Galit Flasterstein

People like to say the startup ecosystem is all about a high tolerance for failure. Still, people often try to spin it. Or at least, they don’t lead with their failures in an interview. 

Galit Flasterstein isn’t one of those people. 

“The first run I took at VC Lab, I couldn’t finish it,” she says. “I am very transparent about this. I just couldn’t figure out what my secret sauce was. I was like, ‘OK you are asking me about my track record? I have none. I don’t know a thousand LPs. I don’t have that many connections.’ They told me to drop out.”

But did she give up? Absolutely not. 

She knew now what she needed to do next: go out and build her network with the right kind of people and build her personal narrative so that it had a compelling secret sauce. 

And all Galit has ever needed was a road map. She can crush a roadmap. After all, her successful company she sold in 2019 was an ecotourism company. 

“I was always an entrepreneur because it was clear to me I didn't want to solve other people’s problems - I wanted to solve my own,” she says. 

A native of Costa Rica, she traveled all over Latin America, going to every conference and summit she could get an invite to, meeting with hundreds of investors, incubators, politicians, entrepreneurs, trying to figure out where the opportunities and holes were and building a formidable network. She found her secret sauce. She honed in on her narrative and opportunity. And she came back to VC Lab a year later for round two. 

This time around it’s gone a lot better. She’s been getting fund commitments, and her thesis has been resonating. But 2025 is a challenging fundraising year, and Latin America can be a challenging market to raise money from, she says. Without a fundraising track record, she was eager to start making deals, and showing potential LPs what she could do. Not waste years trying to raise the fund first. 

“Thank God you guys came up with Start Fund this year,” she says. “To me it was the perfect solution. I’ve met many large funds having trouble raising right now, even after having exits and everything. It’s a tough climate. So the opportunity to start a fund with less money, and be able to build on that with a legal and transparent structure like Start Fund was ideal.” 

While traditional venture capital funds require you to have at least $1 million closed to start investing, the threshold with Start Funds is much lower; as low as $150,000. That means investors whose strength is more their current dealflow than rich friends or a storied track record, can create legal, institutional grade venture funds faster, cheaper, with much smaller commitments, and build their track records quicker. 

Start Funds are able to launch quickly with less because Decile Group is a co-General Partner, sharing the risk. That was also appealing to Galit, not a drawback.

“It’s a way not to be in this alone,” she says. “It feels like a collaboration. I’ve never run a venture capital fund before, and it feels like I’m also able to learn while I’m building it.” 

Only one-in-five managers who are admitted into VC Lab graduate with successful funds. One of the biggest reasons that 80% don’t make it: they just can’t get the momentum necessary to get to a first close. They can’t get the flywheel turning fast enough. Because a Start Fund has a lower threshold to a first close and start investing, there is less force required to get the fly wheel going. 

“Just the fact that I can say the fund has been incorporated in the US, that I have Decile Group as an investment committee, gives us more credibility,” she says. “It makes the fund more trustworthy to LPs. In Latin America, there is a void of funds and in terms of regulation of funds. So LPs coming from this region definitely feel more comfortable knowing the fund has already been incorporated and has a proper, legal structure.”