HD in HD

When most founders chase a single idea, Fabricio Bloisi built 120. The Brazilian entrepreneur is the CEO of Prosus, the founder of Movile, and the Chairman of iFood, and has helped shape companies that now reach billions across continents. And the spark for all of it began with a teenage ambition “to create a very big global tech company.” We also get into: • Movile’s rise from near bankrupt momen...

Jack Zhang landed in Melbourne at 15 with no money, no English, and no one to lean on. By 30, he was turning down a billion-dollar offer from Stripe. In this episode of HD in HD, I sit down with the co-founder and CEO of Airwallex to trace his zero-to-borderless journey—from small-town China to building one of the biggest tech stories ever to come out of Australia. We get into: • What Airwallex di...

When Uber needed a reset, only a disciplined leader could see the path forward. Raised in one of Iran’s leading industrial families, Dara Khosrowshahi watched everything disappear during the revolution as his family rebuilt their lives in the U.S. In this episode, he shares how, with education as the only constant, he rose to become the youngest VP at Allen & Co., played a defining role across IAC...

“Don’t just believe that things work, actually find out how they work and ask the question, can they work better?” This has been Max Levchin’s constant pursuit since childhood, leading him to build PayPal, HVF, and Affirm, a perfect example of where engineering meets entrepreneurship. In this episode, we explore what it takes to begin again after success and how Max Levchin’s relentless pursuit of...

In a city built on great food, workers were still eating whatever was quickest. When Will Shu moved to London, he felt that disconnect firsthand and built Deliveroo to bridge it, transforming a local gap into a network spanning 10 markets. On this episode of HD in HD, Will shares how his belief in hard work and delayed reward helped him build Deliveroo into a global logistics leader, acquired by D...

Global payroll is a maze most companies dread navigating. Deel turned it into their MOAT by streamlining HR across borders, powering remote work, and hitting a $1B+ run rate with over 5,000 employees. Alex Bouaziz, Deel’s CEO and co-founder, grew up nerding out on Nintendo and hunted perfection from Paris to MIT. His relentless curiosity built a platform that’s rewriting how the world hires. In th...

How does someone with zero ambition rise to the top of Hollywood? Barry Diller started out as a ‘wayward’ kid with no plan, then took his first big risk in television by producing original TV movies, a gamble no one in Hollywood thought would work. In this episode, he shares how trusting his instincts and defying convention guided his journey from transforming Paramount to launching Fox Broadcasti...

When regulators tried to shut them down, Tarek Mansour took them to court, and made history. This week on HD in HD we're joined by the co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, the first fully regulated financial exchange for trading on events. He’s redefining how markets work by building a platform where people can trade on everything from elections to the economy, and proving that prediction markets can be...

How do you go from pitching Sequoia to ringing the bell on a US IPO? Sebastian Siemiatkowski, co-founder and CEO of Klarna was raised in a home where ambition met accountability. Even as Klarna thrived in Sweden, his parents reminded him: “That’s fantastic. When are you going to get your degree?” That grounding, paired with Sebastian’s own ambition to measure up to companies like Google and Facebo...

Before founding Synthesia, Victor Riparbelli grew up in Denmark with parents who struck a balance between ensuring his future security and giving him the freedom to pursue his passions, with his father steering him toward technology. At Stanford, the intense academics and ambitious peers challenged him to question the status quo and honed his approach to creating helpful tools. We also get into: •...

Before founding Vercel, Guillermo Rauch, was a self-taught teenager in Argentina earning his first dollars online to help his family. From early open-source work to remote freelancing, this episode traces how his drive to figure things out led to solving web performance at scale. We also get into: • how his dad instilled a mindset of pushing tech boundaries • what growing up during Argentina’s eco...

With an insatiable appetite for “what’s the new model,” Aaron Levie, Co-founder and CEO of Box, grew up chasing ideas without hesitation: performing magic at birthday parties, building websites, and making short films. In this episode of HD in HD, he shares how a curious mind from early ages became his greatest strength, and how staying slightly uncomfortable kept him ahead of the biggest tech shi...

When Ariel Cohen, co-founder and CEO of Navan, first set out to modernize corporate travel, he wasn’t an industry insider. What he did bring was a relentless focus on fundamentals, constantly asking, “Is it a good business?”, an instinct that arose from his family’s financial struggles, working in cafés, and participating in virtual business competitions in Israel. And that is exactly what led him...

Before co-founding StoneCo, a $3.67B fintech giant, André Street was already thinking like a founder at the age of 14, skipping school not to rebel, but to build. His teacher was life itself, learning discipline from Jiu-Jitsu, gaining “environment intelligence” from being robbed on Rio’s streets, and maturity from an import-export class with 50 year olds. In this episode he joins Henrique Dubugra...

Howie Liu built Airtable into one of the most powerful no-code platforms in the world—used by over 450,000 companies and backed by everyone from Benchmark to Thrive to YC. In this episode of HD in HD, I was joined by the founder and CEO of Airtable as he reelected on the unexpected turns that shaped his entrepreneurial path—from cold-pitching algo trading models at a college career fair, to buildi...

Everyone ignored this problem—until it became an opportunity. Alexander Rinke, co-founder of Celonis, turned a student project into a $13B+ process mining giant from Germany. Born and raised in Berlin, he went on to build a software empire that has saved companies like Pfizer $300M. This episode of HD in HD explores Alex’s path from student founder to CEO—and how he sees AI transforming the way co...

Old-school banking leans on control and complacency. Revolut charted its own course—flourishing by bending conventions, outrunning oversight, and favoring execution over protocol. Nikolay Storonsky, Revolut’s co-founder and CEO, was forged by a mix of physics-driven upbringing and competitive swimming. This drilled in his mantra: systems can be cracked, and tenacity outshines flair. That drive tra...

Justin Mateen set out to make dating simple—no lengthy profiles, no uncertainty—just a "yes" or "no" swipe. Today, Tinder’s user base has expanded to 75 million monthly active users. Justin Mateen has continued building on his success by investing early in promising startups such as Brex, Curative Health, Deel, Home Chef, Kalshi, Speak, Whop, and many others, becoming a billionaire along the way....

Bill McDermott bought his first business when he was in high school, and he never looked back. Now, he sits down with Henrique to talk about his early days as a teenage entrepreneur, coming home from his first job interview with his employee badge in his pocket, and what it takes to be the type of leader people still talk about decades later. This episode is brought to you by Brex—a brand I'm pro...

An early adopter of the Arpanet, Marcos Galperin went from Buenos Aires to Penn to establishing one of Latin America’s most successful companies, Mercado Libre. Marcos sits down for a candid conversation with Henrique where the two discuss the unique problems of building a South American company, the pivot away from the eBay model of online auctions and Marcos’s run as a champion rugby player. Thi...

Beginning in a small town in North Carolina, Zach Perret would eventually go on to form one of the most consequential fintech companies in all of Silicon Valley. Now, the Co-Founder and CEO of Plaid sits down with Henrique Dubugras to talk about being shaped ideologically by Occupy Wall Street, selling and then un-selling to Visa, and how a lead investor once pulled out of a round at the last minu...

Victor Lazarte took a flyer on his first company, leaving a prestigious job at JP Morgan to make mobile games. Now he sits on the board of one of the most prestigious Venture Capital firms in the world. Victor opens up to Henrique about his early attempts to grow his business, making money in the competitive world of online games, and making the transition from founder to VC. Plus, the two talk sh...

Growing up, Vlad Tenev didn’t see himself as an entrepreneur. The son of immigrants in the suburbs of Washington, DC he saw himself going into law, research, math. But when he cracked the problem of providing low-latency trades for free, he knew he was onto something. Shortly after that came Robinhood, and the rest was history. Vlad sits down with Henrique to unpack the road so far: his childhood,...

Henrique Dubugras, founder and chairman of Brex sits down with some of the brightest minds in business and fintech for real discussions that cut through the noise. Hear from luminaries like Robinhood’s Vlad Tenev, Plaid’s Zach Perret, and Mercado Libre’s Marcos Galperin as they share their insights and talk about what’s really going on behind the scenes. To hear all the unexpected, unfiltered insi...