{"id":23122,"date":"2016-06-28T14:39:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T06:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=23122"},"modified":"2016-06-28T14:46:28","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T06:46:28","slug":"katalyst-ph-secures-corporate-vc-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2016\/06\/28\/katalyst-ph-secures-corporate-vc-funding\/","title":{"rendered":"Katalyst.ph secures corporate VC funding\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Startup businesses take on a slightly different path, than businesses in the Silicon Valley, where Katalyst.ph founder, Joe Maristela, got his start as an independent investor and portfolio manager for his family
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In 2009, Maristela launched a healthcare BPO that\u2019s now headquartered in Makati City. In 2015, this BPO had matured enough for him to step away from day-to-day operations, and so, Maristela decided to launch an independent one million dollar investment program\u2014his own money, his own investment theses.<\/p>\n

His first position was Satoshi Citadel Industries (SCI), a universal Bitcoin business that had as its flagship a Bitcoin and Blockchain-based remittance business. In total, Maristela invested $350,000 (USD) into the so called fintech space, which also included a seed investment in Qwikwire (QW).<\/p>\n

\u201cIn late 2015, like many of the startups that I\u2019d invested in, I\u2019d gone through growing pains in the short time that I\u2019d been operating. I had to let some of my team members go, and had to pivot in terms of marketing and focus in key areas, in order to achieve the mission, which is to create an office that is in and of itself a catalyst for other catalysts of progress in the Philippines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat use would a follow-on investment be, if the corporate VC only had as its exit in mind, an acquisition\u2014worst yet, by one of only two telcos in this country?\u201d Maristela spent the greater part of a year, trying to find a follow-on investor that wouldn\u2019t kill the prospects and potential of his initial investment. He\u2019d found a strategic partner in Kakao Venture Group (KVG), the venture arm of Kakao Corp. in Korea. \u201cTheir investment is significant, and it helped to close our seed round,\u201d Maristela said.<\/p>\n

Maristela\u2019s second investment in 2015, seeding QW, secured a slot in 500 Startup\u2019s current cohort in San Francisco, California as well as Ideaspace, a non-profit business support organization affiliated with Smart Telecom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Startup businesses take on a slightly different path, than businesses in the Silicon Valley, where Katalyst.ph founder, Joe Maristela, got his start as an independent investor and portfolio manager for his family office In 2009, Maristela launched a healthcare BPO that\u2019s now headquartered in Makati City. In 2015, this BPO had matured enough for him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":23121,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[799,1049],"class_list":["post-23122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-startup","tag-venture-capital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}