EXCLUSIVE: Marcos Fernandez On Why 'Now Is The Best Time To Invest In Early-Stage Companies,' How Fiat Ventures Is Capitalizing On This

While stubborn inflation and steep interest rates have caused company valuations to plunge, causing fear of more downside and a possible recession, Fiat Ventures Managing Partner Marcos Fernandez sees opportunity.

The venture capital company is capitalizing on the uncertainty, providing unrivaled assistance to start-ups set to experience success when the economy resets and heads back toward a bullish trajectory.

“I’ll tell you something very controversial, but now is the best time to invest in early-stage companies that we’ve had in the last decade, and I’ll tell you why: the best companies that were founded out of the last wave were started in 2008 through 2011, these are like the Ubers and the Yelps, when we just had this brand new technology reaching the forefront with having supercomputers in our pockets,” Fernandez told Benzinga during a recent interview.

“Same thing in the dot.com era right, those are the early days of the Googles and the Amazons of the world that had to learn how to be scrappy through [those] tough times and could accelerate out of it. And we’re seeing that today and this is what we’re educating a lot of our investors [on]. This is not a time to be playing on the sidelines,” he said.

The Venture Capital firm, which focuses on the fintech space, provides early-stage companies with more than just the capital needed to grow their business. Start-ups who partner with Fiat Ventures have access to industry experts, consultants and advisors who offer support to help them achieve success.

“When things do open up again here in the next two, three, four years, we’re in a position to just accelerate and build the next leading companies of the future,” Fernandez said. “We’re not sitting on the sidelines, we’re still very actively deploying (funds) and working with companies because we see this really great once-in-a-decade opportunity right now.” he added.

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How Fiat Ventures Plans To Dominate The VC Space: “What we’ve created is kinda a unique model. Traditionally, you raise venture capital funds and then you build platform teams to support your portfolio of companies, and this has been the model in venture since it was first conceived in the '50s and '60s,” Fernandez said, adding, “We’re taking that and we’ve completely flipped it on its head.”

“What we’ve done is we’ve built out what’s become the market’s leading growth consultancy, primarily in the fintech space, and that provides us this really deep understanding of the markets and what’s going on,” he said, adding “that gives us these incredible opportunities to be able to invest and see what’s coming next around these corners.”

Fiat Ventures has worked with more than 100 clients and Fernandez said there isn’t another company that’s doing what Fiat is doing or at the same scale. “We’re seen as smart capital. We’re fintech experts, we’re ex-operators and executives and we’re current operators within the space,” he said.

The VC company is focused on helping companies draw in more clients and customers on the consultancy side through “full life cycle implementations “and employs experts, such as Sofi Technologies, Inc’s former head of lifestyle to trigger advertising campaigns in creative ways. Fiat Ventures goes a step further, however, and works alongside its clients to make sure they’re seeing “what’s going on behind the scenes.”

Fiat Ventures is focused on helping fintech companies “focus on their core business and (building) that out in a sustainable way, again so that (they) can stick around so that by the time the markets open up again, (they’re) in a very strong position to accelerate.”

“There’s this new wave and we’re kinda at the forefront of leading this charge. I suspect we’re gonna see this more and more over time because it takes more than just a check and a couple emails to really help teams be driven,” Fernandez said. “In these markets founders, unfortunately, have less capital available to them but I just want founders to always know, and this is what we advise, is like, think about that cap-table as people around your table, bring the right people around your table.”

“Now is the best time to invest,” he said.

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