ve already profited in LatAm. But many others still see only risk — especially given the old PE model, which didn’t deliver in LatAm because leverage wasn’t available.
From LatAm to Europe, the flow isn’t strong either. When LatAm families invest in Europe, it’s mostly real estate. Europe is seen as safe — a place to park capital, not to innovate.
In LatAm, the issue is currency and political risk. In Europe, the issue is regulation and risk aversion. But in both cases, the perception masks the real dynamism in places like Brazil — which has produced Nubank ($60B) and Mercado Libre ($120B). Brazil today has an entrepreneurial energy that rivals anywhere.
You’ve spoken about “investing elsewhere.” How do you define that?
Innovation has two components: invention and application.
Cutting-edge invention happens in very few places — Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, China, maybe a couple of European hubs. But application can happen anywhere.
You won’t invent the next large language model in Lagos, Nigeria. But you can apply it in the country’s largest telco and transform the business. That’s innovation, too.
So when I talk about elsewhere, I mean the markets where innovation is applied — not necessarily invented. That opens the whole world outside the traditional centers.
Most investors focus on invention. But the market for application is enormous.
Why bring the “elsewhere” thesis to an audience in Milan at 0100 International?
Because it’s about alpha.
Beta is just riding the wave of a trend. Alpha is making different choices that generate excess returns. That requires doing something a little different — not radically different, but different enough.
Elsewhere is that difference. We’re offering exposure to proven technology trends, market leaders, and founder-driven companies — but in geographies that are underpenetrated. That’s where alpha comes from.
This is true in LatAm, but also in Europe and other capital-deficit markets. When you go where others aren’t looking, you often find better companies at better terms.
And uniquely, right now, anyone anywhere can build a company with minimal resources. AI makes it even more possible. You don’t need a technical co-founder anymore; you can use AI tools. That democratizes company-building globally.
So the next decades are a huge era for elsewhere.
Bicycle Capital’s first fund is focused on Latin America. Could you see applying the same model in Europe in the future?
Yes — the playbook is very similar wherever there’s limited access to growth capital.
Whether it’s Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, or Portugal, the patterns are the same: founders need to be capital-efficient, technical teams are scarce, and the consumer and business opportunities are underserved.
The opportunity is to provide growth capital to founder-driven companies in those markets. But we’re taking it one step at a time: proving the LatAm thesis, building bridges with China and Silicon Valley, and — most importantly — returning money.
At the end of the day, that’s what matters. You can make all the arguments you want, but unless you deliver returns, people won’t believe you.
