After her tenure at Facebook and her own startup, Jimena Pardo joined Hi Ventures as a partner.
Founding Carrot, a car rental platform launched in 2012, gave Jimena Pardo, along with her former partner Diego Solórzano, the skills to be an entrepreneur in an environment where it was harder to access capital and scale.
"Back then, the ecosystem was very small," recalls Pardo. "It was great to be a pioneer of one of the first Mexican startups with venture capital funding, paving the way."
Now, Jimena Pardo has joined the Mexican venture capital firm Hi Ventures as a partner, which has companies like Cornershop, Shinkansen, and Atlas in its portfolio, after spending a few years at Meta (formerly Facebook) as a growth product manager.
From Silicon Valley, she participated in projects like the launch of Facebook Dating, the dating feature. "It was the best product school," she notes.
Pardo, who has been a mentor for the Endeavor entrepreneurs network for over a decade and also an angel investor, has been advising Hi Ventures from the outside in recent years, which led her to make the leap into venture capital.
"I would like Hi to have a foot in a tangible Web3 solution. I'm bringing new product energy," Pardo told Forbes Mexico.
In the face of the startup winter, which has been caused by global economic uncertainty hindering investment access, Pardo argues that it is a market correction, not a bubble burst like what happened at the beginning of the century.
"In Latin America, there are still many big problems that will need solutions with technology. Now is the time for entrepreneurs focused on value creation and with metrics that make their businesses profitable," she adds. "It's like going back to the beginning."
The Managing Partner wants to help entrepreneurs explore new technologies and expand geographically.
