Latitud Podcast

Hernan Kazah's journey as an entrepreneur starts in 1999, in the early days of the internet in Latin America. Co-founder of Mercado Libre, he has witnessed firsthand, as a pioneer, the extraordinary evolution that the startup and VC ecosystem has experienced in the region. In 2011, hoping to help solve some of the pain points they've faced themselves, Hernan and former Meli CFO Nico Szekazy launched Kaszek. Fun fact, the name originated from the combination of both of their last names.Since then, the firm has raised $2B across 7 funds. Half of that sum was closed just two months ago in a duo of funds. In one decade, Kaszek has backed over 90 companies, nine of which spawned into unicorns. And Mercado Libre, now worth $60B, became the most valuable company in Latin America.In this episode, Hernan shares:The mistakes that almost killed Mercado LibrePainful misses as an investorRisks they welcome and risks they avoid when investingAnd what's broken in the VC gameClick here to see the Stop & Go Strategy graph mentioned in the episode.Starting something new?Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.Building 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

Stephanie von Staa Toledo, also known as Ste, was born in São Paulo, Brazil. She has a Wharton MBA and a Master’s Degree focused in Entrepreneurship and International Studies from University of Pennsylvania, and for the longest time, she's been passionate about health & wellness – especially for women.After working at McKinsey, taking on leadership roles at an e-commerce startup in Brazil and a cannabis startup in London, Ste decided to build her own business in the femtech space. Based on a lot of specialized research, she created Oya Care, a digital-first women’s health clinic. Oya's first product is an at-home fertility test, the first to market in Latin America, officially launched this year. With Oya, Ste has the mission to put a woman’s health in the right place: directly in her hands.Starting something new?Visit apply.latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.Building 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

Few people understand overlooked markets and opportunities as well as Christopher Schroeder. Under normal conditions of temperature and pressure, you could find Chris having a chat with a founder in Brazil or Pakistan as easily as you'd find him boarding a plane in Egypt or the Philippines. Now, he jokes, he can swing around the world in a day over Zoom.Chris is a real global citizen, who truly embraces the mindset of giving first and learning from mistakes. For the past few years, he's been advising and investing in driven entrepreneurs in global emerging markets. At Next Billion Ventures, he focuses on South East Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. His book, Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East, is an international bestseller.As a founder, his startup HealthCentral.com was backed by top tier firms and sold to Remedy Health in 2011. Before that, he also helped The Washington Post enter the digital era as CEO of washingtonpost.newsweek and LegiSlate.com.Today, Chris shares with us:His views on rising markets and global playbooksHow failure shaped him as a leaderHis advice on seeking out mentorshipWhat he likes to look for as an investorBuilding 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

Marcos Adler is a Carioca Brazilian that loves traveling, sailing and photography. With a background in Economics and an MBA from Wharton, he worked for almost five years at GE and then as a consultant at McKinsey.Now committed to help tackle income inequality and operational inefficiencies, Marcos hopped on the tough mission to build Clubbi, a digital network of small merchants that will transform the way their members operate their businesses.Find out how Clubbi works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.Starting something new?Visit apply.latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.Building 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

We believe that building in public can help founders build better. This means we’re open to sharing our ideas and strategy before they’re fully baked, even if it doesn’t make us look perfect. So this episode is a little different from what you're used to hearing around here. This is a frank conversation with one of my co-founders, Gina, about the raw process of building something new. In our case, Latitud. If you ever wonder what the heck we are up to, this is where you find out:The why and the how of the Latitud FellowshipThe Latitud Fund's thesis and inner workingsAnd the products on our roadmapFor even more details on Latitud, watch the recording of our Open All Hands that happened on June 25th: https://youtu.be/lFpyQeX1HocCheck out our open Latitud Global Fellowships Director positionBuilding 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

Santiago Aparicio is a serial entrepreneur from Bogotá, Colombia. After studying Economics and getting a Masters in International Management, he went on to become the 7th employee at Rappi, where he was a Corporate Partnerships Director. He later co-founded Fitpal, a fitness platform that went on to become the largest network of fitness & wellness services in Colombia.Now Santiago is building onTop, a multi-country payroll manager for LATAM that automates international hiring and payments, allowing companies to hire talent from all across the globe. He is also an avid writer and recently launched a book titled Apagar incendios con gasolina, or "to put out fires with gasoline", in which he guides entrepreneurs through the processes of raising capital and creating a startup.Find out how OnTop works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.Starting something new?Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.Building 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

César Salazar had years of building successful products for Latin America, but it was only after visiting Silicon Valley that he started considering that his ideas had the potential to go global. The realization that he lacked ambition was the first step to start supporting founders that might have been feeling the same way.From that experience, he decided to start Mexican.VC, the first Silicon Valley seed fund dedicated to Mexican startups. In 2012, 500 Startups acquired Mexican.VC and brought César in as the 6th member of its investment team. He helped put 500 Startups on the map in Latin America, and consequently put Latin America on the radar of international investors. As the leader of the first 500 Startups office outside of the US, he was critically involved in making dozens of investments in the region.César is now the founder and CEO of Beyond, where they aim to accelerate a global sphere of remote collaboration by helping companies build a dream team of creative problem solvers.Stick around to find out:His takes on Latam's challenges and mindset shiftsWhy tropicalization may not be the best strategyLess obvious opportunities for founders in the regionAnd what he'd have done differently as an investor todayBuilding 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

Oriana Fuentes has been based in New York for the past 12 years, where she went back to after living in Peru for 8 years. With a Bachelor's in Economics and Finance from Syracuse University, she proudly built a career in Wall Street. However, not being able to find her real purpose, she left to pursue a Masters's degree in Machine Learning from Columbia University.In her free time, Oriana is either traveling, reading, or scouring New York for delicious food and baked goods. But another one of her passions is complexity. That is one of the reasons why in 2016 she started Emptor, a B2B SaaS company doing automated background checks in 10 countries in Latam, with clients like Didi, Cornershop, Kavak, and Uber.Find out how Emptor works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.Starting something new?Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.Building 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

There are a ton of bright shiny lights on the way to building a startup, and it's tempting to burn through cash for the sake of rapid growth. So after getting a big capital injection, for example, it's normal for founders to get excited. But how long can you keep this up before it becomes unsustainable?When you're playing the long term game, unit economics is something any operator should pay attention to. It not only helps you set priorities, but also build a path to profitability.Having met hundreds of founders in the past decade she's worked in VC, Mariana Donangelo has seen healthy unit economics as a common thread among successful businesses. She also experienced the power of this tool first hand at Invoice2go, where she lead growth for 4 years and made sure to understand and have better control of the levers that eventually made the company lucrative.Before Invoice2go, Mariana was an investor at Accel, helping close several deals in Latam. In 2020, she became a partner at Kaszek. Today, she talks to us about:The metrics you should look at to understand unit economicsHow they impact investment decisionsHer own initiatives at Invoice2Go to make it more sustainableAnd her views on how the VC ecosystem changed in the past 10 yearsBuilding 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

Alejandro Gomez de Greiff is a born and raised Cachaco (from Bogota) who you may find running in the streets of Colombia while listening to business and history audiobooks and podcasts. He studied industrial engineering and quickly joined the dark side, as he describes it, to become an investment banker. He was also the first employee at a Private Equity firm, where he worked for 6 years.After doing some corporate VC and angel investing, he started getting jealous of all the startup founding teams he was meeting and decided it was time to join them in the trenches. So he brought back to life an idea he had 8 years before with his friend Juan Martin, and together they launched Aptuno, a solution for seamless residential rentals.Find out how Aptuno works in this episode of Altitud, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies connected to Latin America.Starting something new?Visit latitud.com to learn about the Latitud Fellowship program.Building 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