We Invest in People Before Companies

At 401, one belief comes before every investment decision: we invest in people before companies. ("we invest in people before companies" → en negrita). It sounds simple. In practice, it changes everything — what we look for, who we back, and how we build.

Why people come first

At pre-seed and seed, the company you invest in today is almost never the company that succeeds. The product will pivot, the market will shift, the deck will be rewritten a dozen times. What stays constant is the founder — their judgment, their resilience, their ability to attract talent and capital when things get hard.

So when we look at a startup, we're really looking at a person: Do they have global ambition and the discipline to execute? Do people want to follow them? Can they learn faster than the market moves? Back the right person early, and the company tends to find its way.

The best deals happen between people, not on stages

The most important moments in a founder's journey rarely happen on a demo-day stage. They happen in a conversation — an intro that opens a round, a mentor who reframes the problem, a peer who's hit the same wall. That's why we obsess over the room: LatAm founders, operators, investors, and mentors who actually show up for each other. Trust is the asset. Everything else compounds on top of it.

How we put it into practice

Believing in people only matters if you build for it. Our batches are small and intentional  we'd rather work closely with a few teams than process many. We pair founders with top-level mentors, open doors to the right investors, and keep the network alive long after the program ends. We also invest in funds and platforms building long-term infrastructure around Latin American founders  because backing people means backing the whole ecosystem they grow in.

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