A long-cycle investment requires a structure that can hold it. The 2019 AI position Alejandro Betancourt López took, confirmed in Tech Times, needed five years to mature. The Auro Travel position, reconstructed in EV Powered’s feature, needed nearly a decade. Both timelines would have been incompatible with a typical institutional fund.
The Mismatch Between Fund Structures and Long Cycles
Closed-end funds operate on horizons of seven to ten years. The early years are spent deploying capital. The middle years are spent managing portfolio companies. The final years are spent exiting, often into market conditions the fund didn’t choose.
This structure works well for investments that mature predictably within the fund’s life. It works poorly for investments that take longer than expected, which is most of them, particularly in unproven categories. A general partner managing a thesis-driven fund can’t wait an extra three years for a position to play out. The fund’s expiry forces an exit, often at a price well below what patience would have produced.
How Family Offices Sidestep the Constraint
Alejandro Betancourt López’s investment group O’Hara Administration was founded in 2014 as a family office. The structure removes the redemption pressure that constrains closed-end funds. Positions can be held until the underlying thesis resolves, regardless of how long that takes.
That structural advantage isn’t theoretical. The Auro position took most of a decade to mature. A traditional fund would have exited mid-position, possibly at the moment the Cabify exclusivity dispute was still unresolved and the Uber transaction looked uncertain. A family office could wait. The wait produced the €220 million transaction with Uber in February 2025.
The Capital Selection Effect
A second, less obvious advantage compounds the first. Because family offices can take longer holds, they can also take different kinds of positions. Investments that require five years of patience are inaccessible to funds with three-year clocks. Investments that depend on regulatory shifts, infrastructure build-out, or category formation can only be made by capital that can wait through those processes.
Alejandro Betancourt López’s investment record shows the selection effect at work. The VTC license accumulation, the Hawkers scale-up, and the AI position all required long holds. None of them would have been good fits for institutional fund structures. They were good fits for the family office structure that O’Hara Administration uses.
Where the Advantage Has Limits
Patient capital isn’t a universal advantage. Some sectors mature quickly enough that a long-hold structure provides no benefit. Some positions degrade over time and are better exited early. The patient-capital framework works specifically for positions where institutional recognition lags the underlying value, and where the holder can wait without forced sales.
Alejandro Betancourt López has been disciplined about applying the framework where it fits and not forcing it where it doesn’t. His public commentary on his investment principles returns consistently to the relationship between capital structure and position selection. The framework is one input into a larger decision process, not a default setting. The result, across multiple sectors and more than a decade of investing, is a record consistent enough that the structural advantage is no longer hypothetical.
