Lorena is a General Partner at Billioneurons, a Venture Capital Fund, that invests in Supply Chain, SAAS and Fintech Startups in Latin America. She is a Board Member and the COO of Erudit AI, an HR software company and prior to that, held marketing and leadership roles at various top tech companies in the region like Rappi, the Linio Group, and Stori Card.   

We talk about:

• Building start-up ecosystems in Latin America
• Marketing dynamics for tech companies and super apps
• Talent dynamics and organizational development in the region
• The growing B2B market in Latin America
• Going to market and focusing on specific countries before expanding

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Where to find Lorena:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenasanchezgarcia/

https://medium.com/lorena-emprende

https://www.instagram.com/lorena.emprende/?hl=en

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We reference: 

https://www.reforge.com/courses/growth-marketing

https://www.kavak.com/

https://about.rappi.com/

https://www.linio.com/

https://mercadolibre.com/

https://nubank.com.br/en/

https://www.yalo.com/

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Where to find Patrick:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/pcmoran/

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(03:39) Building for the emerging middle class in Latin America 

(06:14) How Kavak (car marketplace) got started and building for ecosystem level opportunities vs user level opportunities 

(08:13) The path to super-apps in Latin America which doesn't exist in the US  

(10:44) How start-ups like Rappi drove user growth across their various verticals 

(13:07) Engineering challenges and honing in on manual labor vs automation

(15:55) The dynamics of which countries to start in and which countries to expand to  

(17:57) Infrastructure implications for expanding into different Latin American markets 

(19:38) Going from manual labor to automation

(20:33) Growing B2B presence in Latin America and why 

(24:25) Successful SaaS companies, like Yalo, employ both consumer-facing and B2B2C strategies

(26:16) The challenges and opportunities for Latin American startups, stressing the importance bridging the gap between socio-economic challenges, mindset, and resourcefulness

(28:39) Marketing talent and skill gaps in Latin America

(33:32) Going to market using traditional and guerrilla marketing and then building on top of that using digital  

(35:59) Acquisition and engagement strategies for super apps like Rappi 

(37:42) Using Reforge frameworks to solve problems but the need to rely on traditional marketing in Latin America in order to build a category  

(41:01) Difficulties with measurement and attribution given the number of touchpoints and lack of tracking and automation  

(41:42) Primary distribution in LatAm like WhatsApp

(42:39) Where to find Lorena!