Latitud Podcast: Recent Episodes

Latitud

Follow the biggest innovators and tech founders in Latin America as they cover valuable insights and inspire entrepreneurs facing challenges in scaling their business and raising capital. Presented by Brian Requarth, co-founder at Latitud.

Scott Hartley was a researcher and went on to work with product and operations at companies like Facebook and Google. But the most well-known part of Scott’s journey began when he hit Sand Hill Road.

Scott went on to become a co-founder of Two Culture Capital and Everywhere Ventures. Across these two VC firms, he invested in over 300 startups around the world — Latitud and LatAm included.

In a world now ruled by AI, Scott talks instead about IA, or intellectual amplification. On a similar note, he’s also the author of The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World.

In this chat, Scott and I talk about:

• What makes him confident about investing early on and in multiple countries;

• The difference between fuzzy and techie entrepreneurs;

• And the advice Scott shares most often with startup founders.

My name’s Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
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Back in 2018, Santiago Gomez and Alejandro Casas were just two young and hopeful founders, fresh into YC. However, with a team of 25 working on an e-commerce business, they struggled to find funding.

"There's no founder-product fit", the investors would say. After a while, it clicked that their passion was elsewhere.

They were challenged by a mentor to kill the startup and start building something, just the two of them, that really lit a fire under their feet. Oh yeah, and they should also be generating revenue in 6 months.

Santiago reached out to his network and signed a 3-month contract with Rappi to map out problems within the company that they could solve through software. After an intense quarter, they came up with a platform to conciliate all the financial transactions ran through the super app, and an easy and reliable way for any **company to manage their financial data.

Simetrik** was born, with Rappi's founders investing 2 million dollars in its pre-seed round. The product naturally evolved and now has customers in over 35 countries. Santiago and Alejandro also got a lot more funding – including a $20M Series A in 2022 and a $55M Series B announced just a few days ago.

In this chat, we talk about:

How Simetrik's culture contributed to its success
The tricky balance between technical excellence and rapid growth
And the challenges in fundraising that they didn't see coming

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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Over a decade ago, Matias Recchia created a startup to take home maintenance services online. IguanaFix expanded across Latin America, and eventually attracted the Brazilian unicorn Madeira Madeira.

After the sale, Matias dived into a new challenge: bringing more efficiency to the US real estate market. Keyway uses data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to improve how Americans manage investments in commercial properties.

In this episode, Matias and I talk about:

— Whether it's harder to operate a startup in LatAm or the US;

— His company-building lessons, including how to efficiently use AI in your startup;

— And how to divide roles between co-founders.

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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AI has been the talk of the town for a while. But have you seen it in your run-of-the-mill bank yet? Well, Hyperplane is changing that.

About a dozen banks in Brazil are already getting all the information they have, running it by the startup's artificial intelligence, and then predicting customer behavior and building personalized experiences.

The startup finally came out of stealth a few weeks ago, with a USD 6M round to boot. We're over the moon about being early investors in Hyperplane and participating in this new round as well.

In this episode, co-founder Rohan Ramanath and I talk about:

The problems Hyperplane is solving through artificial intelligence;
The benefits of taking your time to learn and develop your startup;
What companies investing in AI often overlook, and how the convergence between AI and fintech will play out in the next few years.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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Unicorn stories generally look at the beginning and the end of the journey. There's not a lot out there about the messy middle, filled with patience and hard work.

That's why we invited the co-founders of Pismo, 99, and Upload Ventures to our most recent Vamos Latam Summit. By the way, you can already click this link to pre-register for our next, incredible edition of VLS.

In this episode, Daniela Binatti, Paulo Veras, and Rodrigo Baer talk about:

- How previous failures and learnings played into success later on;
- How to deal with competition and choose co-founders;
- And how to survive through tough times and create a valuable company.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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Most of the time, the road to startup success is not a straight and short one. Founders can face unexpected roadblocks and then take detours – especially in Latin America.

Kristen Durham, the VP of SMBs and Startups at Zendesk, chatted with the founders of GetNinjas, Madeira Madeira, and Silverguard in our most recent Vamos Latam Summit. They shared the obstacles seen in their long journeys as entrepreneurs, from product development to employee retention. By the way, you can already click this link to pre-register for our next, incredible edition of VLS.

In this episode, Eduardo L'Hotellier, Daniel Scandian, and Marcia Netto talk about:

- Early product development and fundraising challenges;
- How to deal with and learn from business crises;
- And how to attract, engage, and retain top employees.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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A Series A is a crucial moment for every venture-backed business. Raising this round is a turning point for startups, from validation to scale.

So at our most recent Vamos Latam Summit, we invited investors from Latitud Ventures, Canary, Valor Capital Group, and Fintech Collective to share their perspectives on the path to a Series A. By the way, you can already click this link to pre-register for our next, incredible edition of VLS.

In this episode, Tomas Roggio, Carlos Torras, Marcos Toledo, and Antoine Colaço talk about:

The state of early and late-stage fundraising in LatAm in 2023 and 2024;
The metrics and milestones VCs take into consideration at the Series A stage;
And the perspective for downstream capital in LatAm, from Series B onward.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
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Fundraising the right way to end up with a healthy cap table isn't usually a top-of-mind priority for startup founders. But it should be. Making a dilution mistake in the earlier stages can bring you and your startup a lot of problems when it's time to raise new rounds.

That's why we called experts from BZCP, Carta, Campbells, and Gunderson Dettmer. They shared the best cap table management practices during this year's Vamos Latam Summit. By the way, you can already click this link to pre-register for our next, incredible edition.

In this episode, Eduardo Zilberberg, Reed McBride, Alexandra Clynes, and Adan Muller talk about:

The different corporate structures for fundraising and their trade-offs;
How founders and their startups should legally prepare for fundraising;
And what's the current state of fundraising and exits in LatAm.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
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A founder-investor relationship is like a marriage: hopefully, you're both sticking to each other through thick and thin, for years to come.

Finding the right partner and crafting this lasting relationship is no easy task. That's why we called founders and investors to share their experiences during this year's Vamos Latam Summit. By the way, you can already click the link in the description to pre-register for our next, incredible edition.

In this episode, Cumbuca's founder Daniel Ruhman and the investors Jonathan Lewy, from Investo, and Mercedes Bent, from Lightspeed Venture Partners, talk about:

How investor relationships changed in the past few years;
The signs of a good and a bad partner, no matter if they're founders or investors;
How startups can differentiate themselves from competitors, and how founders can sell the value prop to investors.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
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Product-market fit can make or break your startup. Being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market is an essential but difficult task.

That's why we asked the founders of BHub, Foodology, and Pomelo to come to Vamos Latam Summit and share their own journey of reaching PMF.

In this episode, Jorge Vargas Neto, Daniela Izquierdo, and Gastón Irigoyen talk about:

What were the strategies to acquire their first customers in competitive markets;
What metrics they use to measure product-market fit;
And why achieving PMF, making small pivots, and talking to investors are constant efforts.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
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Sebastian Mejia is the co-founder and president of Rappi. And for the past 18 months, he’s been focused on a single goal: having the best team in the world.

At Vamos Latam Summit, Sebastian shared how we went about it, and his journey as a startup founder.

This is only one of the impressive panels we’ve had at VLS. And by the way, you can already click this link to pre-register for our next, incredible edition.

In this episode, Sebastian and I talk about:

Why and how to hire world-class talent;
How to develop a “killer instinct” and deal with self-doubt as a founder;
And why Sebastian is optimistic about Latin America.

My name’s Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, Latam!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
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Here’s Gina Gotthilf, co-founder of Latitud together with Brian and Yuri. You might have noticed this episode’s a bit different — but not only because I’m the one presenting it.

This week onward, we’ll be sharing the most impressive panels we’ve had at Vamos Latam Summit. By the way, you can already click this link to pre-register for our next, awesome edition.

There’s no better way to open this series than with the chat I’ve had with Hernan Kazah, co-founder of Mercado Libre and Kaszek Ventures.

In this episode, Hernan and I talk about:
- His biggest learnings as a startup founder;
- What made Mercado Libre a success;
- And how he evaluates segments, types of founders, and the current state of the market as a startup investor.

This is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, Latam!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
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After spending a decade at JP Morgan, all the way to becoming VP, Eduardo della Maggiora decided he wanted to go from company advisor to company builder.

Betterfly got 99 nos and 1 yes in the beginning, as Eduardo puts it. After fundraisings and pivots, the corporate benefits platform became a unicorn back in 2022. Now, it's focusing on its global expansion.

In this episode, Eduardo and I talk about:

How to practice essentialism in our personal and professional lives;
Eduardo's transition from financial exec to startup founder, including a journey to Africa;
And the constant effort of leveling up.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
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Derek Hall and Miguel Burger-Calderon weren't born in Latin America but saw just how many opportunities the region has. They went from founders to angel investors in the US and LatAm, putting money into companies such as Clara, Cobli, and Nowports.

Now, Derek and Miguel are venture capital investors for LatAm. At BFF, which is not "best friends forever" but "by founders for founders", they look for startups that can impact the 99%.

In this episode, Derek, Miguel, and I talk about:

How Derek and Miguel got to know LatAm;
Their thesis as angel investors and now as VCs at BFF;
The advice Derek and Miguel have shared the most with startup founders in the past decade, and the advice they're sharing the most right now.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
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We've been hearing startup founders all over LatAm for a while now. And we noticed a common reflection from those on a fundraising journey: how a simple and clean investment template could take much of the friction away.

That's why we partnered up with law offices such as Gunderson Dettmer to launch MISTO in Brazil. MISTO is a document with optimized terms for investing, with language and practices understood and accepted by both founders and investors.

Christel Moreno is a partner at Gunderson, leads their São Paulo office, and was deeply involved in the creation of MISTO. In this episode, Christel and I talk about:

From a legal standpoint, how dealing with startups in LatAm is different from dealing with traditional companies around the world;
What exactly is MISTO, and what makes it unique in comparison to other startup investment templates;
Finally, the advice Christel would give startup founders with no legal experience.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
And follow us on Linkedin / Instagram / Spotify to stay in the loop

Atlantico's back with its annual Latin America Digital Transformation Report. The study reflects on some of the forces transforming LatAm today, from the renewal of the entrepreneurial spirit in the region to the rise of artificial intelligence.

We had early access to these findings here at Latitud, and decided to chat with Atlantico's Ana Martins and Julio Vasconcellos about the most impressive insights.

In this episode, Ana, Julio, and I talk about:

How LatAm founders are currently balancing excitement, optimism, and caution;
How close we are to the end of the startup fundraising winter;
Some trends to look out for in Latin America, from mobile to AI.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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Parker Treacy voyaged down from the US to Brazil back in 2014 for two reasons. First, for the adventure. Second, and that's in his own words, for being irrationally convinced that he'd be successful.

In the end, Parker stucked the landing. He took his experience in the auto industry to create Cobli, a startup that builds technology for fleet management. Now, Cobli has over 5 thousand clients and investors such as Fifth Wall, the IFC, and SoftBank.

In this episode, Parker and I talked about:

How to balance curiosity and focus as a startup founder;
The story of how Parker landed in Brazil and co-founded Cobli;
How to balance founders' and investors' interests, and the importance of product-channel fit.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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From the Brazilian city of Recife, André Ferraz co-founded a startup out of a research project. That was In Loco Media, a company that used geopositioning technology for marketing. Eventually, the retail giant Magazine Luiza bought the startup.

But years before that sale, André was already working for years on using that same technology to solve another huge problem: online security. His new company, Incognia, has gone on to raise a Series A and be present in 200 million devices worldwide.

In this episode, André and I talk about:

André's journey from a computer science researcher to a startup founder;
Lessons on cap table management, pivoting, exiting, and fundraising;
Incognia's creation and André's view on the future of artificial intelligence.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

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Sujay Tyle sold his used cars marketplace to Naspers back in 2019. He could have stopped there. But he decided to double down on a segment and a market that still had a lot to offer.

Sujay co-founded Merama, a marketplace that invests in and partners with e-commerces brands all over Latin America. Merama’s now a unicorn, and Sujay also became a startup investor to share what he’s learned with other founders.

In this episode, Sujay and I talk about:
- How he discovered and leveraged e-commerce in Latin America;
- How to prepare for an exit and deal with competitors from your startup’s early days;
- And the most common advice Sujay gives founders as an investor.

My name’s Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, Latam!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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Wanna win a free ticket to Vamos Latam Summit, and bring your friends along with a discount? Participate in our exclusive raffle for Latitud Podcast listeners! Click the following link and comment your favorite episode's title + tag two friends you wanna bring along to VLS: xxx

Connections are really powerful — and even more so when we take the time to be together in real life. That’s why startups have adopted promoting their events as a brand and sales strategy.

We’re no exception. I started promoting events at Viva Real, and now we’re taking that strategy to the next level at Latitud. Our next big thing is Vamos Latam Summit: we’re gathering the top startup founders and investors in the region so that they can learn and build relationships.

4,000 people will be at VLS, on September 28th and 29th, in São Paulo. And you can win your ticket and even bring some of your friends with a discount. We’re doing an exclusive raffle for our podcast listeners. Click on the link in the description and learn how to join the raffle.

Now, we don’t want to stop there. Founders have been sending us a lot of questions about how they can also make memorable events and leverage brand and sales with that. So Mariana Fonseca, Latitud’s Content Lead, and I gathered these questions and talked in this episode about:

Why adopt the events strategy if you’re thinking of strengthening your brand and sales;
How you can build events even on a tight budget;
The top metric you should keep an eye on and how to produce results after your startup’s event.

My name’s Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm! And see you at Vamos Latam Summit.

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Irit Epelbaum has managed product teams for more than a decade. From San Francisco to São Paulo, she's worked in companies like Trulia, Peixe Urbano, and VivaReal. Now, Irit makes use of that experience to coach founders on the best practices of product management. She's both the product operating partner at Atlantico and an independent product management coach.

In this episode, Irit and I talk about:

The best practices on product management for startups before they reach product-market fit;
When to hire a product manager and how to structure the product team;
How AI is going to affect product management, and why your product might not be working as well as you expected.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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Manoela Mitchell went from investor to founder because she wanted to crack one of Brazil's most challenging markets: healthcare. She's now the co-founder and CEO of Pipo Saúde, a startup that currently has 100,000 lives under management.

Pipo Saúde's growth is a lesson on focus and efficiency, ranging from sales and fundraising to culture and diversity. In this episode, Manoela and I talk about:

What she learned from going from investor to founder;
How to discover your ideal customer profile;
And how to fundraise and innovate in the most efficient way.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

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Latitud Podcast has been going strong for three years, and we’ve finally reached episode #150. So we decided to take a trip down memory lane and revisit some stories about how to survive through difficult times. These difficult moments can appear in your upbringing, in your startup’s ups and downs, in the market as a whole, or in your own limitations.

Whatever your tough moment of the day is, we have a founder or investor who went through something similar. We’ll remember the challenges that entrepreneurs at the startups 99, Buser, and Loggi faced. We’ll also share deep reflections we had with investors at Atlantico, Cracks Fund, Ganas Ventures, and General Atlantic.

We hope that these lessons will inspire you to keep pushing forward on your journey to make an impact in Latin America. Vamos, LatAm!

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Alejandra Ríos started her studies in the food industry. But she already had another plan in mind: entering the finance and business world.

Now, Alejandra is the CEO of the culinary education and events company Ambrosía. She's also a shark at Shark Tank Mexico. We share the stage in the show's newest season, which airs on July 7th, 2023.

In this episode, Alejandra and I talk about:

How she carved her own path in finance and business;
What she's learned so far from being an investor through Shark Tank;
And how Alejandra sees her role in bringing more diversity to the business world.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

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Get out of the building! If you've never heard this advice before as a founder… wait, what am I saying, of course you have.

Today, we welcome a true titan of the startup world, the man who coined "GOOB" and pioneered the Customer Development methodology, which has been instrumental in shaping the Lean Startup movement.

Steve Blank is not only a serial entrepreneur with 8 ventures and 4 IPOs under his belt, but he is also an accomplished author, having penned four influential books, including "The Four Steps to the Epiphany" and "Startup Owner's Manual." Also an adjunct professor and co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford, it's safe to say that Steve has made a lasting impact on the entrepreneurial landscape.

The masterclass you're about to listen to was originally a private session for the Latitud Community that was too good not to share with the world. Hosted by my co-founder and Latitud CTO Yuri Danilchenko, this chat covers:

How the Customer Development methodology came about and evolved over the years
Common misconceptions and pitfalls about doing customer discovery and building MVPs
The impact of AI and other emerging technologies on entrepreneurship
And Steve's biggest lessons from past failures

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Luis Lora has been in the media and tech scene for a long time – from writing a check into Napster and negotiating deals for iTunes to dealing with M&As, private equity, and venture capital deals in Latin America.

Now, Luis is a managing partner at Globo Ventures. The investment firm writes checks for venture capital funds and startup founders transforming the Brazilian market. It also leverages the assets and know-how of Grupo Globo, the biggest media conglomerate in the country.

In this episode, Luis and I talk about:

Luis' trajectory in tech and media, ranging from investment banking and corporate development to M&A and venture capital;
The key components for founders to extract the most value out of the sale or merger, how M&As compare to IPOs, and the future of M&As
Globo Ventures' thesis and value proposition, and how founders can use media in an efficient way.

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Anna Piñol moved from Spain to Silicon Valley to become a startup founder. She not only got invested by the venture capital firm NFX but decided to join them to fund other startups.

Anna's now a Principal at NFX. Day after day, she sees and writes checks for transformational business models in Latin America.

In this episode, Anna and Brian Requarth talk about:

What she learned from being an executive at Amazon in Spain and a startup founder in Silicon Valley;
How LatAm founders can join the Silicon Valley club, and how the giveback culture works around the world;
NFX's investment thesis and current numbers for Latin America, and Anna's advice for startup founders in the region.

Hey, open your startup the right way, request early access to Meridian's international account, or start by signing up for our newsletter.

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Arthur O' Keefe is no stranger to pressure. He started his professional journey by working in a nuclear submarine for the United States Navy, but later decided to go to Harvard Business School and make a career in finance.

Arthur has led M&A efforts for years at Movile, the Brazilian tech company best known for the delivery app iFood. Now, Arthur's the founder of Bamboo. The company brings the private credit market to the digital world.

In this episode, Arthur and I talk about:

Arthur's journey, from a scholarship in the US Navy to dealing with corporate finance for Movile and iFood in Brazil;
The lessons he'd share with founders on when to sell or not your startup;
The gap that equity investment can't fill on its own, Bamboo's creation, and the debt market's current state.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, Latam!

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Rafael Costa has been investing in Latin American startups for a decade. He's seen the development of the tech investing scene in LatAm by being an investor in growth equity firms like Vulcan Capital, and by sitting on the board of companies like Loft and Neon.

This experience has opened Rafael's eyes to the opportunity of bridging tech communities in Latin America and the United States. He's now a general partner at Across Capital. The cross-border investment fund aims to leverage that geographic connection, transforming it into a competitive advantage for startups.

In this episode, Rafael Costa and I talk about:

How the Latin American startup ecosystem has evolved in the past decade, and at which point of the cycle we're currently in;
Latin America's unique market dynamics, and Across Capital's thesis of connecting the tech scenes in the region and in the US;
Rafael Costa's view on fund size, company sourcing, and the next few years for founders and investors.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, Latam!

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Born in Colombia but raised in the US, Brian York went back to Latin America a few years ago. He not only discovered his roots but also a mission -- driving value to the Colombian startup ecosystem, and generating economic and social progress with that.

Brian's now a co-founder and the CEO of Cubbo, a startup that provides logistics to e-commerce players. He's also sharing everything he has learned and is still learning about tech entrepreneurship through social media, in the spirit of building in public.

In this episode, Brian York and I talk about:

His personal story and the challenges he went through on his own startups;
Why and how Brian started building in public through TikTok;
His advice on fundraising, from how to build a relationship with investors to the perfect valuation of a pre-Seed startup.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos LatAm!

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As a lawyer, Jorge Vargas Neto met fintech founders like David Vélez from Nubank and Sergio Furio from Creditas. He got so inspired that he decided to become a fintech founder himself.

After exiting two startups to the unicorns PagSeguro and Rappi, Jorge is now on his third journey as a fintech founder. BHub offers back-office-as-a-service for startups and traditional SMBs. They have accomplished a ton in the last couple of years. We have the pleasure of being their first check. They're supporters of our Vamos Latam Summit. And we're customers.

But in this episode, Jorge and I talked about:
- The lessons he learned from his first two fintechs, and what made him want to be a fintech founder for the third time;
- BHub's fundraising journey, and making the decision of how much to spend or to save;
- And how Jorge sees competition and culture in a startup.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, Latam!

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Tractian is part of a small LatAm startup club that focuses on hardware and software. This was a decision that Gabriel Lameirinhas, Igor Marinelli, and Leonardo Vieira took early on. And it was a necessary step to solve a massive global problem: making factories more efficient.

The hard work has paid off, and Tractian now supports hundreds of clients and monitors thousands of machines in Brazil and Mexico. There's much to learn about identifying pains and winning over clients, even when you're facing a difficult environment.

In this episode, Leonardo and I talk about:

Tractian's early days, from discovering the problem to nailing the customer acquisition strategy;
How the startup went beyond Brazilian borders and conquered sales in Mexico;
Leonardo's advice on fundraising in a tough market and building a deep tech startup in Latin America.

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Fabien Mendez grew up in France but discovered his entrepreneurial vein in Latin America. That calling led to one of Brazil's biggest startups.

Loggi became a unicorn back in 2019. Now, it moves 300 thousand packages every day across the country. But these numbers don't tell how hard the journey has been, from convincing early investors to adapting to regulations and new business models.

In this episode, Fabien and I talk about:

His first startup, and how that "epic fail" later helped in his fundraising for Loggi;
How Loggi went from an asset-light first phase to an asset-intensive second phase, and what Loggi's third phase looks like;
Fabien's most humbling experience, and what he's learned from the difficult transition from CEO to chairman.

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Bernardo Cordero has always liked to be one of the first people to arrive at the scene. That was the case with Linio, an e-commerce company created more than a decade ago. That was also the case with STARTegy, his venture builder for fintechs. Finally, history repeated itself when he co-founded the real estate business Flat.

These years in tech entrepreneurship have taught Bernardo valuable lessons on how to make the best use of blue oceans. His learnings go from retaining the best employees to picking the right initiatives to scale.

In this episode, Bernardo and I talked about:
- How to balance family life and business life, and how to retain top talent in the early days of a startup;
- Bernardo's endeavors in e-commerce, fintech, and real estate, and what other opportunities Latin American startup founders will need to seize;
- What Bernardo looks for as a startup investor, and the main lessons he shares with founders.

My name's Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, Latam!

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Mar Hershenson has done it all. She's been a VP of product development and a co-founder of three successful startups.

With 14 patents under her belt and a passion for teaching, Mar has joined us today to share her insights on:

What it takes to succeed in the startup world,
Experience as a managing partner at Pear VC to
Her early bet on DoorDash,
Thoughts on the role of academia in the startup ecosystem and much more.

You won't want to miss a word of this conversation.

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Growing up in the Bahamas gave Stevon Darling an interesting world vision. He started his career studying to be a doctor but later was exposed to finance education and found his calling.

He was, until very recently, the CIO of H2O Capital, an investment company that focuses on large and valuable companies in LatAm.

Stevon faces another key moment in his career, founding a neobank for the Caribbean and Central America.

We discussed his upbringing, the work and numbers of H2O, investing in LatAm, the forecast for 2023, and his current mission to empower Central America and the Caribbean with capital access.

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Hugh Strange worked as a VP of product at Nubank. As you know, being a company devoted to innovation and product development, his work there was full of rich and broad experiences.

In our conversation, Hugh shared how to choose the right technology, build the ideal team, use product development for growth, incorporate the company's culture into the work, and some history behind product decisions.

It was an insightful conversation, and I look forward to hearing about his next adventures.

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This is an open and honest conversation full of lessons and ideas from a dynamic and curious founder: Marcelo Lombardo. As a kid, He used to build electronic equipment for fun, buying parts, dismantling, and building them back again.

His obsession with understanding how things work led him to start coding, giving him the critical thinking he needed to envision product development opportunities.

In this episode, you will see that Marcelo loves to share his learnings, processes, journey, and results.

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This is a special episode about a product we have been working on for some time now.

Meridian is the business account for LatAm startups. You can manage your company's runway, move capital across borders, and keep your flow of funds compliant. No hidden fees. No hassles. No bull.

To learn more about Meridian, go to https://meridian.latitud.com/

In this conversation with Patrick Kolencherry, we discussed the latest developments with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), our decision to launch Meridian, and why it is a revolutionary fintech product.

Vamos LatAm!

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Mercedes grew up in a household where inventions, product ideas, and web development were discussed at the dinner table.

That unique environment created a curious-minded person who started her professional career on Wall-street but later became a startup founder and investor. Today she is part of Lightspeed venture partners.

We discussed her interest in fintech, crypto, NFTs, LatAm investing, and much more.

Show notes:

Mercedes Bent's article on Crypto Utility.

https://medium.com/lightspeed-venture-partners/the-future-of-crypto-native-consumer-products-part-3-utility-229e605bc3da

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It's 2023, and all startups are trying to find answers to profound questions that may affect their present and future existence.

We invited back Dan Green from Gunderson Dettmer for a series of special episodes where we will focus on vital legal and financial information.

Dan works with all corporate and securities law areas, including company formation and financing, debt transactions, and investor-side financings. He got an exceptional eye for the Latam Startup universe.

In this episode, we have a chance to overview what is happening with so many companies right now and discuss fundraising, down and extension rounds, dilutions, debt, vesting, and other crucial financial and legal topics.

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Yuri Danilchenko is Latitud's tech-co founder, and I have introduced him many times before. Personally, what I find very compelling about his story is that we can see clearly how his personal experience helped shape who he is and how he works.

He was born naturally curious about technology and is a great translator between product x business, and tech. He grew up in Russia during some history-defining moments and moved to the US, where he got his masters in Artificial Intelligence. He worked at several startups and, later, in Brazil, he co-founded Vamos.

In this episode, we discussed:

The tech job market.
How to attract and keep talent.
Where the technology is heading, and how this will impact our lives and work.

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It takes an effort of titans to elevate the startup ecosystem in Latam. At Latitud, we know it's not possible to do it alone; that's why we partnered with Jeeves to help provide access to financial tools to help founders in the most critical stages of their startups.

In today's episode, we will have an honest conversation with four great talents: Dileep from Jeeves, Antonia from ALLVP, Gabriel from a16z, and Jonathan from Investo. We will focus on demystifying fundraising for Latin American startups.

There is a lot of good information here, and I am sure it will be helpful for everyone, especially considering the outlook for 2023.

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While searching for a new home for her family, Brynne saw an opportunity to introduce much-needed transparency and speed into the real estate market in Colombia.

Today, the company she co-founded, Habi, is a leading start-up in the field.

Brynne and I talked about:

The journey to start a business in Colombia.
Her personal experience with real-estate technology.
How they adapted their business and work due to the pandemic.

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In the world of startups, Elad Gil has done it all. He's been an executive, entrepreneur, investor, or advisor for so many successful companies: Airbnb, Gusto, Stripe, Square, Google and Twitter, to name a few. Today he is the co-founder of Color Genomics and describes himself as A Startup Helper. We couldn't agree more.

In a conversation with the entire Latitud Team, Elad talked about:

the current state of startups
headcount and budget adjustments
access to investment
and how he chooses where to focus his time and energy.

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Before being COO at Milo, a consumer internet startup eBay acquired in 2010, Wenyi was a consultant with McKinsey & Company in the Middle East, Africa, & South Asia.

Today she is the CEO and co-founder of Polymath, a venture studio that builds digital platforms to empower the middle class in Latin America.

Wenyi and I talked about her passion and reasons for developing companies specifically for the middle class in Latam and Polymath's model based on co-building with corporate partners.

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Ten years ago, the entrepreneur and lawyer Cristobal Perdomo decided to "take a risk on those who risk it all." That's when he became the co-founder and general partner of Wollef. The Latin American VC firm has invested in over 30 companies since 2013. Five unicorns came out of this portfolio: Jeeves, Kavak, Konfio, Loft, and Nubank.

Today, Cristobal and I talked about:

His entrepreneurial mindset since the age of 17.
How he moved from business development to VC.
Great insights on how to pick the right company and founder to invest in.
The importance of teamwork.

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Ryan Bloomer founded the venture capital firm K50 six years ago, after building two companies, an accelerator, a venture studio, and a founder community. With K50, Ryan had an ambitious goal in mind: betting on startups building a better future for the 99% in the US and in Latin America.

Since then, K50 has invested in no less than 180 startups, with pre-Seed and Seed rounds in sectors such as finance, healthcare, and future of work. Fintual, Frubana, Osana, and Tul are some examples of K50's thesis in action.

Today, Ryan and I talk about:

His trajectory up to K50 Ventures, and on what startups and founders the firm bets inside the early-stage space;
Why Ryan started a founder community back in 2008, how it followed a decentralized support model, and the thesis of investing in diverse geographies;
Ryan's vision on valuations for early-stage startups, the drive for solving huge problems and creating a legacy, and the one investment that exemplifies K50's thesis.

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Latin America is a giant. It's a market worth over 5 trillion dollars. A population of over six hundred million people. And a territory that stretches from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.

These big numbers also come with big challenges. You might be thinking that they are barriers we can't overcome. But we've seen time and time again that it works much like the opposite.

Startup founders are diving head-first into opportunities that are as vast as The Amazon River. And some of them have yet to be seized.

We've launched the first edition of The LatAm Tech Report (https://www.latitud.com/en/reports/the-latam-tech-report-2022) to provide new coordinates for your opportunity map. We took a deep dive into seven industries dear to Latin America – B2C Fintech, B2B Fintech, E-commerce, SaaS, Proptech, Healthtech, and Climate Tech.There, you can find all the data and interviews with industry experts to know the past, present, and future of each sector.

We also wanted you to hear directly from the founders thriving in these seven industries and in Latin America. So, in this episode of the Latitud Podcast, the creators of Pomelo, Addi, Bitso, Morado, Nuvemshop, Xepelin, Clivi, Sami, and SuperPlants shared with us what insights startup founders in their industries can't miss.

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Federico Antoni had an extensive career in marketing, working for retail and e-commerce companies like Mercado Libre. But he found his calling in the venture capital world.

Over a decade ago, Federico founded ALLVP, a Mexican venture capital fund focused on solving the hardest problems in Spanish-speaking Latin America. ALLVP now has a portfolio of over 40 startups. Their emblematic portfolio company is Cornershop, sold to Uber.

Now, ALLVP's preparing its fourth fund, and Federico divides his time between ALLVP, boards of multiple startups, and lectures at Stanford.

Today, Federico and I talk about:

His leap from retail and teaching to the startup and venture capital segments, and what was the Mexican startup ecosystem like when ALLVP started;
What gaps have been filled since then, and how the firm faces the macroeconomic uncertainty in Latin America as a feature, and not as a bug;
What does ALLVP mean by team-market fit, its plans for a fourth fund, and Federico's view on the current market landscape and the development of a startup culture in Latin America.

Every startup founder needs to know what their superpower is. Oso Trava knows pretty well which one is his – connecting people and helping them become the best they can be.

That realization came with years of creating startups and being an advisor and angel to other founders. Now, Oso's a general partner at Cracks Fund, a firm that's investing in early-stage tech disruptors in Latin America.

Today, Oso and I talk about:

What exactly is a "crack"; why and how did Oso enter the startup world; and what lessons Oso took from his endeavors to his role as an investor;
If founders should build their personal brand, and if it can or should be dissociated from their startups' brand; the growing presence of celebrities in the venture capital world, and the pros and cons of having them as investors in your startup;
Oso's transition to general partner at Cracks Fund; how to go from virtual to real-life impact, and the importance of DMS, or doing meaningful shit.

Canary has its eyes on promising startup founders even if they still don't have an idea or a company name. That's how the early-stage venture capital firm has invested in more than a hundred startups throughout Latin America. And that's how it raised US$ 100M for its third fund at the end of 2021.

Marcos Toledo is a co-founder and managing partner at Canary, together with Loft's Florian Hagenbuch and Mate Pencz, and Peixe Urbano's Julio Vasconcellos. Izabel Gallera is also a partner at Canary.

Today, Marcos, Izabel, and I talk about:

The trajectory Marcos and Izabel traced up to Canary's foundation; how the LatAm startup ecosystem has evolved since then; and what will the next years look like for tech companies in the region.
What's Canary's investment thesis; how the firm tracks the success of its portfolio and supports founders in various sectors; and the impacts of remote work on helping these portfolio companies hire talent;
Canary's investment process, the strategy the firm followed in its third fund, and how Marcos and Izabel see the changes in startup valuations during the last months.

Stori became the ninth unicorn of Mexico this year, after raising a US$ 150 million equity and debt round last July. And, with it, the credit card fintech got a valuation of 1.2 billion dollars. That's another proof of the impressive strength fintechs are showing in Latin America, even considering the slowdown in relation to 2021.

Stori aims to offer credit card access to 100 million underserved Latin Americans – and about one million and a half Mexicans are already Stori's customers. One of its co-founders is Marlene Garayzar, who has almost 20 years of previous experience in financial services.

Today, Marlene and I talk about:

What it's like being the newest Mexican unicorn and growing a startup while growing your own family, and Marlene's trajectory in the financial sector up to Stori;
The scenario of credit access in Mexico, and how Stori started, divided roles between founders, built trust with its first customers, convinced funds to invest, and then gained traction;
The challenges the fintech faces daily, such as preventing frauds and educating customers, and what's next for Stori and the fintech sector in Latin America.

Simon Baker is passionate about big ambitions and high growth – and he has built a portfolio with companies from all around the world to see that first-hand.

Simon is not only an Australian serial investor and an expert in the global proptech industry. He's also the chairman of the CAV Investment Group, a private investment fund that invested in Viva Real when I was running it.

The fund focuses on startups with a global mindset, but still in their early stages. And Simon makes it clear that his team wants to be hands-on, adding value to the business as it goes, from funding to human resources and strategic guidance.

Today, Simon and I talk about:

How you should approach investors, and how should angel investors create value for the founders they invest in;
What common mistakes Simon sees early-stage founders make, and the importance of clarity, simplicity, and doubling down on what you're doing well in product and sales;
Why you should reach out and have tough conversations with mentors and advisors, and how to keep one role, one focus as a CEO and in your startup's team while testing out new initiatives.

Back in 2005, Alejandro Diez Barroso had the idea of building a venture capital fund to support the development of Latin America. He was a Mexican entrepreneur himself and saw the lack of capital for startup founders.

His fund finally took flight in 2012. During this last decade, DILA Capital has raised four funds and invested in dozens of early-stage startups, including two that are now unicorns: Incode, from Mexico, and Kushki, from Ecuador.

Today, Alejandro and I talk about:

How did DILA Capital start, how being an entrepreneur shaped the way Alejandro invests, and what he looks for when selecting a startup;
The differences between building a startup portfolio in Latin America and the rest of the world, what's DILA value proposition to LatAm founders, and how to go from local to global trust from startup investors;
How does Alejandro deals with missed investment opportunities, how venture capital firms should go about bringing value to founders, and what's Alejandro's vision for the future of startups in Latin America.

Prominent global venture capital funds already have startups from Latin America on their radar, and founders should be prepared to attract these VCs. I know that first-hand, with Andreessen Horowitz being one of Latitud's investors.

To become closer to global firms, it's essential to understand their decision-making process. That's why we invited Gabby Cazeau, from Harlem Capital; Gabriel Vasquez, from a16z; and Matias Van Thienen, from Founders Fund, to talk about their investment strategies.

We'll share right now the chat these VCs had with Fernanda Caloi, director of Special Projects at Latitud. During the Vamos Latam Summit, our connections and knowledge flagship event, they talked about:

The one piece of their personalities that allows these VCs to be great startup investors, and how to invest globally and specifically in Latin America;
What factor makes these VCs pay more attention to a startup, and what are some examples of outlier founders in their portfolios;
How the current market environment impacts their investment strategy, and what they expect from the Latin American startup ecosystem in the next decade.

Venture capital is not about driving a car, but flying a spaceship. It's all about the long-term mission. Latin America has laid the groundwork in the last years in terms of talent, capital, and market adoption. Even so, we're still in the early stage of our space exploration campaign, both in terms of what technology can do and in terms of startup exits.

These are some of the reflections shared by three partners at venture capital firms. These firms invest heavily in Latin America. Izabel Gallera, from Canary; Marcelo Lima, from Monashees; and Santiago Fossatti, from Kaszek, were all at Vamos Latam Summit, our connections and knowledge flagship event.

We'll share right now the chat these VCs had with Tomi Roggio, head of Ventures at Latitud. They talked about:

What has changed for founders and investors in Latin America during the last decade, and how startups should deal with current market conditions;
What Canary, Monashees, and Kaszek really value when selecting startups;
And what trends and verticals these VCs are excited about for the next years.

Building a community is a powerful tool for any startup – but it's not an easy task to create a gathering that becomes a reference. There might be a few names that come to your mind when talking about founder communities, maybe Techstars, Endeavor, Google for Startups, and Latitud itself.

Ian Hathaway, Camilla Junqueira, and André Barrence shared their best practices for building founder communities with Virginia Campo, Latitud's Director of Programs and Community, during the Vamos Latam Summit.

In our connections and knowledge flagship event, they talked about:

What defines a community, and why giving back and fostering engagement are so important;
What metrics are used to assess the quality of a founder community, and how to keep the community's essence even when it grows;
And what is the role of in-real-life events to sustain a stronger founder community.

You've probably heard from our friends at a16z that every company will become a fintech. Latin America's one of the most fertile grounds for the providers of new financial products and services. There are over a thousand fintechs in the region.

In this fierce competition, the ones that flourished were fintechs offering powerful solutions to huge pain points. By enabling cross-border payments, dLocal became the first unicorn from Uruguay and went public. And by attacking high-interest loans, Creditas became another Brazilian fintech unicorn.

Sergio Fogel and Sergio Furio, founders of dLocal and Creditas, reflected on the fintech revolution in the region during Vamos Latam Summit, our connections and knowledge flagship event. We'll share right now the chat the two Sergios had, moderated by Miguel Armaza, from Gilgamesh Ventures. They talked about:

How to provide new products and services to consumers that either don't know or know really well what they want, and how to be a wartime or a peacetime CEO in Latin America;
How to deal with challenges like international expansion, currency fluctuations, and going public;
And what makes fintech in Latin America unique in relation to the rest of the world.

Being a startup founder comes with a big ambition. To conquer your dreams, however, you should learn the best practices for launching your business, fundraising, and hiring talent.

Taking advice from founders who have either exited or transformed their startups into unicorns will shorten that learning journey. Andres Bilbao from Rappi, Dileep Thazhmon from Jeeves, and Ingrid Barth from Linker showed how to think big from day zero at Vamos Latam Summit, our connections and knowledge flagship event.

We'll share right now the chat they had, moderated by Rosa Jimenez, from Jeeves. Andres, Dileep, and Ingrid talked about:

When founders are really ready to launch their startups and raise money from investors;
If founders can actually achieve work-life balance, and how important the first hires in a startup are;
What would they change if they could start over as entrepreneurs, and the one piece of advice Andres, Dileep, and Ingrid would each give to startup founders.

Not many people know or believe that Instagram has a Brazilian as a co-founder. Mike Krieger was not only that – he was also the sole developer for Instagram during its early stages.

Between the ideation of a mobile check-in app called Burbn and Instagram becoming one of the most heavily used apps of our days, there's a lot to be shared.

At Vamos Latam Summit, our connections and knowledge flagship event, Mike recounted his journey with Gina Gotthilf – who co-founded Latitud with me and Yuri, and is also a former VP of Growth at the education app Duolingo.

Gina and Mike talked about:

The main lessons Mike learned during his journey as Instagram's co-founder;
How to maintain a good relationship between cofounders and deal with the expansion of your startup to other countries;
What growth levers helped Instagram pick up in its early days, and how to not lose sight of product and people when developing new technologies.

We've talked with Pete Flint before. He's a brit deeply immersed in Silicon Valley startup culture and someone who has ushered in two unicorn companies – one of which, Trulia, was the inspiration behind my business, Viva Real. He's now helping entrepreneurs leverage connections, experience, and capital as a partner at the venture firm NFX.

Focused on seed funding, NFX has been investing in Latin America for quite some time. But Pete has taken the relationship with the region to the next level. He joined us at our first Vamos Latam Summit, our connections and knowledge flagship event.

We'll share right now the chat we had at VLS. Pete and I talked about:

NFX's thesis and why it has a growing interest in Latin American startups;
What non-obvious pieces of advice Pete would give to early-stage startup founders on fundraising and hiring;
And how can founders scale their roles as they exit their businesses the right way.

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

After more than two years of a global pandemic, some habits are here to stay. In Latin America, even more so. The boom in tech adoption has held up more in the region when comparing it to the US. But even with this growth, the potential for tech creation is still huge in LatAm.

This is just one of the insights from the newest Digital Transformation Report, which is being published today by the venture capital fund Atlantico. Julio Vasconcellos is Atlantico's managing partner and was also the founder of the Brazilian e-commerce Peixe Urbano. Ana Martins is a VC investor at Atlantico.

Today, Julio, Ana and I talk about:

Why tech adoption in LatAm presents a bigger opportunity in comparison to other regions of the world;
How startups are dealing right now with boom and bust cycles and recruiting talent, and how they should deal with these challenges;
And the three segments in which LatAm can become a global leader.

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Alfonso De Los Ríos is 23 years old, but his startup experience goes way beyond what you'd imagine for his age. He's the co-founder of Nowports, a startup that is bringing tech to the international supply chain and helping companies move their containers more efficiently.

Nowports rode the logistics startups boom during the pandemic. The company raised its Series A one year into the pandemic – and then raised round after round at a breakneck pace. The last one was a Series C, led by SoftBank, which valued the Mexican startup at over a billion dollars and transformed it into a unicorn.

Today, Alfonso and I talk about:

Alfonso's journey of cofounding Nowports, raising round after round, and managing its global growth;
His take on the changes brought by the pandemic and the current market downturn, and his strategy of going on the offensive;
How to scale a startup without losing its culture and values, and Alfonso's sources for learning about leadership.

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

James Currier is an expert in a key ingredient behind the success of companies like Meta, Uber, and Amazon. The key ingredient? Network effects. They happen when a company's product or service becomes more valuable as its usage increases.

James has not only seen the growth of digital businesses but also created four successful venture-backed startups himself in the past couple of decades. Those endeavors were sold to companies like Monster and PayPal. His fifth company is the early-stage venture capital fund NFX (you got it: network effects). He's currently a general partner there. Today, James advises top startups about how to build strong network effects to win – and win big.

Today, James and I talk about:

His journey as an entrepreneur and as an angel investor up to NFX;
The discovery and the importance of network effects;
And James' lessons for entrepreneurs looking at network effects when creating and scaling their startups.

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

Jimena Pardo started her startup journey after having a chat with the venture capital fund ALLVP. The Mexican venture capital fund focused on solving the hardest problems in Spanish-speaking Latin America and eventually wrote a check for Jimena's car-sharing startup.

Ten years later, Jimena is on the other side of the table. After also spending some years as a product manager at Facebook, she became ALLVP's newest partner. Jimena joins a fund that manages more than US$ 350 million and has a portfolio of over 40 startups. Their emblematic portfolio company is Cornershop, sold to Uber.

‍Today, Jimena and I talk about:

What the Mexican ecosystem for startups was like a decade ago, and how it has evolved;
Her journey as a founder and a tech executive, and how that made her a better investor;
ALLVP’s current thesis, its plans for the following years, and its view on the current investment climate and on the opportunities for LatAm startups

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

Jonathan Gheller went from selling tequeños, or fried cheese breadsticks, to being a founder of companies sold to Facebook and Google. In a world where unit economics became the new king for startups, Gheller is a long-term preacher about building businesses that are scalable and profitable.

Now, the Venezuelan entrepreneur not only advises early-stage startups. He also connects Latin American talents to Silicon Valley companies through Matilda Explorations.

Today, Jonathan and I talk about:

His first endeavors, and how to build scalable and profitable businesses;
Advice for early-stage startups and just-exited founders;
Reflections about remote work, being an efficient manager, and a new standard for salaries and hiring in tech

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

Out of the billions of VC dollars that poured into Latin America in 2021, only 4% were allocated in seed and pre-seed rounds. For the investors at 17Sigma, that's where the biggest opportunity to find the next big thing lies – and LatAm is the perfect place to find it.

17Sigma was created almost a year ago and is investing US$ 30 million in entrepreneurs and projects in the early stages. It already has over 10 startups in its portfolio and plans to reach up to 40 in the next few years. The fund is based in Argentina and led by Bianca Sassoon, who was previously at Kaszek and has become thefirst woman in Spanish-speaking LatAm to lead a VC fund.

Today Bianca and I talk about:

What she's looking for when evaluating a new startup
The 17Sigma strategy to help founders cross the death valley
Her outlook on the current investment climate

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

When it comes to communicating in Latin America, WhatsApp is king: people use it every day, all the time. But how many times did you sign a contract or had your ID checked via WhatsApp? That's a US$ 3.5 billion potential addressable market according to Truora, a Colombian startup that offers businesses tailored digital authentication solutions like background checks and identity validation.

Back in April, that sort of pitch got it US$ 15 million in a Series A round led by Propel Ventures and Accel on a US$ 75 million valuation. And full disclosure here: I have also invested in it, along with many other founders who see potential in the idea.

Truora was founded in 2018 and it's now active in 9 LatAm countries. One of its founders is Maite Muniz, who wears many hats and is responsible for managing product strategy, research & development, and customer relationships. She's been an entrepreneur for pretty much her entire professional life and has learned on the job how to deal with some of Latin America's most challenging issues.

Today Maite and I talk about:

How Truora mapped growth opportunities in Latin America
The challenges involved in scaling authentication solutions
How to work intentionally to level the playing field for women in tech

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

Pretty much everyone knows Endeavor, which is a thriving global community for high-impact entrepreneurs. What you might not know is that Endeavor also has a co-investment arm called Endeavor Catalyst, which has over US$ 500 million in assets under management and has participated in rounds alongside General Atlantic, a16z and Softbank, among others.

Endeavor Catalyst has been active since 2012 and works with a long-term view in emerging markets. So far, it has seen 49 of its investees reach unicorn status – including Rappi in Colombia and Careem in Dubai – and it has just announced its 4th fund, closed at almost US$ 300 million.

Having been managing director for about a decade, Allen Taylor has been with Endeavor since 2006 and has a lot to share about entrepreneurship in developing countries.

Today Allen and I talk about:

How recent changes in financial markets can impact investments in Latin America
What's different about having founders invest in other founders
What Endeavor Catalyst plans for its new US$ 292 million fund

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

Alex Szapiro is a veteran when it comes to working with tech in Brazil. He was part of the early Submarino team and served as the country manager for Palm, Apple and Amazon, where he helped bring its operation to the country and stayed for over 8 years of incredible growth.

In April 2021, he left Amazon for Softbank, where he's now Head of Brazil and an Operating Partner. And it's an intense time for that position too, because Softbank is investing heavily in Latin America and especially in Brazil: the Softbank LATAM fund began with US$ 5 billion in 2019 and added another US$ 3 billion to it two years later.

Softbank is now investing in early stage, growth and digital transformation in the region and has many unicorns in its 60+ company portfolio, like Rappi, Quinto Andar, Gympass, Loft and MadeiraMadeira.

Alex and I talk about:

How startup investing has changed in Latin America over the years;
The importance of talent management;
How Softbank makes choices now while thinking in the (very) long term.

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

As a founder, you likely go out to raise money a handful of times during your journey. Investors, on the other hand, live and breathe pitches and term sheets everyday. Leveraging your position in the face of asymmetry is not an easy task – but it can be done.

Tomi Roggio has over a decade of experience in consulting and investing. He joined Latitud as a founding member, launched our rolling fund and, as Head of Ventures, leads the team that invested in over 80 companies in less than a year and a half.

Today, we share with all of you a bit of what we constantly share with Latitud fellows and portfolio companies, about the science behind fueling your company. In what our community started calling the Latitud Fundraising Playbook, you can learn the tactics to structure your process and increase your odds of being successful.

Stick around to uncover:

How the current economy affects fundraising and your valuation
The main paths you can take and how to plan ahead
How to prepare and approach investors
And the clear DOs and DON'Ts of speaking to VCs

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

You might have heard on the news a while back that Latitud raised a $13M seed round co-led by a16z and NfX.

Today, we are going to do something a bit different: to celebrate our podcast's 100th episode, I'm going to tell you how we raised said round. I decided to provide an open and candid reflection about the process.

Think of it as our on "how I built this" – except we're very early.

Find the full article at latitud.com/seed

Set up an international corporate structure accepted by international investors with Latitud Go.

It was early 2019 when Softbank's official landing in Latin America marked the largest-ever technology fund focused exclusively in the region. LatAm was breaking its own records in terms capital injection, and the firm had already tested the waters with a few juicy checks. So Softbank committed US$ 5 billion to the new Latin American Fund – about the same as all of the region’s venture investments in 2017 and 2018 combined.

One of the people leading it was Paulo Passoni. But after three years as Softbank's Managing Partner in Latin America, he felt it was time to move towards different ambitions. In April 2022, Paulo announced he was leaving Softbank with Shu Nyatta, Softbank's other LATAM Managing Partner, and together they would do their own thing.

All in all, Paulo has a solid 15-year experience investing in all business stages in Latin America. While on garden leave and building the next steps, he's remains active on the board of companies like VTEX, QuintoAndar, Creditas and Loggi.

On today's episode, Paulo and Brian talk about:

His plans for the future (at least what he can share for now)
Softbank's effect on the overall LATAM ecosystem
What he learned from brilliant founders

Establish your fundraising-ready company structure at go.latitud.com

Communicating safely and practically is something that interests everyone, from government agencies and big banks to small businesses and communities. That's the concept behind Rocket.Chat, an open source communication platform that began in Brazil in 2015 and now has over 12 million users in 150 countries.

Besides being highly customizable, Rocket.Chat offers two server options: you can use their cloud or run it on your own server. It's that unique data protection layer that has attracted the likes of the US Department of Defense and the US Navy, besides the 30,000 new companies that become customers every month.

Back in February 2021, Rocket.Chat raised a US$ 19 million Series A round. It remains based in Porto Alegre, a city in the south of Brazil where the co-founder and CEO Gabriel Engel was born, and it's still very much an open source project at heart.

Stick around to find out:

Why Gabriel chose Brazil as the headquarters for a global business
The challenges and opportunities of an open source company
The importance of keeping the community engaged to make the product better

Establish your fundraising-ready company structure at go.latitud.com

What if Twitch, AngelList and Shark Tank had a baby?

That's the question Ali Moiz decided to address as a business opportunity, and the baby is none other than Stonks.

Ali is a self-identified Meme Dealer with two multimillion-dollar company exits, over 75 investments as an angel and solid experience in the live streaming space, so I guess you could say he knew a thing or two about what he was getting himself into.

Stonks is an online platform for startup demo days set out to democratize access to investment opportunities. Founders from all over the world can apply to raise funds through their platform, and things can get pretty intense: founders get to watch as investment commitments pour in mid-pitch, and investors in the community aren't afraid to put their money where their mouth is.

Having founded Stonks in early 2021, Ali and the team raised an impressive $15 million dollar Seed round led by a16z last January – after less than a year of operations.

On today's episode, Ali and Brian talk about:

The rationale for giving the fundraising process a makeover
What he's learned from watching so many pitches
And why good sense of humor has a place in all of this

Establish your fundraising-ready company structure at go.latitud.com

I think we can call it: Miami has established itself as one of the most important tech hubs not just in the US, but for all countries south of it. As much as the recent boom seems sudden though, the concentration of LatAm startups and opportunities in the area has been on the rise for years.

Ana Paula González moved there in 2016, where she launched the Miami operation of 500 Startups. Originally from Guadalajara, she made her career as an investor with a special focus on supporting Latin American founders.

In April 2021, Ana Paula became the director of the Miami Initiative at SoftBank, which aims to invest around 250 million dollars in Miami-based companies.

In this episode, Ana Paula and Brian talk about:

The impact a Miami hub can have for LATAM startups
How international investors see LATAM opportunities now, after 40+ unicorns
What makes for a vibrant startup ecosystem and how to get there

Bolivian entrepreneur Martin Escobari went from growing up in a small town to graduating from Harvard. Upon moving to Brazil, he co-founded one of LatAm’s first startup IPOs in 2005: e-commerce platform Submarino became a huge industry player and went on to merge with local giant Americanas.com.

As an investor at General Atlantic since 2012, he now lives between New York and São Paulo and wears the hat of Co-president and Head of Latin America. General Atlantic specializes in a form of investment called growth equity, which sits somewhere between traditional venture capital and buyout firms, focusing on companies in that middle tier that can have their growth accelerated.

Since its beginnings in the 1980s, General Atlantic has invested in over 400 companies, with a jaw-dropping $84 billion dollars in managed assets. Its portfolio includes names like XP Investimentos, Hotmart, Quinto Andar and Gympass.

Today, Martin and Brian talk about:

What he calls the "magic of chaos" and why it matters
The opportunities and challenges a LatAm investor is better equipped to see
And the red flags and the green flags he looks for when making an investment decision

Santiago Suarez is the Co-Founder and CEO of the “Buy Now Pay Later” solution, Addi.

Through Addi’s rapid ascent, Santi has been a central figure in the boom in online sales and e-commerce since the COVID-19 pandemic, securing over 500,000 customers and 1,000 retailers with his company.

Addi raised USD 340 million last year, having already secured some lucrative clients such as Nike, Puma, Apple, and Claro. The organization also recently opened offices in Brazil and Mexico, and they are looking to expand throughout the LATAM region.

In this podcast, Santi offers insights on topics like:

The crucial tips and tricks he picked up while working at JP Morgan
The gaping holes in the payment solutions market in South America
How fintech companies can differentiate themselves to ride the waves of opportunity
The key lessons any founder can take on board to be a better CEO

Matias Woloski is the CTO and co-founder at Auth0, a developer-first identity platform born in 2013 that became Argentina's 5th unicorn in 2019. With clients in over 70 countries, it grew to become a global leader in the Identity-as-a-Service arena, and was recently acquired by Okta for US$ 6.5 billion in early 2021.

Auth0 has over 2 thousand enterprise customers and handles around 42 million logins every day. That demands a lot of tech working just right, and a lot of top-notch tech support to fix the issues that may come up.

That's all part of Matias' job as he oversees people in over 30 countries, most of them working remotely, as well as in headquarters in Buenos Aires, London, Seattle, Sidney, Tokyo and Singapore.

Today, Matias and I talk about:

What new challenges for cybersecurity are on his mind
The importance of timing for a product fit (and can it be crafted or is it just luck?)
How Auth0 made its first connections with Silicon Valley investors
And what Matias himself looks for when investing in startups as an angel investor

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Mercado Libre began in a Buenos Aires garage in 1999, when online shopping was pretty much all about eBay auctions. Now the biggest company in Latin America, Meli is valued at over 50 billion dollars and active in 18 countries in the region.

Brazil is one of the main markets, with around 1.5 million packages delivered everyday, big investments in logistics, machine learning, hiring, and in its own fintech, Mercado Pago.

One of Meli's co-founders and our guest today is a Brazilian himself. Stelleo Tolda dedicated 22 years to the company, from those early days in Argentina to his 10 years as General Manager and then President of Commerce in Brazil. He recently left the day-to-day operations to become an advisor.

This episode is going to sound a bit different: it was recorded live as a session with our community of Latitud fellows.

In this session, Stelleo and I talk about:

How tech has changed in the last two decades
The vital turning points for the business
How Mercado Libre seized new opportunities during the pandemic

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

What would you do if you had $1.2M in funding and suddenly realized you need to kill the business? In 2018, Deepak Chhugani had a YC-backed startup in the HR space that wasn't going anywhere. He went back to the drawing board and decided it was time to follow his dad's footsteps into the world of logistics and supply chain. But before pivoting, he offered the money back to each of his investors.

Most of them stayed. And to make up for the ones who backed out, they also put in a little bit more to get Deepak back to $1.2M. A few months later, Nuvocargo was born.

Nuvocargo is simplifying the highly complex process of transporting goods between borders, by centralizing it under one software-powered roof – starting with US and Mexico. Elected as one of YC’s Top Companies in 2022, they're also backed by over $40M from Tiger Global Management, QED Investors, NFX, and the founders of several unicorns.

In this episode, Deepak and I talk about:

Getting out of the limbo stage
The balance between hype and substance
Deciding what not to do
And hiring relentlessly resourceful people – globally.

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Jose Jair Bonilla co-founder and CEO of Chiper, the leading B2B e-commerce platform for independent corner stores in Latin America.

He co-founded and led software studio imaginamos in Colombia and served clients in 10+ countries, pioneering the implementation of digital transformation processes across the region and accumulating over 15 years of development experience in the process. He was a part of building Rappi from the ground up, but has been deeply ingrained in the LatAm startup ecosystem long before that.

His latest challenge is solving problems for the retail industry with Chiper through their presence in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. Chiper raised a $53 million Series B led by Tiger Global and Nosara Capital to grow their customer network to over 100.000 corner stores.

On this episode, Jose covers:

Opportunities for disruption in the retail industry
The digital transformation landscape in Latin America
And the key components of a good go-to-market strategy

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

If you told 13-year-old Miguel Santos with his first Apple device that he'd grow up to build his own billion-dollar tech company, he might have had a hard time believing you.

When Miguel started Technisys over 20 years ago, he and his co-founders set up office in a living room with a piano for a desk just as the internet started to become an integral part of everyday life.

Their digital banking solution came about 10 years ahead of its market, long before venture capital had turned to Latin America for investment opportunities, and there was no shortage of additional challenges along the way.

Miguel survived the Argentine crisis of 2001 and went on to become an Endeavor entrepreneur, expand his company to 15 markets serving over 200 million end users, and raise money from big-name VCs like KASZEK and Riverwood Capital.

Technisys was recently acquired by SoFi in a $1.1 billion all-stock transaction.

Miguel and I will be having a chat about:

Overcoming bureaucracy and inefficient regulations in developing countries
Building and scaling products in traditional sectors
And the key factors in pulling off a billion-dollar exit

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Colombian-born Santiago Molina got his degree in business administration and finance from Houston Baptist University on a soccer scholarship, and moved back to his home country after his MBA to start his entrepreneurial journey.

Santi is second-time founder focused on promoting financial inclusion, and is now on a quest to create an innovative solution to democratize access to capital in Latin America.

He and his co-founders Andres Ferrer and Tomas Shuk came together to start Finkargo, LatAm's first import financing platform. They're enabling small and medium-sized importers to finance their international purchases, and have just raised a $7.5 million Seed Round from co-led by Quona Capital and MAYA Capital to propel their vision.

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

By 2030, the UN predicts that 3 billion people will be living without shelter. Today's guest is doing something to combat that.

Brett Hagler is a Y Combinator graduate, a published author and cancer survivor, but you may know him best for his non-profit New Story and for his impactful key note speaking.

Brett started New Story at 25 years old. In the years since they have funded over 2,300 homes, built 16 communities and raised over $25M, so it's no wonder they were named one of Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies in the World four different times.

Having been featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30 and named one of the Top 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs by Goldman Sachs, Brett is passionate about speaking on leadership and social entrepreneurship.

Today, Brett and I are talking about:

Building a venture-backed non-profit
Incorporating startup principles in impact entrepreneurship
And taking innovation to those who need it

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Angela Strange is a multiple marathon winner and once achieved 7th place in Canada's distance running national ranking, but you may know her best as an investor on behalf of Andreessen Horowitz.

Before joining the world of venture capital, Angela launched and scaled up Chrome for Android and Chrome for iOS during her time at Google, and her previous experiences have uniquely positioned her as an investor that's been in the trenches and knows what it's like to build something from scratch.

As a General Partner at a16z, Angela focuses on financial services such as financial infrastructure, insurance and real estate, and she's taken special interest in Latin America after witnessing the transformation in its fintech space in the last 5 years.

In this episode, Angela and I went over:

Her thesis that every company will be a fintech company
Nurturing relationships between investors and founders
And why she chose to invest in Latitud

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Francisco Larraín's professional journey tells a story of coming full circle.

It all started as a founding team member for advertisement network Tapjoy. Having gotten a taste for the world of startups, he went on to found payment technology solution Zappedy and to have a $30 million exit to Groupon, where he stayed as Head of Local Engineering for 3 years.

It wasn't long before Francisco got back on the saddle and founded Maxxa, the largest insurtech company in Chile, and he scaled it up to over 25,000 SMB customers before looking for a new challenge.

When he felt ready to tackle the next big thing, Francisco decided to go back to his beginnings in the monetization space: he and co-founder Regina Ye started auction-based advertisement solution Topsort in 2021 hoping to bring innovation to marketplace advertisement.

Having just raised a $8 million dollar Seed Round at a $110 million valuation from names like Pear Ventures, Quiet Capital and FJLabs, I'd say they're well on the way to accomplishing their goals.

Today, Francisco and I are going over:

His successful exit strategy for Zappedy
The challenges of tech leadership roles
Topsort's journey from idea to Product-Market fit

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Pierre Schurmann has never shied away from great adventure: he and his family left Brazil when he was 15 with the goal of sailing around the world, and after 4 years of traveling with them, he disembarked in the US to obtain a degree in Business Administration.

Since then, Pierre has become an accomplished multi-time founder and an established investor through VC firm Bossa Nova, which he founded under the premise of "entrepreneurs backing entrepreneurs".

nuvini, his latest venture, is a B2B SaaS platform in Brazil servicing end-to-end business needs. They're making waves with their acquisitions as a strategy, and aiming for an IPO in Nasdaq in the not-so-distant future.

In this episode, we talk about:

The early days of LatAm tech startups
The importance of experienced players in an entrepreneurial ecosystem
And the future of founder liquidity

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Lolita Taub has made it her mission to create generational wealth in community.

As the daughter of a Mexican immigrant family, providing underestimated founders and funders with resources is at the core of what Lolita has set out to do. With 15 years working in the Silicon Valley ecosystem, she's made +90 investments as an angel and VC at Backstage Capital and The Community Fund.

Lolita also co-founded the Startup-Investor Matching Tool in 2020, which has since made over +3K intros and helped founders raise $6 million. Now working on building her own fund Ganas Ventures as a General Partner, Lolita's leveraging her online presence and community-building mentality to change the narrative about what being an investor means – you can find her on Twitter at @lolitataub and @ganasvc.

Lolita had some insights to share about:

The principles of community-led growth
The future of investing relationships between LatAm and the US
And bringing diversity into the VC world.

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Born and raised in a chinese-brazilian family, Bedy Yang has a lengthy track record of consulting for global companies on go-to-market strategies in Brazil. She moved to the US at a time when there weren't many links between Silicon Valley and Latin America, and so she helped build and strengthen them.

It started in 2009, when she founded Brazil Innovators, scaling its network from 0 to over 10,000 people. Two years later, she joined 500 Global as a consultant before tackling the role of Managing Partner and the challenges of ecosystem development.

In the words of founder Dave McClure, “Bedy Yang is a super-connector who knows Brazil inside and out”.

As a global operator, she's invested in the likes of ContaAzul, Descomplica and Viva Real.

Bedy and I are catching up to talk about:

The role of networking in an entrepreneur's journey
The recent influx of capital in Latin America
And how founders can enter negotiations from a position of strength

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Vicente Zavarce was born and raised in Venezuela, but went abroad to study in the US during his university years. He quickly found his way into their booming startup ecosystem, and went on to join Postmates' User Acquisition efforts in Silicon Valley before moving on to be Director of User Acquisition for Getaround.

His experiences led him to a lightbulb realization: what if there was an app to combine all delivery and transportation needs for countries that don't have a consolidated digital infrastructure?

That's how Yummy was born. Part of the YC21 batch, the SuperApp recently raised a $18 million Series A to accelerate their growth across Latin America, and they have presence in five countries and counting.

On today's episode, we talk about:

Seizing a time-sensitive business opportunity
Smart ways to go about B2C user acquisition
The challenges of building a business in Venezuela

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Before he knew he wanted to build a company, Gerry knew he wanted to make people’s lives better.

Born in Monterrey, Gerry Colyer left Mexico to attend Yale University, then went on to pursue a degree from Stanford Business School. His initial game plan was to go into public service, but he soon stumbled upon the realization that technology was the key to drive change at scale. Eager to learn, he relocated to Silicon Valley, and co-founded Uva Scooters shortly after.

One successful exit later, he returned to Latin America to put the skills he’d picked up to good use, and thus Clara was born in the heart of Mexico City. Clara’s corporate credit card and spend management solution made them the fastest startup in LatAm to reach unicorn status, getting to a $1billion valuation in 8 short months. Backed by the likes of monashees and Coatue, they’ve partnered with Mastercard to support entrepreneurship in the region.

Join Gerry and I as we talk about:

Going from 0 to 1,000 B2B customers in 8 months
Latin America expansion strategies
And the importance of partnerships in disrupting fintech

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Fabio Muniz is a product designer turned founder and CEO. He worked with clients such as Google and Viacom before transitioning to VC-backed startups until he found out we wanted to build his own.

Awari came to be when Fabio realized that there were many career opportunities in tech and not enough qualified professionals.

Awari's goal is to help Brazilian talent learn technical skills through a wide curriculum of courses, a strong community of like-minded individuals, and a mentorship program supported by thought leaders from some of the strongest companies in the world.

In today's episode, Fabio tells us about:

The most important early-stage lesson he learned
How edtechs contribute to social mobility in Brazil and LatAm
His vision for Awari and how it'll build new mental models

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

There's a famous anecdote in which a CFO asks the CEO: "What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?" To that, the CEO responds: "What happens if we don't and they stay?"

Upskilling teams is vital for businesses to evolve and UBITS has made that decision a no-brainer for Latin American companies. The woman behind it is co-founder and COO Marta Helena Forero Sepúlveda. She sustains that with her constant purpose of "designing and building extraordinary online courses, getting results, solving problems, beating the competition, and growing the business."

And they're on their way to growth: Martha and her team just closed a sweet series B round led by Riverwood Capital to invest in more learning experiences and continue expanding to new markets – not only in Latin America, but also in Europe.

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Rafael Stark is an engineer with problem-solving in his blood. He started his own Product Studio called Hummingbird and came across a client wanting to automate refunds, and that's where he realized there was a market-wide opportunity to simplify several payment processes at scale.

Stark Bank was born to modernize the financial infrastructure in Brazil through the power of integrations. They were a part of YC's 2020 batch, and are now helping companies such as Loft, Quinto Andar and Buser make operations smoother than ever.

Today's episode will discuss:

Problem-solving in fintech
Innovation in traditional spaces
The impacts of open banking in Brazil

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

The last 10 years have completely changed Latin America's financial landscape but, when compared to other more established regions, we still lack basic infrastructure, and that's what Pablo Viguera set out to build.

With experience in UK open banking from his time at Revolut, Pablo wanted to pave the road for the next generation of financial businesses, so he and co-founder Oriol Tintore decided to build what is now the leading Open Banking and financial information API platform in LatAm.

Dubbed the "Plaid of Latin America" by TechCrunch, Belvo is providing the ‘picks and shovels’ for big players in the fintech space looking to innovate in the region. With operations in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, they're endorsed by a partnership with Visa and backed by a $43 million Series A with participation of Kaszek and David Vélez.

Today, Pablo and I talk about:

The unique regulatory challenges of open finance in LatAm
Educating users on the best use of their financial data
Propelling economic development by building infrastructure

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Born in the US and raised in Uruguay, Nathan is a football enthusiast currently splitting his time between Silicon Valley and Mexico City. As a third-time founder, his passion is in building companies that tackle Latin America's biggest problems.

The problem he is tackling at Flexio is B2B payments: Helping businesses manage their cash flow.

As an entrepreneur-in-residence at Google Launchpad Accelerator for LatAm, he's giving back to the ecosystem by helping less experienced founders navigate the startup world.

On today's episode, Nathan touches on:

The unique challenges of cashflow management in Latin America
How players in the fintech industry are building complementary solutions
The learnings of being a third-time founder

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Making history in LatAm's fintech industry is very on brand for today's guest.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Pierpaolo Barbieri left Argentina to study in the US as a young adult. He returned 12 years later with a Harvard University degree and a career as an economic historian and published author, but you may know him from being the founder and CEO of Ualá.

Ualá's complete financial ecosystem was created with the ambition of unifying all financial services into one app and, with 3.5 million cards issued in the 4 years since, I'd say they're on track to meet their goals. With a $350 million Series D led by SoftBank and a $2.45 billion valuation, they're now locked and loaded to expand across all of Latin America.

Join Pier and I for a chat about:

Making financial services accessible
The role of fintech in promoting social mobility
What challenger banks can and should do differently

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Children are often fascinated with technology, and Sahil Lavingia's story isn't any different: he first started getting into computers at about 12, playing around with graphic design tools like Photoshop, and it soon naturally developed into building websites for family and friends.

One Computer Science and Engineering degree later, Sahil turned what started as a casual project for himself into a marketplace for others like him to get paid doing what they were good at: Gumroad went from a weekend project to a sustainable business that became a staple of the gig economy. But the road wasn't without its bumps.

Now having published his book "The Minimalist Entrepreneur", Sahil is known not only for his transparency about his challenges as a founder, but also for talking about the alternative path for founders that aren't looking to build a VC-backed unicorn.

In this episode we talk about:

Community-driven products and the art of problem-solving
Shaping the future of work
And the delicate balance between profitability and scale

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Universal as it may seem now, in 2014 access to banking services was still very much limited in several LatAm countries. That realization was what sparked Daniel Vogel's idea of democratizing financial services through the existing but underused infrastructure of mobile phones. With the Bitso app, buying and selling cryptocurrencies become as easy as ordering pizza.

Daniel's founder journey got him in the MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 list as one of the youngest CEOs of this generation. Having started in Mexico, Bitso quickly expanded in Latin America.

With a $2.2bn valuation and backed by the likes of Tiger Global and Kaszek, Bitso has pledged to invest $270M to take the Brazilian crypto market by storm.

In this episode you can learn about:

Skills every founder should pick up
Crypto as a vehicle of financial inclusion
The future of blockchain in Latin America

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

With over 10 years of experience in Brazil's VC scene, Rodrigo Baer was hearing pitches and offering offering term sheets long before the LatAm capital craze started. He has an unquestionable understanding of the country's entrepreneurial landscape, and is a believer of sharing knowledge with the world, which he has been doing for the last four years through his Youtube channel "Pergunte ao VC".

Previously a partner with Redpoint Ventures and a board member for companies such as Movidesk and Cortex Intelligence, he is now a Managing Partner for SoftBank's Latin America fund with a $5bn initial commitment and then an additional $3bn being allocated.

Today, Rodrigo and I are going over:

Qualities VCs look for in founders
Common questions founders have about exit strategies
SoftBank's plans with the latest LatAm fund

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

In his own words, Daniel Bilbao is a friend to all latino entrepreneurs. He went from spreading papelitos in Comic Sans looking for engineers to shaping the future of fraud prevention in Latin America. Born and raised in Colombia, his mentality is one of giving back to our region first.

Daniel first dipped his toes into the cybersecurity space with his previous company Paladin Cyber in 2017. Now CEO and co-founder of Truora and backed by the likes of Kaszek, Magma Partners and Y Combinator, he managed to take his business from 0 to $10M annual recurring revenue in two short years.

In this episode, Daniel and I talk about:

The role founders play in combating inequity in LatAm
How to sell your company's idea to investors
What the Latin America startup scene will look like 10 years from now

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Alex Vilhena was born in Rio de Janeiro, but moved to Los Angeles to pursue a Bachelor's degree in Communications and had a chance to try out the startup scene in the US. Big lover of jiu-jitsu, he has over 10 years of client-facing roles under his purple belt, and helped build Santander's Loyalty Program before moving on to his own projects in the financial industry.

Now CEO of Plug Pagamentos, he gets to brag about being a YC portfolio company while he and his co-founders are simplifying payment services by providing a one-stop solution to manage multiple providers through a single API integration.

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Andres Bilbao is a Colombian triple threat, and that goes far beyond being fluent in three languages: he's a unicorn entrepreneur, an angel investor, and a trusted advisor to many others in the LatAm startup ecosystem.

He was one of the co-founders of Rappi and reached an impressive $5.25 billion valuation within six years of starting operations. Now Andres is putting down roots in blockchain as co-founder of Invert, a company pledging to change the way we do conservation through the power of crypto and NFTs.

In this episode, Andres and I will talk about:

Fostering entrepreneurship in a team
What qualities to look for in a mentor or advisor
How blockchain and conservation can intersect to shape the future

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Entrepreneurship is much like running into a wall until you knock it down, and German-born Florian Hagenbuch has committed to making sure that the wall stays down for those coming after him.

Florian founded Loft to digitalize the real estate market and make it accessible to millions of Brazilians dreaming of owning a home. Their latest funding round bumped them up to a nearly 3 billion-dollar valuation.

With a portfolio of over 100 companies he has personally invested into as an angel, his trajectory naturally evolved into the formation of a VC fund. Canary, a pre-seed and seed-stage investment firm in Latin America, has now over $150M in assets under management.

In this episode, Florian goes over:

The lifecycle of disruption opportunities
How fast-growing companies can accelerate careers
The potential of addressable markets in Latin America
Angel investing as a way to give back

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Very few people are product builders at heart, and Jeff Orr is one of them - he founded Maply to connect people to events happening in real-time around them, and has helped the likes of Delt.ai and Noonlight improve their own product and experiences.

He first came into Latitud's radar as a Fellow in our 3rd cohort, but I soon realized that he shared our passion and vision for emerging markets. Now Jeff is spearheading Latitud Launch and taking part in our mission by building the go-to place to launch and discover new tech products in Latin America.

Today Jeff and I will be chatting about:

Shipping products faster
The no-code approach to business
How to hack growth in early-stage companies

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Starting four different companies AND dabbling into music production isn't for everyone, but Dhaval Chadha has managed to balance the two passions just fine.

Other than his musician profiles on streaming platforms, you'll find Dhaval's name attached to companies like ClassPass, which acquired his previous company Vivo, and where he led LatAm Expansion.

Now CEO of Justos, Dhaval and his co-founders are set out to build a fairer and safer world by making car insurance more accessible to all with a data-driven approach to pricing. Having raised a $2.7M seed round led by Kaszek, today they announce what can be the largest series A round in Latin American history.

Stay tuned to hear Dhaval's take on:

Going from idea to MVP
The key challenges for B2C companies in LatAm
Dealing with waves of failure and success
And Justos' $36M series A

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Born in Essex, England, Pete Flint is a brit deeply immersed in Silicon Valley startup culture. He's a titan of disruptive innovation and a widely respected leader in the tech industry, and was one of my early supporters at Viva Real.

Two times unicorn, he was part of the founding team of travel industry pioneer lastminute.com before starting Trulia, one of the most popular real state apps in the US.

With tales of a successful IPO and an exit valued at $3.5b, Pete is now helping entrepreneurs leverage capital, experience and connections as a partner at venture firm NFX.

Today Pete and I will be talking about:

How to leverage network effects
Building a business that evolves at scale
And NFX's plans for its new $450 million pre-seed and seed fund

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Founders outside of Silicon Valley have always had a harder time accessing capital, and Latin America is no exception. Add that to the difficulty of paying for global company expenses in local currency and you have yourself a market ripe for disruption.

Dileep Thazhmon founded Jeeves to provide startups with an all-in-one cross country, cross currency expense management platform, making capital accessible through debt and combating equity over-dilution all in one fell swoop.

If you haven't heard of it, that's because Dileep built Jeeves stealthily but, having raised a whopping $131 million in just one year, they're now halfway to unicorn status at a $500 million valuation.

Before Jeeves, Dileep founded Jeeng, which surpassed the $35M+ annual recurring revenue mark and was acquired last year. He also has an investor background and lots of lessons learned during his time with Voyager Capital.

Join us as Dileep and I go into:

Challenges and misconceptions of hypergrowth
Positive signals to look for in the Latam fintech ecosystem
When to fundraise and when NOT to

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Winter Mead grew up on a maple syrup farm in New England. After writing his grad-school thesis on technology trends in digital media, he relocated to Silicon Valley to test his own theories. Now teaching about entrepreneurship and venture capital at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, it's safe to assume his instincts were right on the money.

With 20 years in financial services, Winter has invested over $1bi across 80 private equity and venture capital firms during his time with Sapphire Ventures and Hall Capital Partners. This first-hand experience lead to two striking realizations: one, that capital was crucial for innovation and market disruption, and two, that the gap between casual investors and full-time VCs was only growing wider by the minute.

Oper8r was born from the aspiration to bridge that gap. Winter and his co-founder, Welly Sculley, set out to build a community to enable the next generation of institutional VCs.

Join Winter and I as we talk about:

How LPs can succeed outside of the top 10 investment firms
Unlocking capital and knowledge to create new fund managers
The network effects of a VC community

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Fintech is extremely hot in Latin America.

Chilean entrepreneur Sebastian Kreis is seeing this opportunity and is building Xepelin with the goal to be the leading SMB digital bank in LatAm. Xepelin is one of the fastest growing fintechs in the history of the region and Sebastian believes they are just getting started, and are here to stay.

Prior to founding Xepelin, Sebastian was a Consultant at BCG and co-founded Safecard. He holds an MBA from UC Berkeley.

In this episode, Sebastian shares:

How he met his co-founder Nicolas and how they started Xepelin
Why Xepelin is focusing their operations in Mexico
The importance of building deep relationships as an entrepreneur
His thoughts on debt financing in LatAm
And his next challenges as a founder

Starting something new?
Apply at apply.latitud.com

About 6 years ago, Pamela Valdés was faced with an important choice between a full scholarship for university in the US or dropping out to get her business off the ground. As you may have guessed, the latter won.

That was the birth of Beek, a startup created to be the top audio platform in Latin America.

Originally from Mexico, Pamela was part of YC in 2017 and got investments from VC firms like Greylock and Accel. Outside of work, Pamela enjoys surfing and, of course, listening to audiobooks. Over 50 a year.

In this episode, Pamela shares:

How Beek pivoted and evolved along the journey
The importance of managing herself as the company grows
Her unique story of getting into YC
And some special book recommendations

Starting something new?
Apply at apply.latitud.com

Over the last few years, Latin America has been seeing more and more people interested in founding a startup. To them, Freddy Vega has one advice: don't do it.

The deterrence may sound strange, especially coming from someone who is a natural born entrepreneur. Freddy started at age 16, when he created what became the largest community of developers in Latin America, Cristalab. He had learned how to program by himself 3 years prior, on a borrowed Casio calculator.

After meeting Christian Van Der Henst, who led an equally successful initiative in education, they decided to merge their communities. Soon after, they started hosting live educational shows every Thursday, which ultimately evolved into Platzi: an online learning platform offering courses in technology, business and several other categories. With millions of students across Latin America, it bets on teaching saleable skills fast and on a huge scale, while also seeding a lifelong-learning attitude.

Fun fact, Platzi was the first company with a Latin American market to ever go to YC, in 2015.

Keep listening to learn:

What's behind the "don't do it" advice
His self-development journey
How to build psychological safety within a company
His thoughts on culture in Latin America
And how to unleash the power of community

Starting something new?
Apply at apply.latitud.com

From a young age, Martin Schrimpff was always looking for entrepreneurial opportunities, whether that was selling chocolate or doing raffles at school. His first official business, though, was founded right after university: a software development company called Sirius.

It was at Sirius that Martin and his partner were asked to build a payment system for a friend's company – "something like PayPal for Colombia," he said. They had never heard the name "PayPal" before, so Martin looked it up, only to find out it had been recently sold to Ebay for 1.5 billion dollars. His first thought? "If they can do it, so can we!"

The mix of ambition and naiveté originated PayU, which became a global business and was eventually acquired by Naspers at a 1 billion dollar valuation. But Martin never stopped founding companies after the exit. Later came other successful startups like Zinobe, Centeo and, most recently, Kocomo: a transparent marketplace that empowers people to co-own their dream vacation homes.

Stick around to learn:

The two most game-changing moments for PayU
How his experience bootstrapping compares with starting venture-backed companies
His thoughts on founder-market fit
The backstage of Kocomo's recent pre-seed round of $56M
And his advice on fundraising to early-stage founders

Starting something new?
Apply at apply.latitud.com

Born in Brazil, Iona Szkurnik arrived in California 8 years ago. After graduating from Stanford University as a Lemann Fellow, she worked at a couple of Silicon Valley companies and taught at Menlo Park and Palo Alto public-school district. Iona is the co-founder and board member of Brazil at Silicon Valley and PortPy, a project aimed at making coding in Python more accessible to Brazilian youth.

Last year, she also started Education Journey, a startup focused on making innovation core in education. Married and a passionate mother of two teenagers, Iona cannot live without hiking, the ocean, and ice cream.

Starting something new?
Apply at apply.latitud.com

What does it take for Latin America to have the next Nelson Mandela, Greta Thunberg, or a few thousand more David Vélez?

LALA, the Latin American Leadership Academy, believes it's about unleashing the potential in young people and bringing them together. Seeking to promote sustainable economic development and strengthen democratic governance, LALA is finding, developing and connecting a new generation of entrepreneurial, principled, impact-focused leaders for the region.

Diego Ontaneda has seen it work. Originally from Peru, in 2013 he joined the African Leadership Academy, and became determined to adapt the model to LatAm. After completing an MBA from Stanford, he was introduced to educator David Baptista and found in him the ideal founding partner to build LALA. With over 15 years of experience, David chose this path inspired by his own family's story of breaking the cycle of poverty through education.

In this episode, Diego and David share:

How the Theory of Change and Systems Thinking are applied at LALA
How Unit economics work for non-profits
How to measure your Social Return on Investment
And how to become an ally

Starting something new?
Apply at apply.latitud.com

Salvador Rivero is a self-proclaimed fintech geek. Born and raised in Mexico City, he's trained in Political Science and Finance at Science-Po in France. With 9 years of experience in the investment industry, he allocated more than $1.5B USD in Latam equity markets.

As a 3rd-time founder, he now joins forces with Max Mergenthaler, also 3rd-time founder, to build the high yield savings account for Mexico. Levo started last year and it's already backed by Latitud, Y Combinator, Magma Partners, and BackBone Ventures.

Starting something new?
Apply at apply.latitud.com

When he was 12, David Vélez made his first investment: a cow. Bought with birthday money and savings from summer jobs, that one cow eventually became six, which were then sold and turned into his college tuition at Stanford.

After graduating, David spent a few years working at investment banking and private equity before he joined Sequoia Capital. As Partner, he was responsible for all Latin American investments, leading him to move to Brazil in 2011. But shortly after that, Sequoia decided to pull back: the tech space was just not developed enough.

David saw that as an opportunity. This time, as an entrepreneur. Nubank is a pioneer in digital banking, even though it doesn't see itself as a bank. Rather, it's a tech company that happens to be in financial services. Now valued at 30 billion dollars, Nubank is one of the fastest-growing fintechs in the world, with operations in Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Colombia.

David is a father of three, a marathon runner, and him and his wife Mariel recently signed the Giving Pledge, committing to donate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.

In this episode, he shares:

How he manages his time as cofounder and CEO
The most culture-defining moments at Nubank
How to balance speed, growth and quality in the long term
And some of the curve balls that could've changed this entire story.

Bulding something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Chile is a country that, despite being a smaller market in LatAm, has always pushed to be at the forefront of innovation. It is home to Startup Chile, the birthplace of two unicorns, and also where Antonia Rojas is from.

Last year, Antonia became the youngest female venture capital partner in Latin America when she joined ALLVP, one of the most active new wave funds in Spanish-speaking LatAm.

With a master’s degree in social entrepreneurship, Antonia is a Kauffman Fellow and a founder-turned-investor, having started her own edtech and worked at seed fund Manutara Ventures.

Last year, she became the youngest female venture capital partner in LatAm when she joined ALLVP, one of the most active new wave funds in Spanish-speaking LatAm, with investments in companies like Cornershop, Flink and Nuvocargo.

In this episode, Antonia shares:

Her views on the evolution of the Chilean ecosystem
Her take on signaling
And the mechanics and nuances behind ALLVPs investment decisions

Bulding something new? Apply at apply.latitud.com

Nine years ago, the terms fintech and open banking barely even existed in Latin America.

But Benjamin Gleason was already working on building Guiabolso, a personal finance platform that helped improve the lives of millions of Brazilians and transform the country's financial landscape.

The early days back in 2012 were rough, but Ben says product-market fit became clear when the app ranked higher than Tinder in the list of most downloaded apps in Brazil. Fast forward to today and Guiabolso has proven to be a great success story, having been acquired by financial marketplace PicPay just two weeks ago.

In this episode, Ben shares:

The struggles faced in the early days
Why and how they pivoted very close to launch day
Challenges overcoming regulatory barriers
And details behind the sale of Guiabolso to PicPay

Starting something new?
Visit apply.latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Fintech is a global trend at the moment, and having people who truly understand it is as valuable as ever.

With a Bachelor's from Stanford and a Harvard MBA, Ana Cristina Gadala-Maria certainly fits this description.

Ana leads Fontes, a seed-stage fund for Latin America fintech at QED, and is a supporter of the LatAm ecosystem through Mosaico, a content platform.

She's passionate about democratizing access to financial services, a strong believer in entrepreneurship as the driving force behind transformative solutions, and an advocate for female and diverse founders.

In this episode, Ana shares:

Why fintech is so hot in Latin America (and globally!)
How to cater to the "underbanked and under-served"
Her opinion on the future of embedded finance
Challenges that founders starting or scaling financial services should be aware of
How Fontes works within QED

Starting something new?
Visit apply.latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Ben Casnocha was practically born an entrepreneur. In his teenage years, he started and scaled a couple of companies, before becoming Chief of Staff at LinkedIn and Greylock, both founded by Reid Hoffman. From this partnership, two books were born, co-authored by Ben and Reid, including New York Times bestseller The Start-Up of You.

Since 2017, Ben has been a co-founder and Partner at Village Global, an early stage venture capital firm that aims to work not simply as a traditional VC, but also as a network. With almost a quarter billion dollars under management, Village Global is backed by some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.

In this episode, Ben shares:

Inspirational tips for your journey and career as an entrepreneur
What sets Village Global apart from the rest of the VC world
How to build a strong network
And how his interest in Buddhism is compatible (or not) with the entrepreneurial mindset

Starting something new?
Visit apply.latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Caterine Castillo is a lover of rowing, crossfit, extreme sports and meditation – it's all about balance! Originally from Bogotá, her commitment to personal and professional growth led her to complete programs in Harvard, Columbia, UC Berkeley, become a Kauffman Fellow and, of course, a Latitud Fellow.

Cate has been in fintech for about 10 years. She's worked in Growth for a Neobank in Colombia, in Product for a Banking as a Service company, and as Country Manager for one of the biggest global payment providers. Now as co-founder and CEO of Neivor, she is simplifying payments and building a digital ecosystem for more than 2.2 Million condominiums and apartment buildings in Latin America.

Starting something new?

Visit apply.latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

A renegade is someone who renounces conventions.

It is through this innovation mindset that Renata Quintini runs Renegade Partners, an early-stage deep technology investment firm which she co-founded and is currently a Managing Partner at.

Renata has been working in venture for over 15 years, having also been a Partner at Lux Capital and Felicis Ventures. Prior to becoming a VC, she was an investment manager at Stanford University's endowment, which invests in dozens of private equity and venture capital funds.

In this episode, Renata shares:

The thesis behind Renegade and their investments
What is a founder’s “supercritical” stage
Potential red flags founders should be aware of
The importance of diversity in the entrepreneurial ecosystem

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Raphael Kappeler grew up in Switzerland and has over 15 years of experience in finance and sales. Almost 10 of them he spent in Credit Suisse, working in investment banking in Europe and Asia. His childhood dream was to become a fighter jet pilot. Instead, he ended up jumping out of planes in the Swiss Army. He is a lover of the outdoors, often skydives, scuba dives, goes skiing and surfing.

After living and working in Asia for a few years, he fell in love with Latin America and decided to call Mexico 'home.' There, he developed and launched several startups. The latest, Reworth, is an API data platform that will give financial institutions an edge in the competitive market, helping them to engage their customers and increase revenues.

Hernan Kazah's journey as an entrepreneur starts in 1999, in the early days of the internet in Latin America. Co-founder of Mercado Libre, he has witnessed firsthand, as a pioneer, the extraordinary evolution that the startup and VC ecosystem has experienced in the region. In 2011, hoping to help solve some of the pain points they've faced themselves, Hernan and former Meli CFO Nico Szekazy launched Kaszek. Fun fact, the name originated from the combination of both of their last names.

Since then, the firm has raised $2B across 7 funds. Half of that sum was closed just two months ago in a duo of funds. In one decade, Kaszek has backed over 90 companies, nine of which spawned into unicorns. And Mercado Libre, now worth $60B, became the most valuable company in Latin America.

In this episode, Hernan shares:

The mistakes that almost killed Mercado Libre
Painful misses as an investor
Risks they welcome and risks they avoid when investing
And what's broken in the VC game

Click here to see the Stop & Go Strategy graph mentioned in the episode.

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Stephanie von Staa Toledo, also known as Ste, was born in São Paulo, Brazil. She has a Wharton MBA and a Master’s Degree focused in Entrepreneurship and International Studies from University of Pennsylvania, and for the longest time, she's been passionate about health & wellness – especially for women.

After working at McKinsey, taking on leadership roles at an e-commerce startup in Brazil and a cannabis startup in London, Ste decided to build her own business in the femtech space. Based on a lot of specialized research, she created Oya Care, a digital-first women’s health clinic. Oya's first product is an at-home fertility test, the first to market in Latin America, officially launched this year. With Oya, Ste has the mission to put a woman’s health in the right place: directly in her hands.

Starting something new?

Visit apply.latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Few people understand overlooked markets and opportunities as well as Christopher Schroeder. Under normal conditions of temperature and pressure, you could find Chris having a chat with a founder in Brazil or Pakistan as easily as you'd find him boarding a plane in Egypt or the Philippines. Now, he jokes, he can swing around the world in a day over Zoom.

Chris is a real global citizen, who truly embraces the mindset of giving first and learning from mistakes. For the past few years, he's been advising and investing in driven entrepreneurs in global emerging markets. At Next Billion Ventures, he focuses on South East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. His book, Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East, is an international bestseller.

As a founder, his startup HealthCentral.com was backed by top tier firms and sold to Remedy Health in 2011. Before that, he also helped The Washington Post enter the digital era as CEO of washingtonpost.newsweek and LegiSlate.com.

Today, Chris shares with us:

His views on rising markets and global playbooks
How failure shaped him as a leader
His advice on seeking out mentorship
What he likes to look for as an investor

Marcos Adler is a Carioca Brazilian that loves traveling, sailing and photography. With a background in Economics and an MBA from Wharton, he worked for almost five years at GE and then as a consultant at McKinsey.

Now committed to help tackle income inequality and operational inefficiencies, Marcos hopped on the tough mission to build Clubbi, a digital network of small merchants that will transform the way their members operate their businesses.

Find out how Clubbi works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.

Starting something new?

Visit apply.latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

We believe that building in public can help founders build better.

This means we’re open to sharing our ideas and strategy before they’re fully baked, even if it doesn’t make us look perfect. So this episode is a little different from what you're used to hearing around here. This is a frank conversation with one of my co-founders, Gina, about the raw process of building something new. In our case, Latitud.

If you ever wonder what the heck we are up to, this is where you find out:

The why and the how of the Latitud Fellowship
The Latitud Fund's thesis and inner workings
And the products on our roadmap

For even more details on Latitud, watch the recording of our Open All Hands that happened on June 25th: https://youtu.be/lFpyQeX1Hoc

Check out our open Latitud Global Fellowships Director position

Santiago Aparicio is a serial entrepreneur from Bogotá, Colombia. After studying Economics and getting a Masters in International Management, he went on to become the 7th employee at Rappi, where he was a Corporate Partnerships Director. He later co-founded Fitpal, a fitness platform that went on to become the largest network of fitness & wellness services in Colombia.

Now Santiago is building onTop, a multi-country payroll manager for LATAM that automates international hiring and payments, allowing companies to hire talent from all across the globe. He is also an avid writer and recently launched a book titled Apagar incendios con gasolina, or "to put out fires with gasoline", in which he guides entrepreneurs through the processes of raising capital and creating a startup.

Find out how OnTop works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.

Starting something new?

Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

César Salazar had years of building successful products for Latin America, but it was only after visiting Silicon Valley that he started considering that his ideas had the potential to go global. The realization that he lacked ambition was the first step to start supporting founders that might have been feeling the same way.

From that experience, he decided to start Mexican.VC, the first Silicon Valley seed fund dedicated to Mexican startups. In 2012, 500 Startups acquired Mexican.VC and brought César in as the 6th member of its investment team. He helped put 500 Startups on the map in Latin America, and consequently put Latin America on the radar of international investors. As the leader of the first 500 Startups office outside of the US, he was critically involved in making dozens of investments in the region.

César is now the founder and CEO of Beyond, where they aim to accelerate a global sphere of remote collaboration by helping companies build a dream team of creative problem solvers.

Stick around to find out:

His takes on Latam's challenges and mindset shifts
Why tropicalization may not be the best strategy
Less obvious opportunities for founders in the region
And what he'd have done differently as an investor today

Oriana Fuentes has been based in New York for the past 12 years, where she went back to after living in Peru for 8 years. With a Bachelor's in Economics and Finance from Syracuse University, she proudly built a career in Wall Street. However, not being able to find her real purpose, she left to pursue a Masters's degree in Machine Learning from Columbia University.

In her free time, Oriana is either traveling, reading, or scouring New York for delicious food and baked goods. But another one of her passions is complexity. That is one of the reasons why in 2016 she started Emptor, a B2B SaaS company doing automated background checks in 10 countries in Latam, with clients like Didi, Cornershop, Kavak, and Uber.

Find out how Emptor works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.

Starting something new?

Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

There are a ton of bright shiny lights on the way to building a startup, and it's tempting to burn through cash for the sake of rapid growth. So after getting a big capital injection, for example, it's normal for founders to get excited. But how long can you keep this up before it becomes unsustainable?

When you're playing the long term game, unit economics is something any operator should pay attention to. It not only helps you set priorities, but also build a path to profitability.

Having met hundreds of founders in the past decade she's worked in VC, Mariana Donangelo has seen healthy unit economics as a common thread among successful businesses. She also experienced the power of this tool first hand at Invoice2go, where she lead growth for 4 years and made sure to understand and have better control of the levers that eventually made the company lucrative.

Before Invoice2go, Mariana was an investor at Accel, helping close several deals in Latam. In 2020, she became a partner at Kaszek. Today, she talks to us about:

The metrics you should look at to understand unit economics
How they impact investment decisions
Her own initiatives at Invoice2Go to make it more sustainable
And her views on how the VC ecosystem changed in the past 10 years

Alejandro Gomez de Greiff is a born and raised Cachaco (from Bogota) who you may find running in the streets of Colombia while listening to business and history audiobooks and podcasts. He studied industrial engineering and quickly joined the dark side, as he describes it, to become an investment banker. He was also the first employee at a Private Equity firm, where he worked for 6 years.

After doing some corporate VC and angel investing, he started getting jealous of all the startup founding teams he was meeting and decided it was time to join them in the trenches. So he brought back to life an idea he had 8 years before with his friend Juan Martin, and together they launched Aptuno, a solution for seamless residential rentals.

Find out how Aptuno works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.

Starting something new?

Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” This powerful quote by Abraham Lincoln is often shared by our guest.

Jason Yeh has spent a lot of time both fundraising and analyzing fundraisers. After working as an investor at Greycroft, starting a business and being acquired, he became Silicon Valley Bank's go-to Executive coach around fundraising. And too many times, he saw the negative impact that lack of preparation has – not only for the business, but for the founder's confidence and ability to deal with rejection. A lot of them needed more effective processes.

That's why last year he launched Adamant Ventures, a firm dedicated to making fundraising easier and accessible. Today, he shares concepts like calendar density and purity of motivation, besides actionable tips to help you sharpen your axe.

Stick around to learn:

Some intricacies about investor psychology
Guidelines to develop your narrative
How to rebalance the power dynamics between investors and founders
And his views on pre-money vs post-money SAFEs

Born in Iran, Yasaman Rajaee is a first-generation middle eastern immigrant woman. Besides having been a private tutor and teacher, she also has an impressive background as a student and researcher in Technology, Management, Computer Sciences and Engineering. At MIT, for example, she spent a few months investigating how Collective Intelligence can be used to improve the way organizations work.

For the last 5 years, she has lived in 5 countries including Germany, Japan and the US. Now in the UK, she combines her experience in tech, education, product and community management to build Lernico, a new social learning platform, where expert can easily build and scale their online learning communities and monetize their knowledge through different types of premium content such as cohort-based courses.

Find out how Lernico works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.

Starting something new?

Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Henrique Dubugras taught himself how to code as a teenager. He met his co-founder, Pedro Franceschi, over an argument on Twitter, which ended up turning them into best friends. The Brazilian tech duo went on to join teams at different startups and even start a few business projects. In 2013, they founded payments company Pagar.me — the Stripe of Brazil — when he was only sixteen years old.

Pagar.me was sold in 2016, and Henrique enrolled at Stanford University. But he left after just a few months to follow his entrepreneurial instincts. In YC, him and Pedro started Brex, a B2B fintech that is an all-in-one finance for business, disrupting the century-old industry of banking small companies.

Brex became a unicorn in record time. One year after its first product was released, it was valued at US$2.6Bn. Today, it's worth US$7Bn.

In this episode, learn more about:

Henrique's thoughts on fundraising and super high valuations
How Henrique and Pedro make it work as co-CEOs
And what is harder and easier about founding a company in the US vs in Brazil

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Gabriel Monteiro is a second-time founder. His first company, Shopgram, was a fashion and decor marketplace, sold in 2015 to B2W, a leading digital commerce company in Latin America.

Gabriel went on to work at B2W for 5 years, soon becoming the head of Submarino.com. That's where he met his co-founders and together they decided to start Newtail, an omnichannel platform that brings new capabilities to every brick-and-mortar grocery store, such as pickup in-store delivery, shipping from store, WhatsApp, and online marketplaces integrations.

Gabriel is originally from Rio de Janeiro, where he lives with his wife. He's an Industrial Engineering graduate, a big Flamengo supporter, traveler, and videogame enthusiast.

Find out how Newtail works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

It's hard to think about tech startups without thinking US and Israel, just like it's impossible for corporations to ignore digital transformation. In Brazil, there's one venture capital firm that is bundling all of that together, by investing in some of the most innovative companies abroad, bringing them to Latin America, and connecting them with big local companies to accelerate their adoption of technology.

Mindset Ventures was co-founded by Camila Folkmann, one of the first Brazilian female founders of a Venture Capital firm. Camila started her career as a corporate lawyer, having worked for major law firms assisting Fortune 500 clients, but made a quick transition to startup and VC life after spending some time in the Bay Area. Back in Brazil, she was looking for opportunities to stay close to the ecosystem, which led her to join Acelera Partners, an investment holding spearheaded by Microsoft.

There, she met her co-founder, Daniel Ibri, and they found out they had similar visions, eventually translated into Mindset Venture's thesis. Today, Camila shares not only what that is and how they invest, but also:

Her insights into the Israeli entrepreneurial culture
The biggest challenges for companies from Israel and the US to come to Latin America
And what to be aware of when accepting corporations to your cap table

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Demian Bellumio is the founder of Nue Life, a startup that is using technology and ketamin-assisted science-based treatments to make mental wellness scalable and cost-effective. Nue Life isn't based in Latin America, but it's situated in the gateway to the region, Miami.

Father, immigrant and long-time entrepreneur, Demian was born in Argentina and started his first company right out of high school, selling marble flooring. After moving to Florida, he became an intern at Barclay Capital and convinced his boss to start a bank with him, Broadspan Capital.

Demian went on to start a number of businesses in the Big Data and artificial intelligence space, and became a well-known name in the Miami tech scene.

Find out how Nue Life works in the second episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.

For a long time, Loreanne Garcia and her brother, Carlos, had talked about building something together. Originally from Venezuela, they finally found the perfect opportunity in Mexico in 2016.

That's when Lori, Carlos and their co-founder Roger started Kavak, an online platform for buying and selling secondhand cars. With a $4B valuation, Kavak became the first Mexican unicorn in 2020, right during the most unpredictable period most of us have experienced globally in our lifetime. Their fast response to the pandemic accelerated the company's growth, which is also operating in Argentina and expanding to Brazil.

It was during her MBA at Stanford that Lori discovered she had a passion for people and culture and confirmed she wanted to be an entrepreneur. As Chief People Officer, she made sure they were very intentional about culture since day one and paid special attention to it as the business scaled to over 2,500 employees. Through this 5-year journey, Lori learned important lessons from taking the team to where they are, which she shares with us today.

In this chat, find out:

How Kavak measures and regulates its culture
How they managed to create a mote from complexity
And her advice on fundraising from the right investors

Pomelo is the fintech as a service (FAAS) platform for Latin America, founded by former Mastercard, Mercado Pago and Naranja X executives. The startup took some of its first steps during the Latitud Fellowship program, where Gaston Irigoyen, Hernan Corral and Juan Fantoni joined the second cohort.

Latitud had the privilege of being Pomelo's first check, later introducing the founders to over 25 funds globally. Now, they're raising $9M to build Latin America's fintech infrastructure, in one of the largest seed rounds in the history of LATAM’s tech ecosystem.

"We were looking for local flavor, global access, and lots of hustle", says Gaston – and they got it.

Led by monashees and Index Ventures, the round also includes funds like QED and Scifi, as well as some of the most prominent angels and entrepreneurs in the region – Max Levchin (Paypal & Affirm), Biz Stone (Twitter), Angela Strange (a16z), Harry Stebbings (20VC), Martin Varsavski and the founders of Marqeta, Rappi, Auth0, Kavak, Loft and RecargaPay.

Pomelo allows fintechs and embedded finance players to build digital accounts with compliant onboarding processes, as well as issue prepaid and credit cards throughout Latin America.

In this chat:

Pomelo's solution to a huge problem
How they put their team together
How the seed round played out
Next steps after the funding
Their experience at Latitud
Gaston's unconventional advice for founders

This is the first episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies in Latin America, hosted by Brian Requarth and Tomas Roggio.

VamosLatam

Cristiano Rocha is a seasoned engineer who started his career as a Master’s Student in Artificial Intelligence. Fresh out of university, he bootstraped his first company for about 8 years, back when venture capital in Brazil was almost unheard of. As a young founder, he established a reputation as a knowledge management evangelist and community management especialist.

Almost by accident, Cristiano also became an expert in M&A, when he merged with another 2 companies in order to gain strength and get funding. This 3-way joint venture was called Affero Lab, which grew into the largest Corporate Training company in Latin America and was eventually sold in 2015.

A hiatus got Cristiano into angel investing, but he missed the thrill of building. About a year after the exit, BizCapital was born to help Brazilian small businesses fund their operations in a fast and simple way through an online lending platform. And this time, they decided to play the traditional stage-financing VC game.

In this episode, Cristiano compares his fundraising experiences and shares a few lessons he's learned as a second-time founder. Stick around to learn:

How you can think of M&A as a viable growth strategy
The thought process behind going down the venture route
A few good practices around managing communities
And how technical founders can not only build the best products, but also the winning products

For the longest time, we've only financed personal and professional projects by acquiring debt. But what if, the same way investors bet on super early-stage business ideas, we could bet on high-potential people through an income share agreement, regardless of what those people decide to do in their lives?

Equity-based financing for people is barely talked about, yet Sam Lessin has been practicing for several years. And he believes it's one of the things that can soon disrupt the big picture of the internet.

Sam is the kind of person you go to to get a peek into the next few decades and likely to get your mind blown a little bit.

He is a General Partner at Slow Ventures, a VC firm that invested in companies like Slack, Dropbox, Pinterest, and hundreds of others. Sam also writes for The Information, and he built Drop.io, which was sold to Facebook and leading him to become Zuck's VP of Product. Now co-founder of Fin, he is instrumenting and optimizing the future of work.

In this episode:

The logistics behind equity-based financing for people
The sweet spot between logical and crazy
What being early or late really means
And how AI can improve knowledge jobs.

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

We do not always realize it, but we are living in two economies: digital and analog. In fact, depending on who you ask, 2020 was either the best year for business or the worst, and a lot has to do with how these two orders contrast and relate.

Today, 9 out of the 10 largest companies in the world are in technology, and many began as small startups not very long ago. Meanwhile, new startup ecosystems are developing and causing a surge of fast-growing tech companies that illustrate a massive global economic transition.

Arnobio Morelix is a Brazilian based in Silicon Valley. Formerly the Chief Innovation Officer at Startup Genome, he advised governments and private organizations across 35 countries. He has authored research and analysis with Stanford University, the World Economic Forum, and others, and has been widely featured in global publications like the New York Times and the Economist, to name a few.

Now the Chief Data Scientist at Inc. Magazine, Arnobio also recently wrote "Rebooted", a book that dives into tons of future-looking topics including post-pandemic economies, the tech butterfly effect, and the unintended consequences of major technological change.

In this chat, we talk about a few of these topics and other insights Arnobio has accumulated over years of studying startup ecosystems. You'll learn:

How founders and tech creators can navigate the next decade.
The two main common threads of successful companies in 2020.
How local and global connectedness influence performance.
And how to build more responsibly to catch up on what he calls the 'fairness debt.'

Learn more:

Entrepreneur's Guide to Depression & ADHD workshop @ SXSW
Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative

Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. That’s true for companies, it’s true for products, and it's true for VCs too.

Emergence Capital is known for a few superstar deals, like Crunchbase and Zoom, but also for their focus sourcing and selecting deals. They look at B2B software as a service companies, and nothing else.

In the early 2000s, when the firm started, it wasn't an obvious space to place a bet. But it turns out that massive value is unlocked when you hone in and focus. Today we talk to General Partner Santiago Subotovsky, who just became one of the first investors from LatAm to make the prestigious Midas List.

In this episode:

The advantages of staying focused.
How they assess patterns of successful entrepreneurs.
What he's learned from the founder of Zoom, their biggest investment to date.
Are the best deals really the ones where there's controversy?

Check out Latam's first rolling fund at fund.latitud.com

We live in a software-powered world but many practices in the venture capital industry still lack the technology it invests in. We see innovation increasing at an accelerated pace, whereas many of the VC firms that finance innovation seem stuck in time.

Avlok Kohli has a few possible explanations for this irony, and a lot of propositions to offset it. CEO of AngelList Venture, he's been leading the platform that adds more flexibility and accessibility to the fundraising process.

Among its products, AngelList changed the game by introducing syndicates and, last year, the rolling fund model.

In this episode, we explore some of the benefits and details of these initiatives, including:

The main differences between syndicates, rolling funds and traditional venture funds
Best practices for engaging LPs
And the future of the VC industry.

Check out Latam's first rolling fund at fund.latitud.com

With a Harvard MBA under his belt, after his role as co-CEO of Groupon, Lucas Vargas had a lot of options for his next step. But he didn't take a step: he took a leap of faith – and decided to join a small proptech startup in Brazil called Viva Real.

As CEO, Brian hired Lucas to be the Vice-President of Sales. Just a couple of years later, Brian knew Lucas was going to be his replacement when he eventually stepped out.

It was a process of intense self-discovery and challenges for Lucas that involved managing highly experienced executives and having to let go of about 400 people, as he led the company through the merger with ZAP and the acquisition by OLX.

Once the deal was finalized, he packed up these lessons to embark on a new journey: Lucas is now leading Nomad, a global digital bank offering financial services and investments for the Brazilian mass affluent.

In this episode:

How vulnerability got integrated into his leadership style
How they used the DISC framework to build cohesive teams
The importance of speed in an early-stage startup environment
And the behind the scenes of our merger with ZAP

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Falling and getting back up is what makes the cycles of an entrepreneurial journey, but some people just enjoy to be constantly getting ideas off the ground, even if the previous ones are growing steady. Alex Torrenegra is an example of this.

Alex has been a friend for 10 years, and I'm proud that his first ever angel investment was in my company, Viva Real. You may also know him as a tiburón in the tv show Shark Tank Colombia. But before all that, Alex bootstrapped a number of companies, including Voice 123 and Bunny Studio, both of which he started with his wife, Tania Zapata.

Then in 2020, after years of being an investor and his own venture capitalist, Alex went out to raise capital for a business of his own for the first time. And while a lot of founders may prefer to not have too many people on their cap table, he intentionally went the opposite way. By design, Torre's first seed round had over 50 investors from more than 15 countries.

In this episode:

His experience fundraising during the pandemic and being rejected
Some of his lessons from 20 years of building remote companies
The model behind Torrenegra Accelerator
What was the most memorable pitch he's heard on Shark Tank and why it stuck

Mentioned in this episode:

Check out Remoter, the why-and-how guide to building remote teams: https://www.remoter.com/en/remoter
Learn more about Torre: https://torre.co/
Pitch by Kiwi on Shark Tank Colombia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_KE4ShB3-M

In the startup world, it's becoming more common for founders to share mistakes they made when they were starting out, but we rarely get to know about early mistakes investors make.

Well, today, Jonathan Lewy is gonna bring the challenges he faced from both sides.

Jonathan moved from Belgium to Mexico right out of college, and built a food delivery app called MiOrden that was sold to SinDelantal in 2012. His experience fundraising until then had been so frustrating that, after the acquisition, he decided to give back. That's when he joined his co-founder Sergio Romo again and together they started a seed capital firm called Investo.

One of their first bets was Rappi, before many had dreamed of it being a unicorn. Today, Investo's portfolio companies also include Unbabel, Cambly, Runa and many others.

But that's not all. Jonathan and Sergio also co-founded Grin, a brand you may have seen on scooters around one of their many locations. By merging with Brazil-based Yellow, Grin went from 4 to 2,500 employees in one year and became Grow, a micromobility pioneer.

In this episode, Jonathan tells us about

The hiccups in his journey
His counterintuitive tips on crafting a good pitch
Precautions on building a company that depends on VC
And how to deal with conflicting interests

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

While a lot of VCs may ironically be discouraged by turmoil in emerging markets, Shu Nyatta feels comfortable in messy places. In his own words, because he grew up in one.

A Nairobi native, he's lived in the US as a young consultant, in the UK as an Anthropology student, and in Dubai as a company operator. He even had a brief career as a recording artist – if you noticed a soundtrack change today, that's his music in the opening of this episode!

It was through this winding journey that he found where he wanted to place his intellectual energy: financing tech and underrepresented founders.

Shu joined the investment team at SoftBank in Silicon Valley in 2015, before it started revealing itself to the world as the powerhouse it is today. Since then, he's helped direct roughly 2.5 billion in growth capital to startups in Latin America. He's also behind initiatives like Softbank's AI Academy and the Opportunity Fund.

In this episode, Shu urges you to embrace the mess as he talks about:

The myth of the pipeline problem.
Why momentum trumps market size.
And how complexity becomes opportunity.

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

As the CMO of Cabify, Courtney McColgan led the company's market expansion from series A through series D, across 120 cities. She had roughly 350 people that reported to her. And every month, without exception, she received complaints from team members about issues with their paycheck.

Motivated by solving a familiar challenge, Courtney founded Runa, a startup that automates payroll for businesses in Latin America.

By then, from the time she spent at Cabify, she knew a thing or two about building a unicorn in the region. So she was ready to build her own.

That, of course, came with a lot of challenges she wasn't so familiar with. In this episode, she shares some of the main ones, including:

Building a senior management team remotely as a solo founder.
Scaling software between Latin American countries.
How her pitch changes when she talks to US investors vs local ones.
And adjusting personal roles to take care of a fast-growing company.

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Kevin Efrusy is low-key. You won't find a lot of interviews with him, and that's by design. One of his reasons is that he believes entrepreneurs should be the ones taking all the credit, and that's a testament to what an outstanding investor he is.

But truth be told: Kevin has done a lot for many founders, Brian included, both as an angel and as a partner at Accel, a top-tier global VC firm, which he joined in 2003. He has incredible experience as an operator, having worked with Elon Musk in his first company, in the late 90s, and then moving on to founding a couple of really successful startups.

Kevin was also an early investor in Facebook, when no one wanted that deal, and a lead investor in pioneering companies such as Groupon, Couchbase, and Despegar.

Because of his special connection with Latin America, which he'll explain in the episode, Kevin leads Accel’s initiatives in the region. It also got him involved with the creation of LALA, an amazing world-class leadership academy that finds, connects, and develops Latin America's most promising young leaders.

This is a fun – and rare! – chat that covers tons of lessons and untold anecdotes, so stick around to hear about:

The early days of his journey as an entrepreneur and how that shaped him as an investor.
The story behind the early investment in Facebook.
And his advice on building and managing boards.

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.

Stop fishing in the sludge. There's a lot more healthy fish where people don't go as often. And while some investors care too much about other investors' signals and might see particular markets as small ponds, Claire Diaz-Ortiz uses that as an advantage by searching for overlooked big opportunities.

Claire is a VC, angel investor, author, and speaker who was an early employee at Twitter. Named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company and called “The Woman Who Got the Pope on Twitter” by Wired, she joined Magma Partners in 2020 as an investing partner in Latin America. There, she runs Brava, the first initiative of its kind to invest in female founders across the region.

In this episode:

Her journey at Twitter until she became a VC
The dynamics of leverage and signaling
Ideas to shockwave change towards investments in underrepresented founders
And tips to get the right investor's attention

Come on in, the water's warm!

When Marcelo Abritta pitched Buser to a VC for the first time, he didn't have a lot of leverage. His operation was quickly blocked by authorities and incumbents. He wasn't yet working full time on the business. And the cherry on top: he had a six-figure debt from a recently failed company.

He did, however, receive a great investment offer from a top-tier fund that same day.

Everyone knew from the start that that would be a "make it or break it" type of deal — and it still is. In fact, Marcelo likes to make that clear even to potential hires. But with high risks come high returns.

In this episode, you'll find out:

How that first pitch went down.
The behind the scenes of their whole fundraising process.
How they stay scrappy and lean.
And the challenges and measures you take when you're this heavy on uncertainty.

--

Go to book.latitud.com to get your copy of Viva The Entrepreneur!

Brian's book is now available! Go to book.latitud.com to get your copy of Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America .

This episode is not about that, though, and even less so about him. Yes, sure, our guest today wrote the foreword -- but above all, she's a huge inspiration to me and thousands of other founders around the world.

That's because Linda Rottenberg co-founded Endeavor and has led the global entrepreneurship movement since 1997. Back then, people would call her Chica Loca — or “the Crazy Girl”. Why crazy? Linda insisted that high-growth, high-impact entrepreneurs exist outside of Silicon Valley; almost no one believed her.

Now with offices in 40 locations, Endeavor rigorously selects, scales up, and co-invests in the fastest growing founders in emerging and underserved markets. There are currently 2,500 Endeavor Entrepreneurs (Brian's one of them!).

Endeavor shows how essencial it is for every founder to count on a network of people who are a few steps ahead in the game and then give back. And it proved it works.

In this episode, Linda talks about:

The key to building great connections and communities
What makes people help other people
The importance of solving local problems
And the stories that turned crazy into global thought leader.

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A couple of Linda's stories and a lot of Brian's are in Viva the Entrepreneur. You can get the ebook NOW for only $0.99 -- This is a limited offer, so make sure to move fast. Go to book.latitud.com to check it out.

Yuri Danilchenko grew up in Russia during one of the most defining moments in history. He's had a knack for tech and entrepreneurship since before he noticed it, having sold cell phones for pocket money when he was only 13, and fixing his friends' computers even though he didn't own one. Then, after living in the US and getting his masters in AI, he moved to Brazil and worked at several startups.

He liked the challenges of startup life so much he ended up co-founding a business himself, called Vemos. But they eventually had to move on, and Yuri joined Kaszek-backed Escale as CTO, bringing in dozens of new engineers to the team and scaling product development through series C.

In this episode, he shares:

Some of the early-stage pitfalls he fell into
How to attract and select tech talent when you don't have a tech brand
How to factor in diversity during your hiring process
And what kind of culture you need to build a tech and product company

Starting something new?
Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program

It’s here: the last episode of 2020. We started this year by interviewing Paulo Veras, the co-founder of 99, the first Brazilian unicorn. Now, we end the season on the highest of notes with the guy that was managing the company when it was sold to Didi.

Peter Fernandez held leadership roles at Google and was an angel investor and advisor for 99 before he joined the team in 2016, becoming CEO 10 months later.

When he left the position, he went on a sabbatical that took him on an amazing journey of self-discovery. Today, he shares reflections on fulfillment, giving first, and making a positive impact.

Also in this episode:

The top 3 things that are critical for high-performance teams;
What culture boils down to;
And why taking care of yourself is also part of your job.
Learn more about the Latitud Fellowship Program at https://latitud.com!

In the early days of Love Mondays, co-founder Luciana Caletti was encouraged by her investors to talk to every player in the industry, including competitors. Not only did that accelerate their learning as a startup, but it also allowed them to build a relationship with their US-born more developed equivalent, Glassdoor.

Fast forward 3 years, they joined forces as Glassdoor expanded and Luciana became the Managing Director for Latin America. But even though her title might have changed, her role did not.

Today, we talk about her journey leading a venture-backed company and choosing where to focus her attention to generate growth. She also shares a few learnings on:

Things to keep in mind when you start hiring
How to create news pieces around your company
And how to build employer branding organically

Visit latitud.com to find out more and apply to the Latitud Fellowship.

Fabricio Pettená is a partner at Global Founders Capital, a stage-agnostic lifecycle global venture capital firm. If you’re wondering what that means, this is the episode where he explains it!

We also talk about:

GFC's decision process and how they support startups;
What good board meetings should look like;
His analysis of Latin American markets;
And the signals investors pay attention to.

Visit latitud.com to apply to our programs!

Gina Gotthilf was the VP of Growth at Duolingo, the most downloaded education app in the world, leading the team that built its user base from 3 to 200 million. She also led Tumblr's growth in Latin America and participated in the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign to help oversee digital ad campaigns at a historical daily spend.

In 2020, she joined Brian and Yuri as a co-founder of Latitud, to help engineer serendipity for the top doers and thinkers in the Latam startup ecosystem.

In this episode, Gina talks a bit more about what we’ve been up to, but mostly about her own journey, challenges and learnings. Stick around to find out:

What hyper-growing startups running seamlessly from the outside are really like in the backstage.
Some of the growth tactics early-stage founders can benefit from.
Her biggest F-ups.
And her takeaway from pitching Duolingo to President Obama in the White House.

Visit latitud.com to apply to our programs!

A few years after getting his degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University, and fresh out of his MBA at Harvard Business School, Antoine Colaço wanted to go into the VC world as an investor. But he’d always heard it’d be better to get operational experience first. So he joined Yahoo!. Then, in 2003, he took a risk and accepted a position at a small startup. It was called Google.

Antoine was there for 9 years, founding Google’s operation in India and launching offices all over Latin America. Although it may seem glitzy to build startups within what would become one the largest tech companies in the world, it came with the same challenges any early-stage founder would face. Some of which weren’t the least bit glamorous.

It was his impressive curriculum, but also his great feeling for business and love for Latin America, that led Antoine into becoming a partner at Valor Capital Group.

In this episode:

How different Latam cultures affect his investment approach
How he sees potential paths for founders looking to expand their business
A bit of Valor’s investment criteria
And how intuition and luck can play a big part in investing in winning companies.

Visit latitud.com

A company’s DNA is what makes it stand out. It guides everyone’s behaviors and determines the quality of the people you have by your side, from the initial hires to the hypergrowth stage. It can be the difference between a team that is indifferent and one that is all-in.

This is something Eric Santos and his co-founders paid attention to from the get-go. Similar to what Netflix’s culture code means to Silicon Valley founders, Resultados Digitais’ culture code became well-known in the Brazilian startup ecosystem. The team scaled from 30 to 100 employees in just a few months, then to 230 employees the following year. But RD’s DNA remains the same as it was in the very beginning, 10 years ago.

In this episode,:

How the founding team identified the virtues that were authentic to them
Some of the difficult conversations they had upfront
The challenges they faced while hiring fast
And how they operationalized these virtues at scale.

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Visit latitud.com

No matter the game, understanding the other player always helps you make better moves. This logic applies to the fundraising game too.

Julio Vasconcellos is a great example of this, being a very prolific entrepreneur and investor. Julio was Facebook’s first country manager in Brazil, back in 2010. That same year, he started Peixe Urbano, which became a leading local commerce and services company in Brazil, later expanding to other 6 countries in Latin America and eventually being acquired by Baidu. He’s been an angel investor ever since and is also the co-founder of two VC funds: Canary and Atlantico.

In this episode:

What makes an incredible investor and what makes an incredible founder
Good practices of having a board and sitting on a board
Dealing with advice and external opinions
And the challenge of balancing emotional involvement and rational thinking

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Learn more about the Latitud Fellowship program at latitud.com

Startups are the wildest roller coasters. You can have your best day and your worst day oftentimes in the same day. You really need to learn how to deal with the ups and downs and accept that there are things that you simply cannot control.

Oskar Hjertonsson has been on a crazy ride for the past 14 years. Born in Sweden, he met one of his co-founders, Daniel Undurraga, in Chile, where they first created Needish. Later rebranded Clandescuento, it was acquired by Groupon, and Oskar and Dani led the expansion in Latin America.

They later took their entrepreneurial expertise into building Seahorse, but that didn’t quite work out like they expected.

In 2015, Cornershop was born — launched first in Mexico and Chile as an on-demand grocery delivery service. In less than 2 years, conversations started with Walmart for a potential exit. The deal was announced in 2018, but after a long stressful wait, the antitrust authorities in Mexico ruled against it moving forward.

In this episode:

Oskar's fundraising journey.
Takeaways on leadership.
And the emotional loops, dips, highs and turns that founders go through.

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Learn more about the Latitud Fellowship program at latitud.com

Starting a business is a game of persistence. As our guest Sergio Furio says in this episode, “we build businesses to thrive over 10-20 years, but we don’t know what’s happening tomorrow.”

Sergio was born in Spain and moved to Brazil after his wife, Silvia, told him about the high interest rates in the country. He founded BankFácil in 2011, which later became Creditas.

Much later, in fact. Sergio had to adapt his strategy a few times, and has persisted a lot, but he’s staying ahead of the game. Creditas is now the largest fintech for secured loans in Brazil.

Today, Sergio talks about:

His experience going-to-market (again and again)
His biggest mistakes he made when Creditas started to grow, and
The fundraising journey that led him to raise over 300 million dollars

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Learn more about the Latitud Fellowship program at latitud.com

Thomas Floracks and Brian Requarth have been partners for 16 years -- Germany and USA joined forces in Colombia to ultimately build a successful proptech scale-up in Brazil: Viva Real.

They've been through thick and thin together, and the experience made Thomas a product and growth expert. Today he’s back in Colombia as the Chief Product Officer of LaHaus, another amazing proptech company where Brian is also an investor.

This episode is a chat between old friends and co-founders, but also a lesson on building great tech products. Thomas shares tactical advice on:

How to manage product and engineering teams as a non-technical founder
How to engage everyone with a clear purpose
And what are the 3 things that good products do.

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Support, knowledge-sharing and collaboration go a long way — they’re just as important as other resources. Building an environment with these characteristics helps us grow individually, and it continues to do so as we give back and create value for the whole, rather than the parts.

Brad Feld is the co-founder of Techstars, one of the first accelerators in the US, and runs the Foundry Group, his fund based in Boulder, Colorado. He also wrote a book called Startup Communities back in 2012 and he is soon releasing a sequel called The Startup Community Way, where he and Ian Hathaway describe the properties of entrepreneurial ecosystems and how interactions affect prosperity.

In this episode, he talks about why it is important for us to feed these ecosystems and for you, the entrepreneur, to be an active participant in your local startup communities.

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Track:
Accralate by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3336-accralate
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

When we’re starting up, we don’t always pay much attention to legal structures or to tax legislation. Entrepreneurs tend to go with the fastest, easiest, or cheapest way to get the business off the ground.

Brian, too, made this mistake. It cost him approximately one hundred million dollars in company value.

Dan Green is a partner at Gunderson Dettmer, a global law firm specializing in tech. In this episode, he shares:

Specific advice about setting up or flipping your structure to raise capital from international investors.
What these investors look for during due diligence.
And how to manage intellectual property, vesting and your cap table in the early stages.

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Visit latitud.com

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Track:
Accralate by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3336-accralate
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

What does this downturn mean to startups who are currently looking to fundraise?

Nicolas Szekasy shared some of the challenges he faced as CFO do Mercado Livre during the internet bubble in 2001 and the 2008 recession. Now, as co-founder and Managing Partner of Kaszek Ventures, he uses what he learned to help founders build high-impact tech companies in Latam.

In this episode:

The difference between corporate venture capital and other VCs.
How the current crisis compares to 2001 and 2008.
Nico's biggest lesson at Mercado Libre.
What's more important: team, market or business?

Visit latitud.com to find out more!
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Track:
Accralate by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3336-accralate
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/