How do you build a $100B business without hypergrowth or endless funding rounds? Hernan Kazah co-founded Mercado Libre, the Latin American ecommerce giant, at the peak of the dot-com bubble. But when the market crashed, funding disappeared, and competitors doubled down on spending, Mercado Libre focused relentlessly on building a rock-solid, profitable core product—ignoring pressure to chase faster growth. Hernan shares how they turned extreme constraints into a secret weapon, why getting profitable early was a game-changer, and why the biggest businesses are built by doing fewer things, better.
Why You Should Listen
- How Mercado Libre survived going bankrupt by pivoting overnight.
- Why most startups die chasing growth—and what to do instead.
- How to build unstoppable momentum by nailing one thing first.
- The simple test to know if your startup has real product-market fit.
- The one thing all $100B companies do differently.
Keywords
Mercado Libre, product market fit, Hernan Kazah, startup advice, ecommerce growth, marketplace strategy, profitability, venture capital, early-stage startups, Latin America startups
00:00:00 Intro
00:04:07 Why We Chose the eBay Model
00:08:56 The Early Hack That Got Us Our First Users
00:14:23 Raising Money at the Worst Possible Time
00:21:37 Becoming Profitable and Going Public
00:26:34 How Mercado Libre Stayed Patient While Competitors Chased Growth
00:34:05 Why We Expanded Across Latin America From Day One
00:45:11 Our Secret to Winning Against Better-Funded Competitors
00:50:04 The Most Important Advice for Early-Stage Founders
00:52:16 Why AI is Different From the Internet and Mobile Revolutions
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