Alejandro Laplana is an activist investor, tech transfer specialist & serial entrepreneur. He presently serves as founder and director of Horizon Latin America LTD, subsidiary of Nasdaq listed, One Horizon Group (OHGI). Laplana built a team of over 30 employees in five countries and promotes the company to various government entities, mobile operators and transnational enterprises. During this time, Laplana directly aided one of Venezuela’s largest mobile operators in returning roaming services back to Venezuela (after it had been widely suspended across the country) through innovative VoIP channels for postpaid and, more importantly, prepaid subscriber communities that have been historically underserved across emerging markets.
Previously, Laplana founded and served as managing principal of Nesting Partners LLC, a patent incubator and software company builder. Having created the company’s investment thesis and business model, Laplana played a key role as an investor, partner, and promoter in Nesting Partners various portfolio companies. To date, Nesting Partners has transacted in over 40 patent portfolios and founded over 9 companies, producing 2 successful exits for a 7.5X return.
Laplana continues to oversee Nesting partners as a principal and has, on an individual capacity, directly invested in and/or raised over $20 million in seed stage funding for over 15 start-ups. Laplana, his teams and partners (in orchestration) have additionally developed, designed and successfully commercialized over 150 products and technologies for internal portfolio companies, partners and clients.
Laplana currently advises the Venezuelan Congress on IP strategy and serves as a member of the technical steering committee that is tasked with reforming the country’s IP legislation. He and his companies have been invited to speak at forums hosted by: Amazon, the Venezuelan and Colombian Congress, the Metropole global forum, the IP Deal Makers forum, the Urban Land Institute, Harvard Business School and the Clinton Global Foundation.
Laplana holds a Bachelors (BA) in Economics and International Relations from Syracuse University and a Masters (Msc) in Management of Technology from New York University (NYU).