Buenos Aires-based InvGate, which offers IT service and asset management tools, raised $35M led by Riverwood, its first external funding since its 2009 founding
Context & Ripple Effects
Riverwood has made a habit of writing the first institutional check to companies that skipped venture capital for a decade or more: the firm led Geopagos's $35M first outside round in 2022 for the Buenos Aires payments infrastructure startup, and later put $60M into BigID at a $1B+ valuation. InvGate fits the same template — fourteen years bootstrapped in IT service and asset management before taking external money.
The $35M round matters because it signals growth equity moving into Latin American enterprise SaaS on the strength of existing revenue rather than early-stage potential, with Riverwood building a repeatable playbook across the region.
First-order effects
- InvGate now has its first external capital to scale its IT service and asset management tools, ending fourteen years of operating entirely on its own revenue.
- Riverwood adds a second Buenos Aires-based, long-bootstrapped company to its portfolio alongside Geopagos, deepening its LatAm enterprise software exposure.
Second-order effects
- Competitors in IT service and asset management face a rival that can now fund expansion it previously had to pace against cash flow, tightening the market for deals and talent.
- Riverwood's pattern — Geopagos, BigID, now InvGate — makes it a known first-check buyer for profitable software companies considering outside capital, giving the firm deal flow other growth investors must bid against.
Third-order effects
- If the bootstrapped-then-funded model keeps producing rounds like this, growth equity increasingly substitutes for early-stage VC as the entry point for profitable software companies, reshaping which investors capture the first — and largest — markup.
- Latin American SaaS firms that scale on local revenue before raising give the region a second funding path beyond the seed-first model, attracting US growth capital to companies with proven unit economics.
The trend: Growth investors like Riverwood are turning long-bootstrapped, revenue-proven software companies in Latin America and enterprise IT into their first institutional checks, bypassing the traditional seed-to-Series-A ladder.