Coco Pago’s parent company, called Coco in this report, is raising capital via a Crowd SAFE at a $12 million valuation. This price is a great deal for investors that almost seems too good to be true. Coco generated $7.3 million in revenue in 2020 via its Coco Mercado product and even turned a small profit that year. Given that revenue potential, why is Coco now raising at a $12 million valuation, far below the average revenue-to-valuation multiples of software or blockchain companies? One answer might be that Coco’s revenues apparently plunged to $1.1 million in 2021. That’s not a great sign, but Coco is still arguably a very valuable company worth more than $12 million just because of the lifetime revenue it has generated. Overall, Coco is raising at an extremely attractive price for investors.

Investors are backing Coco, which is Coco Pago’s parent company. Coco offers another product beyond Coco Pago, which is a marketplace for immigrants to send food and medical supplies to their families in Venezuela. However, this current raise is focused on Coco Pago, so this report will focus solely on the market for international remittances. 

In short, international remittances is a large and growing market sorely in need of disruption. The global market for remittances was valued at more than $700 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a decent 5.7% compound annual growth rate over the next eight years. The market could hit $1.2 trillion by 2030. That’s a massive market opportunity. 

However, there’s an important caveat. Coco is currently focused on the Latin American remittance market, specifically in Venezuela. That’s still a decent-sized market. Venezuelans sent roughly $1 billion in remittances back home as of 2018. If Coco successfully expands into Mexico, its addressable market size will increase even more. Overall, the company has a sizable market opportunity. 

Coco Pago is a new product from the company behind Coco Mercado, a pre-existing marketplace product. This report will refer to the parent company as Coco. Coco was founded by Kevin Charles, Victor Charles, and Francisco Martin Toro. CEO Kevin Charles and CFO Victor Charles previously founded “Venezuela’s first bitcoin exchange,” called Surbitcoin. The two stayed at Surbitcoin for a little longer than two years. Other than that company, the pair has relatively little professional experience. 

Toro, billed as a third co-founder, is Coco’s CMO. His experience parallels Kevin Charles’ and Victor Charles’. He previously founded a cryptocurrency exchange based in Spain and led it for a couple of years. Other than that experience, he doesn’t list other occupations on his LinkedIn page. 

The Coco executive team also includes CTO Idekel Santana. Santana has a bit more traditional professional experience than the company’s co-founders. He spent six years as a software engineer before joining the Coco team. He has experience as both a staff engineer for companies and as a freelancer. 

The Coco team has spent several collective years managing foreign cryptocurrency exchanges and has already led Coco’s initial product, Coco Mercado, to more than $7 million in annual revenue. The team is clearly experienced in this space, and their acceptance into Y Combinator is a major positive signal. However, no team members have significant professional experience. This team needs additional hires who can lend more sophisticated expertise in consumer marketing, finance, and other key disciplines.

Coco Pago is very differentiated from the prevailing method of remittances, which is brick-and-mortar agents like Western Union. Using the traditional approach, remittances incur large fees, and the recipient may have to travel miles (perhaps in a developing country with few transportation options) to physically pick up their cash at an office. With Coco Pago, transactions are nearly instant, incur fewer fees, and don’t require travel. Money is available on the recipient’s mobile phone.

But Coco Pago is not the only one offering this mobile-focused approach. Companies like WorldRemit and Wise (formerly TransferWise) have already developed mobile-first solutions for sending money across borders, and they’re attacking the problem on a more global scale than Coco Pago. These other companies are already well established, so Coco Pago may struggle to bridge their competitive moats. 

It’s also worth noting that it’s not clear just how effective Coco Pago’s solution actually is. It’s difficult to decipher precise details about the crypto exchange process from Coco Pago’s relatively slim pitch materials. Crypto has been used by many Venezuelans to get around the country’s hyperinflation and other economic problems. So there is evidence that Coco’s approach would appeal to its Venezuelan customers. But it’s unclear just how large of a customer base Coco can realistically obtain. Even if crypto is transferred into traditional currency, it’s stored on mobile phones, which might not be a practical payment method in a country like Venezuela. It’s unclear if the company intends to rely on relationships it has built through Coco Mercado to enable people to use the crypto funds at certain merchants. Overall, there is some doubt about the strength of Coco Pago’s competitive advantage given its unproven solution.

Coco Pago’s performance is not very straightforward. First, investors should recognize that Coco Pago is actually a product of a parent company, called Coco, and not a separate entity. Coco built a previous product, Coco Mercado, which helps immigrants send food and other supplies to their families in their home countries. Investors are putting capital into Coco, so they’re backing both Coco Mercado and Coco Pago. 

Coco Pago is a brand-new product launched in March 2022. As a result, there isn’t very much performance data to evaluate yet. The team boasts that Coco Pago is growing at 120% week over week in the last two months, but that isn’t a very meaningful statistic in such a short time frame. 

So it’s really Coco Mercado that’s worth evaluating. The product seems to have performed very well, at least in 2020. That year, Coco generated more than $7.3 million in revenue from Coco Mercado and turned a $107,791 profit. However, revenue seems to have plunged in 2021. While official 2021 financials aren’t available yet, Coco’s founding team indicated in the raise page comments that Coco brought in just $1.1 million in revenue last year. It’s not clear why Coco Mercado suffered so much in 2021, as Coco’s raise page is entirely focused on the new product, Coco Pago. It does note that Coco Mercado has more than 100,000 users, which the company intends to leverage in registering new users for Coco Pago. 

Overall, Coco’s performance is a muddled picture, and investors ought to have a lot of questions about Coco Mercado’s revenue decline. But one thing is clear: the Coco team did at one point succeed in reaching a large audience of Venezuelans, and with the help of the Y Combinator network, it has a head start in growing Coco Pago. 

Coco Pago is a relatively high-risk investment for several reasons. First, the entire field of cryptocurrency and blockchain startups carries more risk than more established industries. Cryptocurrency faces ever-changing regulations and market dynamics. That uncertainty is difficult for an established company to navigate, much less a startup. Additionally, Coco Pago is dealing with cross-border payments, which begets regulatory risk from both the sending and the receiving countries. And then there are the risks of Coco Pago’s operating history. The company brought in a large amount of revenue in 2020, but income declined precipitously in 2021 (for unexplained reasons). Investors are taking on risk by backing this level of volatility. 

This raise is a bit confusing and unusual given Coco Pago’s relationship with Coco Mercado. Investors are getting a stake in both Coco Pago and Coco Mercado because both are products made by the same company. While the raise page focuses almost exclusively on Coco Pago, investors should naturally be interested in the operating history of Coco Mercado. But inquiry into Coco Mercado’s operating history raises more questions than it answers. While the company brought in a massive amount of revenue in 2020 and even turned a profit, performance declined steeply in 2021. Because the Coco Pago raise page doesn’t address Coco Mercado in detail, investors don’t get any reasoning for this fluctuating revenue. 

It’s also worth noting that while Coco Pago’s solution for remittances seems compelling (the Coco Pago app, built on blockchain, is transparent, cheaper than traditional international wires, and convenient), it’s still unproven in the market. Venezuela is a volatile and developing country. It seems risky to bet that Venezualan remittance recipients will be able to use cryptocurrency (or even any form of currency on mobile phones) to purchase daily goods. Investors would be better off if they could evaluate a longer operating history for Coco Pago. 

While there are some confusing elements of Coco Pago’s raise, there are also many reasons to be optimistic about the company. For one, Coco Pago is addressing a large and growing market for remittances. Current methods are outdated and ineffective, so there’s a clear demand for an easier way to send money internationally. Leveraging the transparency and efficiency of blockchain technology is an obvious solution. 

In addition, Coco Pago has several competitive advantages. The company was accepted into Y Combinator (albeit with the parent company’s initial Coco Mercado concept), which confers prestige and a strong network for life. Coco Pago’s founders have all worked in international crypto exchanges before, making them experts in this nascent field. Plus, Coco Pago benefits from a large user list from Coco Mercado, with more than 100,000 users who theoretically fit Coco Pago’s exact customer profile. 

Finally, investors are getting a great deal given all of these positive signals. A $12 million valuation isn’t much higher than the company’s total lifetime revenues, which is a steal for a cryptocurrency and blockchain company in today’s market of inflated valuations. 

Coco Pago is making it easier for immigrants to send money back home. Current systems for these payments, called “remittances,” are convoluted and antiquated. Coco Pago’s app allows immigrants to send money via blockchain for maximum speed and convenience with lower costs. Investors should note that Coco Pago is actually part of a larger company that already launched a separate but related product for immigrants to send food and medicine to relatives in Venezuela, which isn’t made clear on Coco Pago’s raise page. This parent company was very successful in 2020 — generating more than $7.3 million in revenue — but struggled in 2021 with only $1.1 million in revenue. That checkered operating history, plus the core question of whether Coco Pago’s crypto solution is actually practical for Venezuelans, adds some risk to this investment opportunity. 

Still, if this product is effective, Coco Pago could take a slice of the massive remittances market (estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion by 2030). There are some similar products out there, but Coco Pago is comparatively more convenient than the traditional approach to remittances. Although the founders lack strong professional experience, they have extensive experience building and running crypto exchanges. And the success of Coco Mercado proves the team’s ability to run a profitable business. They also have the backing of Y Combinator, which is a strong positive signal. With the outrageously low price of a $12 million valuation, the risk of this investment might be worth the upside. Therefore, Coco Pago has been rated a Deal to Watch. 

For questions regarding the KingsCrowd analyst report or ratings for this company, please reach out to support@kingscrowd.com. 

Analysis written on April 28, 2022.