Mouro Capital is a global venture capital firm that invests in early-to-growth-stage financial services and fintech startups. Evolving from Santander InnoVentures in 2020, the fund manages over $1 billion in commitments and has ElevenLabs and Ripple in its portfolio.
Fund strategy overview
Geography: Europe, North America, and Latin America, with offices in London, Madrid, and San Francisco
Preferred industries: fintech and financial services, including AI-native financial infrastructure: capital markets, wealth management, insurtech, and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) technology.
Investment ticket: up to $15M
Company stage: early to growth stage.
Product type: B2B: data- and AI-driven financial services and infrastructure
Product stage: early traction and clear product-market fit
Revenues: N/A
Q&A with Manuel Silva Martínez, General Partner at Mouro Capital
What are the 5 main things you look for in a startup?
We look for five key things in a startup: a strong competitive advantage (moat) that is difficult to replicate; an exceptional team with the expertise and ability to execute; a clear understanding of the market and customer needs; a credible monetisation model with potential for sustainable revenue growth; and a realistic path to exit, with the potential to deliver strong returns for investors.
What disqualifies a startup as your potential investment target?
Startups are unlikely to be a fit if they lack a clear competitive advantage, a strong team, market potential, or a credible path to revenue and growth. A lack of a scalable business model is also a red flag.
What in your opinion differentiates the best founders from the rest?
The best founders have relevant industry experience that helps them understand customer needs and market challenges. This allows them to learn faster, make better decisions, refine their sales cycle, and build solutions that stand out from competitors.
What startups should take into account before making a deal with a VC fund?
Startups should understand how a VC fund operates, what drives its investment decisions, and how it measures success. It’s especially important to know how the fund will support the company when things get difficult and what happens as the fund approaches the end of its lifecycle.
Reputation and modus operandi of the individuals behind the fund — especially the ones that would interface with the company post-investment — are often more crucial than the VC brand they represent.
What is your approach to startup valuation and preferred share in the company?
Valuations are based on market conditions, the company’s stage, growth potential, and comparable deals. The aim is to secure a relevant minority ownership that allows us to actively support the founders and contribute to the company’s growth. But early-stage startup valuations are more an art than a science.
How do you support your portfolio companies?
We support our portfolio companies through fintech investment expertise, access to our banking network, commercial opportunities, and long-term support to help them grow:
- Access to customers and commercial opportunities: Mouro is backed by Santander, giving us a strong connection to a major banking group. We use this network to help our portfolio companies explore commercial partnerships, alongside introductions to other banks, tech corporates, insurers and other potential customers.
- Access to expertise and talent: Through our network across Europe, North America and Latin America, we connect founders with experienced industry professionals and talent who can help them grow.
- Long-term investment support: We invest at Series A and reserve capital to support our companies as they grow, including through later funding rounds such as Series C. We aim to be a long-term partner, not just an investor.
- Support through challenges: Building a company is rarely a straight line. We aim to support founders through difficult periods, including bridge rounds and recapitalisations, and work with them to find solutions when things don’t go to plan.
What are the best-performing companies in your portfolio?
We prefer not to single out individual portfolio companies publicly, as each is at a different stage of its journey. What we see in the strongest performers is a combination of founders who anticipate structural shifts in financial services and the ability to turn those shifts into real customer demand, whether in AI infrastructure, capital markets, wealth, or compliance.
What are your notable lessons learned from investments that didn’t work out as expected?
Avoid over-reliance on a single customer, partner or/and revenue stream. Too much dependence on one source creates a single point of failure and can put the entire business at risk if that relationship changes.
What are the hottest markets you currently look at as VC and where do you see the biggest hype?
AI is both.
In your view, what are the key trends that will shape the European VC scene in the coming years?
From an investment perspective, I see strong opportunities in AI infrastructure and applications for financial services, regtech, and technologies supporting Europe’s digital sovereignty, particularly cybersecurity, data infrastructure, and the related security layers.
