Greg Krupa was larger than life. Anyone who knew him felt the energy he brought into every room, positive, radiant, impossible to miss. He spoke his mind, always. And in a space where we need people to actually move things forward, he did. He spent his life showing up for Latin America’s hardest to reach communities.
Greg moved to Quito In 2007 with his brother to start the Range of Motion Project, or ROMP, which has delivered more than 6,000 prostheses through clinics in Ecuador and Guatemala. He later founded Novulis, bringing affordable dental care to more than 40,000 people in underserved areas of the Amazon, the Andes, the coast and the Galápagos (see, “How impact incentives brought a dental care startup back to its roots in rural Ecuador”). Greg lived and breathed impact.
In the last few years, Greg served as a fundraising advisor to a range of social enterprises and impact funds across the region, many of them covered in ImpactAlpha, including:
- DREX. An Ecuadorian solar developer building mid-sized commercial projects and a digital platform to standardize solar deals for investors. Greg helped the company secure financing from Exagon Impact Capital for a six-megawatt installation at the shrimp exporter Grupo Almar (see, “Ecuador’s DREX snags investment from Exagon Impact Capital to scale solar access”).
- Zenani Capital. A pilot impact fund backing early-stage ventures across Latin America. Greg advised the fund as it made investments, including in BioPlaster Research, a Yucatán startup turning sargassum seaweed into biodegradable packaging (see the video, “Dealmaking takes center stage as impact investors gather in Mérida for FLII”).
- Savia Ventures. A Mexico City-based fund backing startups in sectors like bio-based materials, grid optimization, urban mining and distributed energy that are often too early or too complex for traditional VC (see, “Andrés Baehr of Savia Ventures on Latin America’s climate moment, and why investors shouldn’t wait”).
- BuenTrip Ventures. A Quito-based, women-led firm targeting a $10 million fund to back B2B software startups founded by women and underrepresented entrepreneurs in Latin America and its diaspora (see, “BuenTrip Ventures finds overlooked opportunities among Latin America’s diverse founders”).
- GoodSAM. A Connecticut-based B Corp sourcing from 1,600 smallholder farmers across Latin America and Africa, selling regenerative food products in Whole Foods and Sprouts (see, “ALIVE Ventures backs GoodSAM to support regenerative farms in Latin America, Africa”).
- Artisan Tropic. A snack foods company working with Colombian regenerative cassava and plantain farmers since 2014, generating roughly $9 million in annual retail sales (see, “DUX Capital backs regeneration-focused snack foods maker Artisan Tropic”).
- Strong by Form. Greg’s most recent advisory engagement was with the Chilean startup developing an engineered timber system to replace reinforced concrete in construction.
This past year Greg and I were everywhere together: five countries, impact conferences, Karol G’s club in Medellín, our first carnival in Rio. He introduced me to everyone, vouched for me everywhere and somewhere along the way became one of my closest friends. We’d talk about how we were going to change the world, bring more capital to Latin America, and build an ecosystem that could actually live up to its potential.
Let’s carry his legacy forward. Dream big. Get shit done. Bring people together. And do it for the people who actually need it. All while having a bit of fun.
See you in the next life, bro. Thank you for the memories, the friendship, all of it. You changed my life, like you did for so many. – Erik Stein
