Kayyak Ventures

Kayyak Ventures is a Santiago-based fund backing purpose-driven companies with strong technology foundations across Latin America. Check sizes of $1M to $5M place the firm at the higher end of LatAm seed and into Series A and B participation, which is meaningful in a region where check inflation has lagged the US. The firm is not specifically AI-focused, so healthcare founders selling primarily on an AI moat should expect a generalist diligence lens; founders with real-economy healthcare models (consumer health, mental and behavioral health platforms, wellness brands, hybrid care delivery) will find more native interest.

The healthcare thesis read is broadly oriented to digital health, wellness and consumer health, and mental and behavioral health, three categories where Latin America has shown demand pull both regionally and as a beachhead for US Hispanic consumer plays. Founders who are best positioned to approach Kayyak are those building defensible consumer health brands with meaningful gross margins, mental health platforms with B2B2C distribution into employers or payers, or care models that work in mixed public-private systems like Chile, Mexico, and Colombia. Pure US or European founders with no LatAm wedge are a poor fit; so are deep biotech and infrastructure plays that need patient capital and specialist boards.

Kayyak’s regional advantage is grounded in Chile’s relatively professionalized capital markets, transparent regulatory environment, and connectivity to other Pacific Alliance markets. A founder using Chile as an operational hub for regional expansion gets real value from that footprint; a founder treating Chile as one of many possible markets does not.

The right intro path is a warm referral from a regional GP, an existing portfolio founder, or an operator at one of the Chilean ecosystem accelerators. The firm reads partner-led decks and is more responsive to a clear regional expansion thesis than to generic LatAm framing. The pitch should lead with unit economics, the specific country sequencing for expansion, and a credible plan for how Series A capital travels in the regional graph after their check. Include a clear answer to the question of why a US fund with bigger pockets is not the right partner.

Caveats. The non-AI focus is not a deal-breaker but it does mean you should not over-index on AI claims in your pitch; emphasize healthcare outcomes, retention, and gross margin instead. The $1M to $5M range is wide; clarify early whether they will lead or follow at your stage. Diligence the firm’s actual healthcare deployments via two founder references, since LatAm health is heterogeneous (Chile and Brazil behave differently from Mexico and Colombia). For a sophisticated founder building a regional, purpose-aligned healthcare company with strong unit economics, Kayyak is a credible regional partner; for founders chasing pure AI or US-only narratives, the fit is weaker.