Fellowship Spotlight: No Border Ventures

The late U.S. Senator, John Lewis, popularized the concept of “good trouble” with a clear bit of advice to his fellow Americans: “Speak up, speak out, get in the way. Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America.” The co-founders of No Border Ventures believe that the people poised to redeem the nation’s soul can be found in any region, not just in the conventional VC cities.

Good Troublemakers

“Andy and I call ourselves good troublemakers,” says No Border Ventures (NBV) Co-Founder, Alejandro Muñoz Mendieta, of himself and his partner, Andy Vargas-Hernandez. “We’ve been building careers on the back of resilience, entering rooms that typically aren’t made for folks like us; and we’re looking to help entrepreneurs who are also achieving every ounce of success through scrappiness, hard work, ingenuity, and calculated risk-taking.”

No Border Ventures Fund 1 is a Texas-based, industry-agnostic, seed and pre-seed fund with a $10M target and a $30M cap. Muñoz Mendieta and Vargas-Hernandez are committed to investing checks averaging $250K into startups led by other good troublemakers, with a regional focus beyond the typical geographies; they’re looking to companies based in the Southwest, Southern California, and Mountain regions in the U.S. as well as in cross-border startups that span the U.S. and Mexico. 

“There’s talent everywhere,” says Muñoz Mendieta, “but today, the way the venture capital space is structured, most of the capital goes to the coasts and legacy tech hubs.” He points out that coastal capital is often inefficient, though, only producing about 60% of the unicorns despite receiving 80-85% of the total investment capital. “The other 40% of unicorns are produced elsewhere,” he says, underscoring the need for more investments to be made in the regions NBV is focusing their work. 

Unconventional Backgrounds, Diverse Experiences

Neither co-founder of NBV has had the typical VC trajectory. Upon first meeting while Muñoz Mendieta was a mentor and Vargas-Hernandez an intern in an SEO program, they felt an instant connection, bonding initially over their Texan roots and their love of competitive sports. As immigrants and sons of immigrants from El Paso, Texas, Alejandro and Andy grew up bilingual and bicultural.

Both men come from working class roots before they made their way into some of the most elite institutions and companies in the world. “For us,” says Muñoz Mendieta, “it’s been about finding different ways to get into the room, finding different ways to make things happen, and we want to support similar folks who are often overlooked — maybe because of background, maybe because they have a different experience — but have great ideas and a lot of resilience to make things happen.”

Muñoz Mendieta was a serious musician in his young adulthood, playing in a rock band and initially disinterested in college. After a mentor redirected him to consider a more academic path, he enrolled at the University of Texas at El Paso and became a leader on-campus. Voted Student Body President, he executed on initiatives that live on today, including the establishment of a green-fund that supports green projects on campus and a book-loan project.

It took him three years to break into Wall Street, delaying his graduation by a year to take on a second major. He eventually got his foot in the door through a back office role, and then networked his way into a banking position at JP Morgan Chase. He's since obtained an MBA from Harvard Business School and built a successful career as an operator. At Grupo Mexico, a leader in transportation and logistics, Muñoz Mendieta worked as VP of operations, innovating and rehauling the company’s operating network, leading them to record-breaking KPIs and annual savings of well over $100M. Most recently, he was CFO at Higo, where he built an online loan operation that lended $30M to SMEs and raised $63M in venture capital. 

Vargas-Hernandez, on the other hand, leveraged his athletic prowess to propel his education and ultimately his career, attending St. Mary’s University on an academic scholarship, becoming the first in his family to go to college. He earned his degree while also on an ocean rowing team that raced across the Atlantic ocean and a soccer team that won a state championship.

He began his career as a trader and in capital markets in the energy space before going on to work on AI/machine learning (ML), cloud infrastructure, and client acquisition at Amazon Web Services (AWS). A recent MBA graduate from the prestigious Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Vargas-Hernandez also has considerable experience and success with deal sourcing and due diligence for early-stage investments at numerous VC firms. “A multitude of roles that interlay into venture capital — in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, San Antonio, and Mexico City,” Vargas-Hernandez reflects, “have all prepared me for this moment.”

Paying It Forward & Taking a Chance Together

While Muñoz Mendieta was living in Juarez, Mexico, with his single mother, someone took a life-changing chance on him. “My mother wanted me to learn English really early on, and the schools in Juarez didn’t have a strong English language program, so she tried to enroll me in school in El Paso.” When the schools wouldn’t take him, his mother found a program and community of people that was willing to welcome him and support him in learning English, even though his mother couldn’t afford the program cost. “They told my mother, ‘Pay whatever you can, and we’ll take care of him.’ That set me up for the rest of my career,” he says. “I left for 15 years, but I always knew I wanted to eventually come back to be able to give back.”

After many years of friendship, when Muñoz Mendieta was in the process of exiting his previous company and Vargas-Hernandez was heading into his second year of business school, the timing seemed right for the two to start something together. “We decided,” shares Muñoz Mendieta, “why not do some good with the skill sets we’ve built over the last decade and launch a venture fund to invest in more folks with backgrounds like ours in the region that we care about the most?” 

In an industry where alums of Ivy League institutions who live in major cities on the East and West coasts are often the obvious picks for an investment, Muñoz Mendieta and Vargas-Hernandez want to be the bridge to opportunity for those who are too often overlooked. “Venture is a game of many no’s,” Vargas-Hernandez acknowledges, “especially for a founder, and especially if you’re raising as a GP. The decision to start a new venture is not really an act of calculation, but an act of faith. One thing I’ve gained from my life experience is optimism, and I think it’s one of the best qualities that a venture capitalist can have.”

What Sets No Border Ventures Apart

As Vargas-Hernandez describes it, there are two ways in which a firm can differentiate itself: either finding something that no one else is doing or finding something that people are doing, but not particularly well. “I feel like we’ve found differentiation through the latter,” Vargas-Hernandez says, “through finding something that was being done, but not with the excellence I knew we could do it with.” NBV’s size allows them to be flexible and enter competitive deals, while their strong regional connections and presence as mentors and educators — both in accelerators and institutions of higher education — allows them to access deal flow before others. 

“We aim to be among the first five calls that any founder makes in the region,” says Vargas-Hernandez. Their unique combined network—with relationships at Penn, Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Google, Amazon, Stripe, JP Morgan, Bain, McKinsey, Bloomberg, and more—grants them access to deals that aren’t typically advertised or shared widely or publicly, and their team of angel investor advisors expands their options even further. 

Both NBV founders have participated in some of the strongest accelerators in the industry, and their previous work has sharpened their operational abilities and investment expertise alike. While the majority of their competitors possess know-how in one of these areas or the other, NBV is able to provide advice to their portfolio companies that spans both. 

Muñoz Mendieta brings insights from his background in financial services, logistics, and supply chain, while Vargas-Hernandez brings enterprise software, renewable energy, climate tech, and AI/ML. And beyond their technical chops, their binational presence and mindset adds value. “We have the cultural expertise that most people can’t duplicate,” Vargas-Hernandez offers.”You hear about all the big funds, but most don’t truly understand what it is to stem from the cross-border. They sit in offices in San Francisco or L.A. or New York, but our lived experience and the expertise that comes from it creates real opportunity.” 

With this expertise, they’re able to navigate spaces on both sides of the border and to connect with founders on a cultural level. The pair has even received congressional recognition from Veronica Escobar, co-chair of President Biden’s re-election campaign, who invited NBV to be recognized for their barrier-breaking efforts along the border.

The Value-Add of Participating in the VC Include Fellowship

Having participated in various accelerator programs, Muñoz Mendieta and Vargas-Hernandez feel very clear about what’s uniquely valuable about the VCI program. They point to the elevated level of conversation, high quality of speakers, and even the thoughtfulness of the application progress as things that set our program apart from the others. “The application invited us to think forward, not just about the now, but about long-term strategy and what this fund could be,” says Muñoz Mendieta. “We could both tell that it was a very well thought-out program.”

Vargas-Hernandez adds, “It comes down to the people. The people who come through the program and those who run the program are here for true impact. There’s truly a mission, a backbone, and a concern for how to leave the VC space better than how we found it.” Vargas-Hernandez also lifts up the intentional nature of the coaching and mentoring NBV is receiving from VCI. “The support is really focused on how to further our thought leadership,” he says, “and help us achieve our upcoming first close and full operationalization of the fund.” 

We’re excited and honored to support NBV on their journey, and look forward to seeing what barriers they continue to break in the venture space.