Clara Bullrich must have cloned herself or possibly invoked dark forces that shouldn’t be meddled with. Somehow, she’s managed to cram a
Clara Bullrich must have cloned herself or possibly invoked dark forces that shouldn’t be meddled with. Somehow, she’s managed to cram about four careers into one life.
Her main gig is leading her own financial entity, AlTi, managing a whopping investment fund, which grew to $54 billion under management following a recent merger. That’s a big enough job in itself.
A member of Women in Blockchain, she also runs a women-only DAO, Komorebi, that concentrates on funding female and non-gender-specific projects.
“I’ve seen in crypto that there’s very few women, and I really want to push that as much as I can,” she says. “For me, it’s always important to have skin in the game.”
And if that wasn’t enough, she’s also the founder of a gaming guild, Ola Guild Games (OlaGG), that hopes to upskill the quarter of a billion mobile gamers in Latin America so they can boost their incomes using play-to-earn blockchain games.
She tells Magazine she feels lucky to have been involved with cryptocurrencies, DAOs and the metaverse at this early stage.
“My sons are nine and 11 and will live through the entire cycle of what blockchain and crypto are creating right now. And I feel super hopeful around that.”
Hailing from Argentina, after studying in the United States and Ireland, she worked for a short time for the Spanish Santander bank in the United States. She didn’t stay there long. Laboring in the stuffy, conventional world of traditional finance clearly does not float her boat. Her favorite word is “disruptive.”
“Bitcoin is just money supported by math. I came across it about seven years ago. At first, I was very uncomfortable with that, then I thought: The big disruptions are the ones you should walk towards.”
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Disruptive innovation
After a short stint at Santander, she was headhunted by an Argentine tech company called Collective Mind, which grew rapidly. Then in 2000, she started a family office business for high-net-worth clients under the umbrella of Guggenheim Partners. In those days, family offices weren’t as prevalent as today.
Over 23 years, she expanded her operations from Latin America to other parts of the world. Three years ago, this fund management business became Alvarium Investment Advisors, managing over $20 billion in investments, then recently merged with two other companies to form Alvarium Tiedemann Holdings, AlTi, with over $54 billion under management.
Bullrich had some challenges persuading her clients to invest in “disruptive” technology, including Bitcoin, but first, she had to persuade her colleagues of the merits of investing in progress rather than simple money-making schemes.
“My discussions with my partners were very much around: ‘We should be investing in tech with tech expertise, not financial expertise.’”
Her intention was to back technology that would have beneficial effects in the longer term, rather than simply looking at a financial balance sheet.
She set up the Digital Assets Committee at Alvarium Tiedemann in 2019.
“What you have to realize is that most people there are traditional investors, so the idea of crypto, blockchain, Web3, digital assets – these were really foreign to them.”
She continues, “And so being able to start that committee has allowed me to educate traditional investors about the potential of digital assets and blockchain technology.” She continues, “I wanted to create that level of expertise to be able to understand trends, why certain disruptions make more sense than others.”
She feels the mindset required is more technological and over a longer time span than in conventional finance. This led, in 2016, to her second company, which is called The Venture City.
The Venture City is an accelerator to nurture innovative projects, so it has the financial backing, expertise and support to reach its potential.
A major impetus behind TVC is to improve access to financial products and services. In some Latin American countries, up to 60%–70% of people do not have bank accounts, restricting their ability to improve their situation. Bullrich sees TVC’s investments as a means of combining technology and financial expertise with a beneficial social product.
“We have already 100 companies who passed through the accelerator, and we’re actually starting Fund 3. So, we did Fund 1 with $52 million, Fund 2…
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