ALEC OXENFORD
Founder & Sponsor
CEO and Chairman
Mr. Oxenford is a serial tech entrepreneur. Mr. Oxenford is regarded as a top technology sector entrepreneur and visionary because of his track record of identifying promising opportunities and nurturing their growth to become established players. He is also an active angel investor in the technology industry with a focus on emerging markets. Prior to founding Alpha Capital, in 2015, Mr. Oxenford co-founded and served as CEO of letgo, a person-to-person used goods online trading platform in the United States and Turkey until July 2020 when its United States operations were merged with OfferUp (an online mobile-first consumer to consumer marketplace) and its Turkey operations were simultaneously acquired by OLX (the leading global online classifieds platform with a focus on Latin America, Asia, and Europe according to SimilarWeb). Under Mr. Oxenford’s leadership, letgo grew to over 100 million downloads and 400 million listings according to Techcrunch, and became a unicorn. Mr. Oxenford supervised the merger between letgo and OfferUp which created the top grossing application in the U.S. in the shopping category on both iOS and Android, according to Sensor Tower. Mr. Oxenford has been a member of the OfferUp board of directors since the merger. Prior to letgo, from 2006 to 2015, Mr. Oxenford co-founded and led OLX, a unicorn, which, under Mr. Oxenford’s leadership became the largest online marketplace in Brazil, India and several other emerging market countries, according to Fortune Magazine. Mr. Oxenford continued to serve on the boards of several OLX affiliates in various capacities until 2019. Mr. Oxenford also co-founded DineroMail in 2003, an online payment platform in Latin America which was acquired by PayU in 2013. In 1999 during the early days of the Internet, Mr. Oxenford founded DeRemate.com, an online auction platform targeting Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, which was acquired by MercadoLibre in 2005.
RAFAEL STEINHAUSER
Founder & Sponsor
President and Director
Mr. Steinhauser has over 35 years of senior corporate experience in Europe and Latin America in the high-tech industry. He served as president of Qualcomm Latin America from 2011 to 2020. During that time, he contributed to Brazil’s digital inclusion through the broad access to the internet via smartphones and to technological evolution through the commercial launch of the first worldwide SiP-based smartphone in Brazil. He fostered Qualcomm’s investment in the Latin American region’s Center for the 4th Industrial Revolution which is led by the World Economic Forum. He also led the effort to create Qualcomm Ventures in the region, currently one of the largest corporate venture capital investors in Latin America, which has invested in several companies that are now unicorns (for example 99, Quinto Andar and Loggi) and the creation of the first public-private partnership fund devoted to the Internet of Things. Mr. Steinhauser was President for Latin America for Acision from 2009 to 2011 and president of NextWave Latin America from 2006 to 2009. He also served as President of Cisco Brazil from 2002 to 2006, where he was recognized in 2005 for growing Cisco Brazil’s operations faster in terms of revenue than those in other countries within Cisco’s large country category, and as president of Brazil Nortel Networks from 2000 to 2002. Earlier in his career, Mr. Steinhauser held executive positions with various telecom service providers, such as Head of Mobile Satellite Services of Eutelsat in Paris and as Executive VP of the Competitive Local Exchange Carrier Vésper in Rio de Janeiro, and as a sales engineer at Standard Electrik Lorenz and Siemens in Germany.
He has extensive corporate and private venture capital experience in Latin America.
Mr. Steinhauser graduated in Aerospace Engineering from the Technische Universität Berlin and in Performing Arts from the Escola Superior Célia Helena in São Paulo. He co-founded in 2015 the B Future Forum, a sustained action-oriented dialog on the future of humanity, and EBAC in 2016, a world-class higher educational institution for the Creative Arts in Brazil. He was nominated and won various awards including the Shell Prize and twice the State of São Paulo Governor Prize for his work in Performing Arts. He has three nationalities and is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, and German.
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RAHIM LAKHANI
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Lakhani has been in finance for approximately 18 years. He has held leadership roles in the United States, India, and Southeast Asia with significant experience in M&A and post-M&A integration. Prior to joining Alpha Capital, he worked with Mr. Oxenford at letgo from 2018 to 2019, leading the New York office as the CFO as well as the head of sales & strategy. Prior to letgo, he was the CFO and COO of Offerpad, a fully vertically integrated real estate technology platform leading finance, HR, and analytics, overseeing significant market expansion, from 2018 to 2019.
He was also the CFO for AB InBev India from 2015 to 2018, where he led the post-M&A integration between AB InBev and SABMiller, leading a team of over 100 employees, delivering significant cost synergies, and bringing the business into compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. Mr. Lakhani received his MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor of science in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology with high honors.
ALFREDO CAPOTE
Chief Strategy Officer
Mr. Capote has considerable experience in company acquisitions and development of companies from the “seed” stage to the public listing stage in both the debt and equity markets, through initial public offerings directed to institutional investors and retail investors. Mr. Capote’s transactional experience includes having served as a director, investor, financial advisor, and investment banker. Mr. Capote currently leads the advisory team that oversees the investment process for LIV Capital Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: LIVK) a US$80.5 million special purpose acquisition company and is also advisor to Soma Capital in prospecting early stage venture capital investments. He also advised BowX Acquisition Corp. a US$400mm special purpose acquisition company in analyzing potential investments in late venture capital in Latin America and other emerging markets. He has previously served as Deputy Chief Executive Officer for Promecap Acquisition Company (BMV: PAC), a US$300 million special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, from its formation in September 2017 until the consummation of its business combination with Acosta Verde, S.A.B. de C.V. in February 2020. Prior to his SPAC experience, he worked with 500 Startups and the Abrajj Group, investing in venture capital and private equity investment strategies respectively on a global basis. Prior to his investment career, Mr. Capote spent 20 years working in the investment banking divisions of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup with an aggregate transaction volume of $100 billion in both M&A and capital market transactions. In 2010, Mr. Capote was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has an MBA, with honors, from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University (1998), a Master in Administration from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de Mexico (ITAM) with honorable mention(1996) and a Bachelor in Science in Chemical Engineering, magna cum laude, from Manhattan College in New York (1993).
KIRILL MATALOV
Vice-President of Strategy
Kirill Matalov, our Vice-President of Strategy. Mr. Matalov is a strategy executive with extensive experience leading ideation, development, and scaling of business strategy and monetization initiatives in online marketplace companies. He worked for letgo from 2017 to 2020, overseeing the revenue and strategy functions. Prior to letgo, Mr. Malatov worked for Avito.ru, a Russian classifieds marketplace, from 2014 to 2017, most recently as Senior Business Development Manager. He began his career in management consulting with McKinsey & Company and KPMG, where he worked from 2012 to 2014. He has a Master’s Degree in International Management from the CEMS Global Alliance in Management Education in London and Helsinki, a Master’s Degree in International Business (with Honors) from the Graduate School of Management in St. Petersburg, Russia and a Master’s Degree in Computer Science (with Honors) from the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University.
