Valeria Mazza

Two deals bolted together

This arrangement is structurally unusual and worth separating into its parts. Mazza put US$1 million in to become a shareholder in Osoji, a Chilean home-robotics company — and at the same time secured exclusive rights to bring its cleaning robots to Argentina and Uruguay. Those are two different businesses in one transaction: an equity stake in the manufacturer, and a distribution franchise in two markets.

The combination aligns incentives neatly, because she profits from the company's success both as an owner and as its regional seller. It also concentrates the risk. If the product does not sell in the Southern Cone, both halves of her position suffer together, which is the opposite of the diversification most investors are told to seek.

A disclosed number is the exception here

Most profiles in this collection have to say that the amount was never made public. This one does not: US$1 million is on the record, which makes it one of the few deals here where the size of the commitment is actually knowable.

What that figure does tell you is that this was a serious capital commitment rather than a name-lending exercise. What it still does not tell you is what percentage of the company the money bought, on what valuation, or with what rights attached — and those terms determine the value of a private stake far more than the headline number does. A million dollars can be a large position or a small one depending entirely on what the company was said to be worth that day.

If this made the sector interesting rather than the celebrity, start with how to begin investing — and, if private companies are what caught your eye, how angel investing actually works.