Latitud Podcast

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 les...

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 star...

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 Caribb...

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 decis...

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. ...

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.  To learn more about Meridian, go to https://meridian.latitud.com/ In this conversation with Patrick Kolencherry, we discussed the latest developments...

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, an...

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...

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 histo...

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 ALL...

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 busines...

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:...

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 specif...

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 entrepr...

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 fin...

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 founde...

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 com...

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 Ame...

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&apos...

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 underser...

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 focu...

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:...

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;...

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 reflection...

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 co...