A Pan-LATAM Forum

The report names seven separate regional deep tech convenings, none of them a reference point for allocators. Consolidate them into one rotating flagship carrying the region’s annual KPI release.

The rationale

The region has no shortage of events and no reference date. The report names seven convenings, from EMERGE’s Deep Tech Summit in São Paulo to Impacto Deep Tech LATAM on the Uruguayan coast to CORFO’s Go Europe Connect, each with its own sponsor set, its own audience and no shared output. An international LP choosing which week to fly for has no answer, and the numbers waiting on arrival do not agree either: more than US$2bn of the region’s 2025 financing came through credit lines, structured debt and FIDCs, which is most of why one tracker’s annual total runs at twice another’s.

A rotating flagship works only if it carries something the market cannot get elsewhere, and that thing is the annual release: deal counts, pilots converted, grants disbursed and cross-border expansions, published on a fixed date under a single stated methodology. The existing organisers are co-branded rather than displaced, and hosting rotates across countries so national agencies stay invested, while the release and its methodology stay with one secretariat so year two is comparable to year one. The invitation strategy is run as a tracked pipeline against the allocator categories the region currently does not reach.

Two objections deserve direct answers. The first is that recommendation 3 already proposes a single flagship; the split is that rec 3 owns private investor education while this one owns the public convening and the release, and the two should be planned and staffed as one programme. The second is that the KPIs do not yet exist in usable form. The report’s own funnel proves it: the text reports 22 startups reaching Series B at 10% while the chart reads 9%, and 22 of 2,566 is 0.86%. Nothing ships as a KPI until that is reconciled.

The evidence

First moves

1. 0–6 months

   Sign the co-branding and rotation charter

   Agree a three-year host rotation, one fixed calendar slot and a co-branding rule that keeps each existing organiser’s name on the programme, signed by the current convenings rather than imposed on them. Deliverable: a signed charter naming host cities for years one to three and the track each organiser controls.

   EMERGE, CITES, GRIDX, The Ganesha Lab and Alianza Deep Tech Colombia with the LADP coalition secretariat
2. 6–18 months

   Lock the release methodology before the first edition

   Publish the definition of every released metric, deals, pilots converted, grants disbursed and cross-border expansions, each with its denominator and collection method, and reconcile the report’s funnel contradiction before any stage share is released. Deliverable: a methodology note and a corrected funnel series with the 9% versus 10% discrepancy resolved.

   LADP coalition secretariat with LAVCA and national innovation agencies
3. 18–36 months

   Run the allocator invitation as a tracked pipeline

   Target the allocator categories absent from the region, pension funds, sovereign wealth vehicles and corporate venture arms, against a tracked invitation list, and publish a count of first-time attending institutions per edition. Deliverable: an attendance report separating returning from first-time allocators, by category and by home market.

   Forum secretariat with IDB Lab and LAVCA

How we would know it worked

• Number of first-time attending institutional allocators per edition, published in the attendance report, rising year on year
• Number of separate regional deep tech summits still running independently of the flagship, counted annually, falling from seven
• Days between the fixed release date and publication of the underlying dataset, held at zero so the KPI release and its data ship together
• Share of released metrics carrying a published denominator and collection method, at 100% before the first edition

What could go wrong

Who acts

Rests on

The data behind it