Latitud Podcast

Startups are the wildest roller coasters. You can have your best day and your worst day oftentimes in the same day. You really need to learn how to deal with the ups and downs and accept that there are things that you simply cannot control.Oskar Hjertonsson has been on a crazy ride for the past 14 years. Born in Sweden, he met one of his co-founders, Daniel Undurraga, in Chile, where they first created Needish. Later rebranded Clandescuento, it was acquired by Groupon, and Oskar and Dani led the expansion in Latin America.They later took their entrepreneurial expertise into building Seahorse, but that didn’t quite work out like they expected.In 2015, Cornershop was born — launched first in Mexico and Chile as an on-demand grocery delivery service. In less than 2 years, conversations started with Walmart for a potential exit. The deal was announced in 2018, but after a long stressful wait, the antitrust authorities in Mexico ruled against it moving forward.In this episode:Oskar's fundraising journey. Takeaways on leadership. And the emotional loops, dips, highs and turns that founders go through.-- Learn more about the Latitud Fellowship program at 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 a business is a game of persistence. As our guest Sergio Furio says in this episode, “we build businesses to thrive over 10-20 years, but we don’t know what’s happening tomorrow.”Sergio was born in Spain and moved to Brazil after his wife, Silvia, told him about the high interest rates in the country. He founded BankFácil in 2011, which later became Creditas.Much later, in fact. Sergio had to adapt his strategy a few times, and has persisted a lot, but he’s staying ahead of the game. Creditas is now the largest fintech for secured loans in Brazil.Today, Sergio talks about:His experience going-to-market (again and again)His biggest mistakes he made when Creditas started to grow, andThe fundraising journey that led him to raise over 300 million dollars-- Learn more about the Latitud Fellowship program at 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

Thomas Floracks and Brian Requarth have been partners for 16 years -- Germany and USA joined forces in Colombia to ultimately build a successful proptech scale-up in Brazil: Viva Real. They've been through thick and thin together, and the experience made Thomas a product and growth expert. Today he’s back in Colombia as the Chief Product Officer of LaHaus, another amazing proptech company where Brian is also an investor.This episode is a chat between old friends and co-founders, but also a lesson on building great tech products. Thomas shares tactical advice on:How to manage product and engineering teams as a non-technical founderHow to engage everyone with a clear purposeAnd what are the 3 things that good products do.-- Visit 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

Support, knowledge-sharing and collaboration go a long way — they’re just as important as other resources. Building an environment with these characteristics helps us grow individually, and it continues to do so as we give back and create value for the whole, rather than the parts. Brad Feld is the co-founder of Techstars, one of the first accelerators in the US, and runs the Foundry Group, his fund based in Boulder, Colorado. He also wrote a book called Startup Communities back in 2012 and he is soon releasing a sequel called The Startup Community Way, where he and Ian Hathaway describe the properties of entrepreneurial ecosystems and how interactions affect prosperity.In this episode, he talks about why it is important for us to feed these ecosystems and for you, the entrepreneur, to be an active participant in your local startup communities.-- Visit latitud.com  -  Track: Accralate by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3336-accralate License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 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

When we’re starting up, we don’t always pay much attention to legal structures or to tax legislation. Entrepreneurs tend to go with the fastest, easiest, or cheapest way to get the business off the ground. Brian, too, made this mistake. It cost him approximately one hundred million dollars in company value. Dan Green is a partner at Gunderson Dettmer, a global law firm specializing in tech. In this episode, he shares:  Specific advice about setting up or flipping your structure to raise capital from international investors. What these investors look for during due diligence. And how to manage intellectual property, vesting and your cap table in the early stages. -- Visit latitud.com - Track: Accralate by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3336-accralate License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 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

What does this downturn mean to startups who are currently looking to fundraise? Nicolas Szekasy shared some of the challenges he faced as CFO do Mercado Livre during the internet bubble in 2001 and the 2008 recession. Now, as co-founder and Managing Partner of Kaszek Ventures, he uses what he learned to help founders build high-impact tech companies in Latam.  In this episode: The difference between corporate venture capital and other VCs.  How the current crisis compares to 2001 and 2008.  Nico's biggest lesson at Mercado Libre. What's more important: team, market or business? Visit latitud.com to find out more!- Track: Accralate by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3336-accralate License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 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