Latitud Podcast

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 fasterThe no-code approach to businessHow to hack growth in early-stage companiesBuilding something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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 MVPThe key challenges for B2C companies in LatAmDealing with waves of failure and successAnd Justos' $36M series ABuilding something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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 effectsBuilding a business that evolves at scaleAnd NFX's plans for its new $450 million pre-seed and seed fundBuilding something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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 hypergrowthPositive signals to look for in the Latam fintech ecosystemWhen to fundraise and when NOT toBuilding something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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 firmsUnlocking capital and knowledge to create new fund managersThe network effects of a VC communityBuilding something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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 XepelinWhy Xepelin is focusing their operations in MexicoThe importance of building deep relationships as an entrepreneurHis thoughts on debt financing in LatAmAnd his next challenges as a founderStarting something new?Apply at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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 journeyThe importance of managing herself as the company growsHer unique story of getting into YCAnd some special book recommendationsStarting something new?Apply at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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" adviceHis self-development journeyHow to build psychological safety within a companyHis thoughts on culture in Latin AmericaAnd how to unleash the power of communityStarting something new?Apply at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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 PayUHow his experience bootstrapping compares with starting venture-backed companiesHis thoughts on founder-market fitThe backstage of Kocomo's recent pre-seed round of $56MAnd his advice on fundraising to early-stage foundersStarting something new?Apply at apply.latitud.comBuilding 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

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.comBuilding 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