Every serious investor faces the same problem: too many opportunities and not enough capital to fund them all. The math becomes unforgiving at scale. U.S. venture capital firms closed 14,320 deals worth $215.4 billion in 2024, according to the National Venture Capital Association’s 2025 Yearbook. That figure sounds enormous until you consider how many pitches never made it past the first meeting.
For Alejandro Betancourt López, whose investment portfolio spans eyewear, transportation, banking, and energy across three continents, the selection process follows a specific funnel. He describes it in blunt mathematical terms.
“They bring you 100 ideas and you analyze them,” Betancourt López explained. “Out of those 100 ideas, you select 10 and then out those 10, you select two and you fund those two and hopefully you get them right.”
That 98% rejection rate might seem harsh, but it reflects a broader pattern across private capital markets. Data from Carta shows that U.S. startups closed just 5,743 new investments during 2024, a 7% decline from the prior year and the lowest annual total since 2018. Capital has become increasingly concentrated among fewer deals, with average round sizes climbing 28% year over year. Investors are getting pickier.
The question, then, is what separates the 2% that receive funding from the 98% that don’t. For Alejandro Betancourt López, the answer involves a two-stage filtration system. The first pass eliminates ideas that lack favorable market positioning or timing. The second pass—the more difficult one—evaluates whether the people behind the idea can actually execute it.
Through O’Hara Administration, the international investment group he leads, Betancourt López has backed ventures ranging from Hawkers sunglasses to Auro Travel ride-sharing to banking operations in West Africa. Each required moving through that same 100-to-10-to-2 process before earning his commitment.
His approach offers a case study in how experienced investors separate signal from noise—and why most pitches, regardless of their apparent merit, never advance beyond an initial conversation.
The First Filter: Market Position and Timing
Alejandro Betancourt López has built his investment philosophy around a central question: where is value moving next? Before evaluating teams or business plans, he assesses whether an opportunity sits at the right point in an industry’s evolution.
“I think I have a good sense of knowing or perceiving what is going to be the next cycle of profitable businesses,” he said. “I have been lucky enough to be accurate in predicting where the profits are going to come from a different industry or when the shift of an industry to another cycle is going to be.”
This filter eliminates most opportunities before they receive serious consideration. An idea might be sound, a team might be talented, but if the timing is wrong or the market position is unfavorable, the deal won’t advance. Betancourt López frames this as understanding where profit margins will concentrate as industries mature.
“It’s the way you place yourself in any industry, that can capture that margin and create that value for yourself or for the investors,” he explained.
He points to historical patterns as illustrations. During the early days of the oil industry, refiners captured most of the profits. Later, as oil became scarcer, value shifted to producers. During wartime in the 1940s, shipping companies like those built by Aristotle Onassis captured outsized returns because they controlled transportation infrastructure. The lesson: margins migrate, and successful investors position themselves ahead of that migration.
His investment in Auro Travel, the Spanish ride-sharing company, followed this logic. Before major competitors fully entered the Spanish market, Betancourt López recognized that private vehicle transportation licenses would become valuable assets. He began acquiring them while others saw little purpose in doing so.
“It was a gamble, but it was a calculated gamble because we knew that the market was going to shift to the private riding industry instead of taxis,” he recalled.
That bet paid off. By November 2022, both Uber and Cabify had reportedly made acquisition offers for Auro valued at approximately €200 million.
The first filter, then, isn’t about whether an idea is good. Plenty of good ideas fail because they arrive too early, too late, or in the wrong market position. Alejandro Betancourt López screens for timing and placement before anything else—a process that eliminates roughly 90 of every 100 proposals before deeper evaluation begins.
The Second Filter: Evaluating the People Behind the Pitch
Once an opportunity clears the market-timing hurdle, Alejandro Betancourt López shifts his attention to a different variable entirely: the human element. This is where most of the remaining candidates fall away.
“I’m a true believer in teams,” he said. “I do believe that talent is the most important thing in a company, or in a corporation.”
The statement sounds like standard business wisdom until you examine how Betancourt López applies it. He doesn’t look for founders who need his guidance. He looks for people who know their industries better than he does.
“When I hire people, I take a real hard look at the experience they have,” he explained. “I like to know that they know more than me, that they’re better than me, that they have better knowledge than me on that industry.”
This approach allows Alejandro Betancourt López to invest across sectors where he lacks deep operational expertise. His portfolio includes fashion retail, ride-sharing, banking, and energy—industries with vastly different dynamics. What connects them is his confidence in the management teams running each venture.
“I understand the basics of not everything in the world but of my investments,” Betancourt López noted. “And I surround myself with good talent and people that I think can run it efficiently and I can understand what they’re doing.”
The filtering process also relies heavily on intuition—but not the mystical kind. For Betancourt López, intuition is a byproduct of information quality and the caliber of people providing that information.
“Everything I do is based on intuition and information,” he said. “Intuition based on the right information and the right people that surround you. You have to surround yourself with people that are at the top of their game.”
His track record suggests the filtering system works. Hawkers grew from a scrappy Spanish startup into an international eyewear brand after Betancourt López invested €50 million and assumed the presidency in 2016. Auro Travel accumulated enough market position to attract nine-figure acquisition interest from industry giants. Each started as one of 100 pitches competing for attention.
“I hit more home runs than I strike out,” Betancourt López observed. “I’m very proud of that, that I don’t swing for first base. I always swing for a home run, and I do strike out and that’s a human thing, nobody gets everything perfect, but I have a good batting average.”
For the 98 ideas that don’t make the cut, rejection isn’t necessarily a verdict on quality. It’s a recognition that capital is finite, timing matters, and the right team makes all the difference.