In this #SocialConfoes, Diego and Jean-luc are joined by Enzo Cavalie. He’s born and raised in Peru but found the startup and venture capital space lacking in the region. With a background in economics he moved to Mexico to start a career in VC. We’ll explore the startup and venture capital space in Latin America and much more. Additionally, he writes about these topics and hosts his own podcasts where he interviews industry leaders in Latin America through his platform Startupeable.

Enzo on Linkedin.

Episode Overview

• 0:00 – Introduction
• 2:15 – The biggest excuses that entrepreneurs use when it comes to business
• 4:48 – The state of startups in Peru
• 9:34 – Startup and VC opportunities in Mexico
• 12:36 – How important is it to be good in Spanish
• 17:34 – What do you need to have in place as a startup to be interesting enough for VCs?
• 23:59 – Providing solutions for people or providing a workplace
• 31:14 – Do we even need VC culture in Latin America?
• 36:16 – How do you identify “pedigree” in people?
• 40:50 – What happens to the money in a non-performing startup?
• 43:39 – Are VCs often directly involved in operations?
• 46:28 – How do VCs deal with political and currency risks?
• 50:07 – Adopting Bitcoin and alternatives in Latin America
• 54:21 – Quick fire final questions
• 1:03:18 – Closing off

Video Version of the Episode

The Hosts

• Diego Ameerali
• Jean-Luc van Charante

Feel free to join our Discord Server.

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Full Transcript

Jean-luc: [00:00:14] Hello? Hello? Hello. Good evening. Good morning. Good afternoon. Wherever you are in the world. And we’re here for a brand new Social Confoes I’m Jean-luc. This is Diego. Let’s kick things off Diego. What’s

Diego: [00:00:49] Today we have with us someone born and raised in Peru and his name is Enzo Cavalie he’s really young just 25. He’s has a background in economics and he’s really active in the startup space. Just a few years ago, he moved from Peru to Mexico. Cause you know the startup venture capital world in, I guess, Latin America, I think we see that as well in Suriname kind of lacking. And we’ll let him tell us more about how that is going, but we’d like to welcome to Social Confoes and you, as you see on his shirt is also has its own startup podcasts and blog called Startupeable before the call, we had a quick you know, debate on what the pronunciation is. So and so welcome to Social Confoes and correct our pronunciation. Please.

Enzo: [00:02:01] Thank you for the invitation. Yeah, I mean you can pronounce it, whatever you want. It depends on where you speak Spanish or English or where are you from also? So could we start the payable stuff apparently like most Mexicans say so. Yeah, it varies a lot.

Jean-luc: [00:02:15] Awesome. Awesome. So yeah, that means that you are big into startups or at least not only for yourself, but you help out other entrepreneurs as well in Latin America in the region. So I do have to ask the question before we started, I mean, I jumped in, I said, I’m going to jump in 20 minutes before the call. I jumped at 10 minutes before the call, I try to do 10,000 things at the same time. And it made me wonder about the excuses that entrepreneurs have for not getting something done. So you speaking to a lot of entrepreneurs, what are kind of the, the, the, the biggest excuses that we as entrepreneurs use when it comes to business?

Enzo: [00:02:54] Oh, that’s a great question. I think something I, that really pisses me off from founders is the raising capital, excuse, like I’m raising X amount of dollars or X, a thousand dollars to build a product, to do X do Y and it’s like dude before asking for my money, go build it yourself.

It’s like put some kind of another one where people will say like, yeah, dreaming and hiding ideas is super, it’s basically free. Right? So it’s just putting the work, right. Demonstrate because if you’re going to ask for someone’s money, it’s a responsibility that person doesn’t just cut the money sign and someone gave it to him, or it’s probably his own

so they’re sort of supposed to, we didn’t get to wait on for that. You. You want to put in the effort to the responsibility and just show that you actually are convinced about what you’re doing. So yeah, what I always recommend entrepreneurs is before asking money or reaching out to people is just build it, like, go learn to code, go find someone that can go for you, convince them that the idea you’re working on is a great idea and it’s worth your time or do it part-time while doing our job and work at nights and use that money to hire someone to help you. I know there’s a lot of ways you can actually have skin in the game. So you’re you actually show other people that you’re serious about what you’re doing.

Jean-luc: [00:04:17] Awesome. Yeah. I think one of the things as well, is that at a certain point, people are like, yeah, I’m not going to share my idea because then somebody with more money is going to take that idea from me. And it’s like, It’s what you just said. Just start somewhere, start building something first. As always we have people in the comments, sections joining in I wouldn’t, I want to do a quick shout out to Rachim joining in as well. Hello guys. And Moreno Jackson joining in Moreno is a very big on local entrepreneurship as well. So thank you for joining in Moreno.

Diego: [00:04:48] Yeah. So to get in straight into it, we’ve been talking before we had a call a few months ago after, you know the fellowship actually met. And so during the,  podcasting fellowship and. the crowd era was amazing. And in our talk we had, we had this talk you know, in Latin America, the reason you move to moved was you found that it was lacking that the startup and venture capital ecosystem was lacking. So could you quickly or briefly describe what the situation is in Peru? And I guess the region in general and before we move on to Mexico.

Enzo: [00:05:23] what I’ve found is that, so after I graduated from school, I went to work for a small, traditional investment firm called Winning big capital. It had an, a family office and investment banking arm. and also small funds area where they launch an what I call an angel fund running the seed fund basically was money from the people, wealthy clients from the family office. They put it into that fund, and we started investing in a more, let’s say organized way. So instead of doing personal investments into the companies and I, I worked at that firm, did everything, including that fund.

I joined because one of the partners was an angel investor and there was interested in what’s an angel investor group well-known and I was just interested in getting to know this ecosystem startup world that I had heard and read a lot. And there weren’t really many options though. It was one of the few. So that’s why I pick it, even though I did love the other part of the job, it was like, okay, there’s the only, this is the only thing that’s available. And I mean, I was lucky enough that they launched the fund while I, I started there, like after a few months I started there, we started investing and was like, basically it was me and that partner where it was like the analyst, I mean, analyst, I will really did like super small investments if you compare to what’s happening now.

And what you see in the news was like,

Jean-luc: [00:06:33] what’s super small. Yeah. Compared to what’s super small,

Enzo: [00:06:37] $20-30K And you were like, like basically like angel investments, but basically, but from a fund instead of from a regular person. But still, I mean, in the end, getting to know the founders, doing due diligence and the license opportunities, it’s pretty similar that even if you would invest 500 K or I mean millions, right.

So I liked the work and I decided I wanted to get into VC but when I was in Peru was already a ceiling the other options that I could have moved to Iraq, a couple of funds were basically horizontal moves. And it was just because there wasn’t, at that time, there were not really institutional VC funds in Peru.

They’re basically actually last year two new were launched. They’re the two biggest ones, fund so far, but they didn’t exist when I was there. So basically my, my thought process was if I want to do a career in venture capital, I have to basically find a future to go to ecosystem. That’s more developed because otherwise I’m just gonna like slow down because the system is still supporting proof, right? There wasn’t many VC funds also a small number of startups, et cetera, not really international investors coming here coming to Peru. So that’s why I had to start looking for opportunities abroad. And that’s how I ended up applying to these VC funding, Mexico, literally by the webpage. I, I knew no one but I was well prepared.

I had a few months of studying a lot using podcasts, reading blogs, et cetera. And I felt like I had my way in that sense, because it was like I had experienced in VC just because like, what’s the narrative, a lot of other investors. And I think that’s what surprises VC fund from Mexico that decided to hire me, literally import me from Peru to Mexican.

Diego: [00:08:15] So it’s really interesting to hear that, you know, even in Peru and I guess a lot it’s applicable to a lot of Latin American south American countries. I haven’t visited many south American countries actually haven’t visited any of the Spanish speaking countries, as you said, but even here in Suriname we’re even smaller.

You guys pop the population is above 30 million. And if you compare that to scale with us, we, we barely reach over half a million. So not even a million. And we have this, you know, even. Call it advantages disadvantage a kind of disconnect with the rest of Latin America because we don’t speak Spanish. So we don’t have that ecosystem here either.

Like a, the startup venture ecosystem. We had a talk a few weeks ago with an Olympic swimmer he’s local, but he studied abroad in the United States. And he’s also went in, started, you know, interest in venture capital. So we’re looking for options, you know, similarities, struggles to how we can compare that and kind of, bring that culture or start and cultivate the best of that culture here with the limited resources that we have. So when you were applying to Mexico, looking at opportunities, what made Mexico so different than Peru in terms of venture capital and startup ecosystem?

Enzo: [00:09:34] I always say that I made a list of 10 and 20 funds abroad but I knew I had heard about. A few of them were in Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, and I applied to all of them that have open positions.

It happened to be one in Columbia, one in Mexico and Argentina. I didn’t pick any country. I just said like whatever opportunity. So it’s not that I, I always say I, it’s not that it said I want to come to Mexico. It was just like a coincidence. in that sense, I think it was lucky. Like I, I made, I probably, if I would have gone to Argentina, Colombia, eh, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.

I think I went to Mexico like in the precise moment, you know, really good timing. And I think there’s, I also like that, there’s like literally when I came out of the airplane and drive my first week in, in working for the VC fund, it was like, I felt like I wasn’t in ecosystem 10 or 20 years, into the future from Peru.

and I think there’s three things that have really accelerated Mexico. And I will say like, for me, Mexico city is becoming like the Silicon valley of LATAM. So I always say to all of my friends or people that I know that want to get into VC I say like, Just grab a plane and come here. you’re going to take a chance and it’s not, fortunately airplane tickets are much more cheap.

So, so you can actually say a few feel safe same amount X amount of money come here for three months, get to know people and joint venture funding opportunity. And there’s a lot of and those are, and that’s because three trends that I think favor the Mexico city. One is just a lot of big tech companies coming to Mexico, Stripe, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, all these companies are opening their headquarters.

A lot them are they’re investing in, in, in getting technical talent here. So they’re being building big offices are obviously that invites money and talent. Well, not only not only money, then you have just big investors, coming to Mexico as they were doing into, into, into Brazil. For example, 10 years ago, they’re now more serious about Mexico.

I think Mexico took a bit longer to explode in terms of ecosystem, but now it’s really catching up with Brazil. And that’s obviously not the big funds like, you know, SoftBank and Tiger global and all those big funds are obviously bringing in money and that money attracts more talent, just like more opportunities, more opportunities to work in startups, to work in VC, et cetera.

And finally, and there’s like this, the latest one is something more special about Mexico is that all the startups in south America, in central America, their second target market is always Mexico because you have a Spanish market. It’s harder to go from Peru to go up to Brazil or from Chili to Brazil than to go from Peru to Mexico, from Chili to Mexico, from Argentina to Mexico, from Panama, from Costa Rica to Mexico, it’s an easiest place and it’s a giant market.

There’s much more money to be raised. So it’s just like, I think like those, these three trends basically make that the Mexico city has become a place for great talent. And I will say, you can go out and you can meet people. From anywhere literally you have the same chance of meeting a Mexican or meeting Colombia and Venezuela and America and Venezuela, Spanish and English guy. And there’s 90% chance that that person will be working in tech.

Jean-luc: [00:12:36] Okay. But we do have to ask the question, how important is it for you to be good in Spanish?

Enzo: [00:12:44] not, not, I’d say it’s becoming less important because most people working in tech, in Latin America, they do speak some amount of English. So that’s, that’s actually like something in favor for example, Suriname, because it’s just required.

Even, even the local companies, like Rappi et cetera. When they hire developers, you’re not going to speak English in, in, at work. I mean, if you’re going to write, read the documentation of Stripe of AWS, it tends to be English. So do it. I have some basic understanding of English. So. I mean, are you saying, like you go to a bar in like the big, big districts of, of Mexico city and a lot of people speak English and it’s, and it’s not white male guys who are American.

Right. It’s just basically Latin Americans. Even if you have like meet Brazilians, you have to speak English with Brazilians.

Jean-luc: [00:13:35] Okay. Yeah.

Enzo: [00:13:36] the end of the guns are neutral. The neutral language to, to meet people. Obviously, if you wanna learn English is,  I mean, if you want to learn or like read things in general, I think people still prefer to read in Spanish and that’s why I did Startupeable and it’s in Spanish because I, I find that there’s a lot of people that prefer to read stuff in their own languages. But in the end of the thing, communication is, is, is a problem.

Diego: [00:14:03] So speaking of a good thing that you mentioned, startup-y up, start up, you know, it’s a tongue twister again. Cause this is, you know, a platform you started by yourself or what are you still in Peru when you started this, right?

Enzo: [00:14:19] No, I, I started in, I started writing before, since I was in Peru, but for other blocks and I started Startupeable itself in January last year. So I was right next Mexico.

Diego: [00:14:28] Okay. I checked it out a bit and what I found great. Although all of it was in Spanish. I could understand, you know, the, the basic structure that you get it kind of a, you know, a database of, you know, venture VCs companies in the region for people to be able to find.

So against the question comes down to how Did you get those, you know, relationship built and is it just a platform to show where what is, or do you have those, you know, network relations so that entrepreneurs can link up with these VCs or companies? How did that go?

Enzo: [00:15:03] that’s, that’s a directory. We basically call it Crunchbase for LATAM. Literally it’s, it’s a copy of Crunchbase. I will say. It’s not a big idea, but it’s obviously targeted to Latin Americans and in Spanish, and we tried to create the data more than Crunchbase is us. I? It was born just because founders were asking me, were reading the blog and the glossary with that. And, and they were sending messages on LinkedIn or Twitter, or even through emails. Hey Enzo I’m raising an angel round who I should contact to. I mean, raising a seed round and raising this where you say, who should I talk to, et cetera, you know, who invest in FinTech or could invest in there’s no many investors are there.

So I said, okay, I need to build up a bathroom or a database because I can’t answer to all these emails. Once the blog started getting more structured and more and more readers, right now it’s basically like a, like a directory. It’s not that you can contact directly the, the investors, I mean, you can get the emails. Sometimes it depends on the, on how the investors want to be open up other information because we put some kind of, some amount of information, but also investors can. basically, claim their, their profile on, on the directory and they can start editing that data. So that’s something we made because that way we can ensure that the data is more updated, right.

because obviously it’s, it’s, it’s some kind of operational job to be updating constantly the information. But what we do built is a , which is another,  it’s an like a complimentary tool to the, to the directory, which basically we call it. It’s a Tinder that for investors in the startups in Latin America.

So since we had a lot of startups looking for funding coming to us for my own work and for Startupeable had like a network of investors, I started, I, I made this simple tool to match them for feces, for stages, for type of investors for countries are interested in. We, we are automated in that way. And now basically, if you, if you are another director, you can also apply to semi. Yes. And we will send a, I mean, w the have case you have to apply, it’s not open to anyone because we try to ensure that there’s a minimum quality of startup, because otherwise investors that are trusted because in it’s, they’re trusting the deal flow.

So if I didn’t, if I just send them, whatever the Lacey that okay. And so you’re just spamming me with emails and they’re going to open them. Right. So they would have to balance that. And that’s something we do for free. I mean, we wouldn’t charge for that. It’s just, it’s just a way of scaling my capacity to connect startups and investors, which when it was, when wasn’t that well-known, I could do it personally for emails, but it’s got into scale where I can, I can no longer handle it by myself. Right.

Jean-luc: [00:17:34] Okay. So I do have to ask before I ask my questions, some people that joined in Marvin is joining in as well, Tevin is joining in as well. Rachim just wants to say he wants all the insights. So he wants after the show, he wants to know, well, we can’t go with the side of the avatar and then kind of start the start finding some VCs

so shortly about, because you mentioned, different stages. So one is the seed capital stage and so on. So we have different stages. And you also mentioned even starting in Peru with, with smaller amounts, 20, 40 K us dollars, which still is already a lot for local entrepreneurs often. So could you take us through the process of what do you need to have in place as a startup to be interesting enough for a venture capitalist?

Enzo: [00:18:20] let me first take a step back and I’m gonna, I always say it’s, it’s not a straight answer, but it’s the truth. The reality there’s two types of entrepreneurs. one of my last interviews on my podcast we talked about that with an investor who. I think he’s one of the few investors in Latin America who speaks openly about it. And it’s, I think we should be sometimes we don’t like speaking about truths, but they’re truths the end. So there’s two types of entrepreneurs.

I call them pedigree, entrepreneurs and non-pedigree entrepreneurs. Okay. So if you’re a pedigree entrepreneur, which means you went to McKinsey, you worked in, oh no. In investment banking, in a big American bank or a big bank in your country, or you went to Stanford or Harvard Truth is,, it’s much more easier for you to raise money.

And those entrepreneurs can even raise money with a PowerPoint that’s as plain as that, it might sound like super unfair. That’s how it works. I haven’t, I mean, I’m new, I’m new in the market, so I it’s not their fault.

Enzo: [00:19:18] it’s if you think about it, it’s like just people want to like it’s the question is how can you validate and entrepreneurs. So those are some kind of signals that investors have decided are good for them. And if you see, I mean, most of Latin America, unicorns, a new bank consider that most of these founders, they usually have worked in consulting or in the U S so there might be some Americans call it a pattern matching. I mean, it doesn’t necessarily imply you’re the best entrepreneur but that’s how people use it.

And the problem is though runners are the smallest percentage of population of Latin America, because we obviously know we are in a region where opportunity is not available for everyone. So that’s, I know one, 5% of the, let’s say that the other, the rest of all entrepreneurs in the region, and then the other ones have it much harder.

And which study places you go to show that you are going to grow, how do you show that building a company so that when I went entrepreneurs come to me and ask me for feedback, Hey, I want to raise. X amount of money. I want to raise a seed round today. What? I don’t necessarily tell them. Okay.

You are a pedigree entrepreneur or not or not, but I, I, I, a cater or shaped my faith, my advice, according to his case, because I know what’s what they’re going to get when they go to the market and start talking to investors because I’m one and I may be working in many bear with me. I’m in my third fund right now, which you need in the U S and you have, I have BBC score my friends.

This is just so I know how they usually think. And it’s like, I just set it up. So if it’s a founder, which fits with the non-pedigree, as I like, okay, build an MVP and try to get some revenue. that’s the main thing this, before that, if you have a PowerPoint of what idea, you’re just going to waste your time going to investors and, and not, and I was in not only your time.

I think what’s worse is that you end up frustrated. You just get a lot of bad energy because like you’re two people, 1, 2, 3 times investor, and nobody believes in you and you said, okay, this is just, I don’t want to do it. Right. You just get like super frustrated. And it’s hard because I think you do when you didn’t take the right order of steps, you should have tried to focus on building a company.

And honestly, like there’s no rush. You can work at nights doing on the weekends or even get a loan from your credit card. If you’re super sure it’s going to work. So try to put and in the end that way is, is how you get your pedigree, right? Like showing that you can build a product that’s, that’s good that users like that’s a profitable, et cetera.

Or as you know, I’ve seen other founder, for example, go to accelerators affairs, our, and a good pedigree would say, you’re a founder for some of that. I’m young, I’m 25. So I know I don’t have friends who are 25 and I’m 25 and you can’t have pedigree. It’s like, even if you went to the best university in your country, you’re still a baby, right.

Because you’re probably in the labor market, you already don’t have an MBA. So even if you were working in as a first year, and at least you’re, you still don’t have pedigree. And I have friends doing those jumps, like at super early in their careers to, to become an entrepreneur and they suffered a lot, and I’ve, I’ve studied with them.

I’ve worked with them in university. I know they’re, they’re smart. And they suffer because yet you’re just 25, what experience you have. You’re the only you’re having in like probably we’re boss of someone, another company. Right? So, for those, I think for those kinds of entrepreneurs, especially like accelerators, like Y Combinator or 500 startup. They really helped them a lot because they put you like a brand that just opens your door to a lot of investors in possibility to do not only investors, but get the talent allies, et cetera.

Jean-luc: [00:23:00] This brings up an interesting point. Diego, if I may, it’s, it’s kind of a, it’s not a juxtaposition, but it’s, it’s almost like you have to kind of things like from a traditional perspective, I completely agree. And of course, the pedigree matters and the age matters and not necessarily the age, but how much experience do you have? Like, especially for young entrepreneurs that are watching that are in their twenties. You have to understand that even if you have a great product, but the investors don’t know if you know how to deal with people. So they don’t know whether, if you’re going to scale, if you’re be capable of dealing with the pressure of having to scale a team and knowing how to deal with people, that once you have to scale beyond your own time, if you can actually deal with it. So from that perspective, I do understand it.

Enzo: [00:23:45] People see mark Zuckerberg and certainly think they can be

their company. I’m not talking about just An alien, like he’s out of the world, like he’s like the Messi of a startup, right? It’s like, it’s super hard to be.

Jean-luc: [00:23:59] So, but they, they see the mountain of course. And they don’t see how to get to the top of the air. Just like, okay. That we can get there, but I have the other side and I think, and you have to correct me in this. If I’m wrong, there are now certain jobs, certain companies that you can build where you don’t have to scale. and resources and human resources, you can now build a company which has completely online is completely automized. And you automize all those processes, whereas you can not everything, but you can reduce the amount that you really need to hire people.

External people are, you can just work with contractors, like you have a tech business and you just outsource part of your work to somebody in India. And you don’t need to actually hire people because it’s only a project-based innovation that you have to do within your product.

So I do think there’s another side to it as well. And it kind of brings the situation where we are also fighting I’m in a big discussion with one of my fellow it entrepreneurs where he’s saying like, I don’t want to have a big team. I actually want a smaller team, the less clients, higher quality. And I actually earned more with less clients and a smaller team that I would do if I scale it to 15-20 people. So what’s, what’s your take on that when you look at entrepreneurship, what, how do you find entrepreneurship? Is it providing a solution for people or is it also providing a workplace for others?

Enzo: [00:25:28] No, that’s, that’s a great question. I mean, I think there’s definitely space for both. And what I say now is that we usually, when we fought about SMEs or small business, we always fight about fought, fought about like the restaurant, the small corner shop, the small printing shop, like nearby your neighborhood.

And there’s this new class of SMBs that are. It online first, there are, I know they can be digital agencies, digital consultants, eh, like a small SaaS product for a specific niche. It’s more marketplace, a job board, et cetera. There’s a lot of opportunity for the internet. And do you want me to raise money for that?

I mean, you’ll need venture capitalists or investors. You can bootstrap it by yourself. It’s usually super lean businesses where as you say, you need to hire a lot of people. You can use contractors when you’re ready, you just need that. And that’s a big opportunity then I think what, what I will say is like, I mean, for sure that’s entrepreneur and entrepreneurship, but I also think of that.

It’s like, like a new wave of jobs, right. Where you can actually build your own job by yourself in a super easy way with I need, and even it even goes to the point of using Uber, like I always discuss with people criticized over the rugby because they pay low salaries and yeah, they might do, but it’s like, I mean, we’re Latin America, there’s no job safety net.

It’s like, if you get, if you get kicked out of a job, you’ve got to do whatever you need to do that because it’s not Europe, it’s not the us where you get a thousand bucks for not working at all and not doing nothing.

Enzo: [00:27:02] the fact that you can just press a bottom and get a bike and start that you’re in food to at least be, eat and get something or food.

It’s really a miracle. I think for Latin Americans, I mean, ask all the Venezuela migration, was it because our country is in a bad situation and for that people Rappi and Uber and they give you economy in Europe, it’s literally a safety net. I mean, obviously it’s not the best job, nobody. I mean, I don’t think they say, yeah, I love my job.

Or because it’s like, you want to learn it. It gets to be a repetitive job, but it’s still, that was a good place to start. Right. And, and those scales to being a, I mean, the same concept is going to fire, going to, to, I always forget the name of all your solar platform, where you can get, get jobs and do like coding stuff or webpages.

And it’s like, we’re going into a world of more, more flexible work in general. And it has nothing to do with VC. Right. It’s like, it’s okay. It’s okay. I mean, I, I, in my, myself, I’ve got, I do freelance for companies in the U S for these, these webpages. And they pay me and pay me more than what I earned in Mexico.

Diego: [00:28:06] Yeah. It’s really interesting. A lot that you mentioned brings so many questions and topics we can dive into, but I guess the first thing to stick to VC for a bit before we dive too much into entrepreneurship. So if we’re talking about VC, right, venture capital in scaling first of all, Are there startups in Latin America that are, you know VC pedigree ready? Is it mostly tech companies? Service companies are the, also have these, like, you know product companies that actually create, you know, physical products or if you’re looking at agriculture or even food production for example, is it, those types of companies are, is a majority still tech how’s that space. And, and the differentiation in types of companies that apply for VC.

Enzo: [00:28:57] I would, if I were to speak like a piece of VC, I was actually having a conversation about that a few weeks ago. I think that if probably for the first 10 years, like the thousands, 2000 tens of other 15, most of the company where companies in Latin America were doing like the copycats.

Like, okay. Mercado Libre is the eBay of Latam, and you can, I’m thinking so far and so forth which it’s not a demeaning demeanor, because, you know, I, I always say like, even if the, frontend is the same as the company in the U S the back end is totally different regulation, operations, doing things in Latin America is a hundred X, much more harder than the US

so when people tell you, okay, doing a copycat is hard. I think people just use it as a critic. It’s not fair at all, but now we’re, I think we’re beginning to see more companies targeting specific problems of Latin Americans. And I’ll always be goes from, I mean, you just need to thinking what are the, the more, eh, I’d say like unique challenges that Latin America has versus our regions.

Right? and agriculture is for sure. One of those access to finance banking. Health education. I still think most things are software driven, technology driven. I mean, their hardware is also technology. Any agriculture I’ve seen, there’s a lot of like for the passenger, a lot of investment in agriculture, like growing in Aquatech and I think it depends.

We probably not going to see companies doing like physical hardware products because I mean, the Asians, Asian markets countries are much more, basically they have a lot of scale and they have focused a lot in doing hardware for the past 30 years. So they have an edge in that. And it’s like, even, even when I meet companies that are doing active software to help farmers optimize crops, predict rain or predict weather conditions, they just most of them to Chinese hardware because yeah, there’s no value out in me trying to build a, an, a, a drone it’s.

I might just choose a drone. To get data and build my own software, build, buy on the algorithms, et cetera. So it’s like, I think it’s just trying to optimize and focus on the real pain points or challenges that our industries and our economies have in comparison to our countries that are much more developed or just have different problems.

Right.

Diego: [00:31:14] So this brings a, I guess a provoking thought, do we even need like VC culture in Latin America, if we’ve talked about entrepreneurship bootstrapping first and, you know, building the product looking for the problem and going from that. So from that context now how much do we even need VC culture in Latin America?

Jean-luc: [00:31:35] Or does it handicap us? I think like, is it actually becoming a handicap

Enzo: [00:31:40] We first have to define what’s the VC culture. I think VC culture actually like a few hours, a couple of hours ago, someone was complaining on LinkedIn that there’s too much that unicorn culture in Latin America. I mean, it’s, like I said, like there’s space for both.

I mean, for small business owners for more technical entrepreneurs, small bootstrap businesses. But I think also that there’s really big problems in Latin America that I personally, and that’s why it can be seen if I find other ways working here, because I feel like just being a clown, pretending there’s an industry where there doesn’t exist.

There’s problem for, do you need a lot of money up front and you can’t just do it in bootstrapped? I mean, for example, just two simple examples, New Bank in Brazil there fifth or sixth or fifth largest bank in Brazil, 40 million users. I mean, New Bank started with a pitch deck, the founder, he raised with a pitch deck with a PowerPoint from and Sequoia.

He obviously had a super pedigree, a stand for working, I think in JP Morgan and Goldman, and then working in Sequoia, et cetera. when you think how, how much money do you need to launch a credit card and get a bank license? It’s a lot of money because it’s a lot of regulation. It’s a few, probably a few hundred thousand dollars, if not a few million dollars.

So if we can raise that VC money today, FinTech in Latin would be nothing. I mean, the Brazilian banking market would still be super strong oligopoly, which it still is, but it’s still, it’s more suffering than getting to compete because fintechs are being a pain in their ass. If it wasn’t for that a few million dollars that Sequoia and Cassick took a risk, literally an entrepreneur with a PowerPoint we wouldn’t have known and we wouldn’t have better options of banks.

And I are more recent, no longer started a few years ago. More recent, example in Mexico. There’s a company called Sophia that I actually use. It’s a, basically a health insurance startup. Getting the health insurance is a pain. It’s like calling a broker, et cetera. And they’ve they started the founder squad.

I, I interviewed him on my podcast. They raised $3 million on a PowerPoint and they were able to do it because he was ex in the expansion, which is really good venture capital firm in England. He’s founders work, co-founder X, Google, X, patron, and they raised on a PowerPoint. They started on 2018. They launched the blog December last year.

They took all those two years getting the regulation, which was like, I mean, to start up a health insurance company in Mexico, I think it’s, you have to pay, I mean, I’ve heard a process it’s like north for a million dollars. So a bootstrapped entrepreneur can’t pay that money. Right. It’s like, where are you going to get that money?

And there’s, and there’s those huge problems need investors that like risk, not like to right, to, to make those bets on a power point. And now I use Sophia and it’s like getting a health insurance. It’s literally freaking out on their finger or it’s like, and it’s like, I mean, it’s a product way better than the other options I saw on the, on the market from traditional health insurers.

So there wouldn’t be that option if it wasn’t for, I mean, Sophia is just starting, it’s super new it’s cause like, because it’s not a year in the market. So I really hope they do well because if they do well, more people are going to have health insurance because it’s cheaper, it’s easily accessible.

And also that traditional players are going to start innovating and stop charging super high fees, making the product I mean, I think in Mexico, only 10% of people have private health insurance. So it’s basically like an inexistent market, right? So I think there are big markets, big problems that need a lot of capital in the beginning to make that jump, to pass those barriers that can be technology, infrastructure, regulation, et cetera.

Or for example, they also in the new occasion, like. You, if you want to sell to school abroad, better location, you just can’t sell an MVP. It’s super hard to sell an MVP because the schools are going to say, I’m not going to buy huge or arithmetic. Course sell me the whole math course. Right. So you’re already invested in content in teachers too, even though that’s what the biggest problems in our region, I think related to those three things, educational health and finance, they have a lot of like barriers to entry.

And if nobody’s willing to put that money to take the risk, we’re just going to have our public education, public health for forever. Right. Which we obviously know are not that good.

Jean-luc: [00:36:16] Okay. Now there, there are two things that come to mind. First of all, I think it’s a difference in mindset. I think what you’re discussing, solving the problems that you want to discuss, or when we’re talking about education, healthcare, access to finance, these are really bigger issues.

Then I want to start a business and I want to run a shop for instance. So I think the mindset, the mindset is, is very, very different from, yeah. Yeah. So, but I think for a venture capital work as well, It’s difficult. I mean, it’s, it’s how, and that’s where the pedigree becomes important because like, how are you going to prove that, that you can fail a day?

The concept that you have, like you said, an MVP is not enough. So, so at a certain point, like one of the things, one of the, one of my first books on entrepreneurship that I read was by guy Kawasaki, which was a Woodster of a bootstrap-based book. And he said like, you have to have the team. So like a lot of young entrepreneurs, they have this big idea, but they’re like, they’re like three things you need to be good at, but you only have one of those three.

So for those that want to do it and actually are searching for partners, like how are you going to find a partner to work with that? You’ve got a need because you need one of those two other skills that you need. And if you don’t have that skill yourself, how can you actually find out that those partners are not just telling you this great story about what they’re capable of, but how can you actually figure out if they’re their pedigree are their skill is fell, it enough for you to take you to the next level?

Enzo: [00:37:56] That’s the million dollar question. I mean, I’m not, I’m not a founder, so I want to say it,

Jean-luc: [00:38:02] I ask it because I know that that is something that you’ve come across and I’m wondering like do you just decide to, and I it’s hard for me because I’m more of a bootstrap entrepreneur. I’m very much if I don’t have the skill, I don’t jump into it.

If I don’t find somebody that does have that has the skill. I don’t jump into it, even if I really, really want it, but I just know I don’t have anybody in my team that’s capable of doing it and I don’t have the partner that I can trust to do it. I just leave it. I’m like in two years time, somebody will pop up and he will take care of it.

If that’s not there, I just,

Enzo: [00:38:35] Startupeable was built the same way you were describing. I literally only going to do things that I didn’t know when I got the person, but I am rushing to find that person. So the directory is an example of that, that it’s, it’s caused a bit of no code. One of my, my interns in my team is a developer.

He knows it. I have no idea could help me a lot. And that’s why we have to stop it like by steps. And it took a lot of time with you in which if I were like a more VC fund or VC entrepreneur would have got a team raising money and doing it. And I was just. I mean, obviously I was working at the same time, so I had no rush, and I don’t think Startupeable is a VC backable company, just because of what we’re doing, which doesn’t mean it, if there’s a problem and there’s an opportunity to make impact that we’ll have a good product, it’s just different as you say, mindsets.

But I mean, what I, what I see is like a lot of founders that after doing, or having success, doing bootstrap business, they want to go the VC route. And I think it’s, it’s probably even better because you’re just come with much more experienced tools in the, in your, in your belt. I mean probably a bigger amount of network, on top of that, there is something much more, eh, I’d say like basic, which is if you’ve bootstrapped the business, do well, and you probably have what are kind of business you, you, you bootstrapped into and it’s working. And you’ll know that you can leave it and it’s still going to be working.

And it makes you a thousand bucks a month for 2000 whatever amount it is. And you can live with that. That’s actually a good moment to jump into that into the VC entrepreneur way, if you’re motivated to it, because the VC way is much riskier. Right. And it usually is zero I mean all or nothing, right.

It’s rare that startups do a, can become bootstrap business, right? Like they can become licensed business. They usually do super well, or they just like stall and they really don’t don’t scale. And it gets to a point in which the founder feels like there’s no more to do it. I just going to leave it. so that, that’s what actually bootstrap founders get into a comfortable, economical place where they can actually be willing to take that huge risk into doing that. A company a VC backed company..

Diego: [00:40:50] You just mentioned, you know, VC is risk and we talk about, millions of dollars investing in a PowerPoint.  a lot of, you know, these tech startups in the first few years they don’t run on net profit cashflow they basically live on VC money. So at what point, the U S a VC decide that, you know, you’ve, you’ve invested that the money in such a startup of a powerpoint startup and they don’t perform after two years are what’s the consequences behind that this is just lost money because you guys took the risks. or is there an another way that that gets, you know, resolved.

Enzo: [00:41:35] First of all, it depends. There there’s investors that are willing to do investment in PowerPoints. my first, the first fund I worked for in Peru, we were willing to do it because we were an angel fund, the funds I worked after we more into, we want to see an MVP product because we also invest much more money.

But in the end that the life of a fund, if I knew of a VC fund, looks like a J usually on the first years, like two to three years, it goes down because you see all the companies that will do, bad they usually do. bad on the first years, and then suddenly it’s like a few, couple of years, say the third, fourth or fifth year of the fund, most companies are still like, there’s a few companies that have resisted and they’ve passed those first years, the valley of death and they are starting to grow.

And suddenly one of those book, it blows. And that’s what’s happened. I mean, I, in it actually tomorrow, we are releasing on my, on my podcast and interview with a man. Cassav is a partner and founder of classic ventures, which is probably the leading, not probably the leading fund, but leading venture capital funding in Latin America.

And he described that the he’s first fund of 90 ninety-five percent of the returns are from New Bank so he’s invested like in 10, 20 companies and 95 of the return of income of the fund is because of one investment. And that’s usually the, the the behavior that you see most funds. Most, most companies you invest in either do bad, just glows disappear, or they just stagnate.

And I mean, I know stagnated startup is really, it’s a loss for a VC because it means you want to be able to sell it. So in the end, there’s no return. So it’s, it’s the same zero has been stagnated right if you. picked one or two good companies. Our companies is gonna explode, but the thing is, you’re just going to wait, right? The first year is usually going to feel like the dumbest investor, because you usually see the losses first and the wins you’re going to see them after seven, eight years, at least.

Jean-luc: [00:43:39] so how do they how do venture capitalists kind of co is that a risk calculation that they just make the calculation and decide, this is where the, this isn’t our, do they actually put in some kind of security? And it’s saying like this amount of stock, and I want this amount of control from the board, or even this remote control on a C-level like on a director manager, they’re acting level. So how do you also have a differentiation between venture capitalists that just provide the venture capital and venture capital is that actually want to be involved in the operation or directly or indirectly be involved in the operation? Is there a difference between those two as well?

Enzo: [00:44:21] I think most investors at the beginning of the industry were more liquid use scrub. The second one effing lately. Most investor tend leave the founder to him to do it himself.

I mean, they only invest if they get a board seat for him. I think Casa does that. I mean, for, for entrepreneurs, like having an investor who’s experienced, who’s seen a lot, it’s a good advice, but in the end you’re going to get good advice. But the company is yours, you decide and VC by the definition some minority investor VCs get 10, 15, 20% of the company.

So, and even Ian VCs have get higher chunks. Usually entrepreneurs ask for control rights. So even if the entrepreneur gets to main company, when a company starts raising a lot of money, it gets to a point where the probably the founder half has 10 30% of the company. So he really is not, it doesn’t have control, but usually in the contract, they will give them higher.

Like his votes on the board level would be much more valuable. So he has control. So I think that’s just like the way VC tends to work, where you give much more power to a founder, because it’s not a, the difference between VC and private equity and public investing is that you’re trying to build a machine to make money, , like investing in apple, the machine is already built.

It’s like, you don’t need to control it. Right. I mean, you can go. I mean, I’m sorry, you can control it if you want to do something else, but at the super earliest levels of a company first years, you’re trying to build a machine. I know if you, as the investor, you have no idea how to be that machine. I one, if that idea and the starter is a founder, so it’s usually better to leave the founder to have freedom, to decide.

Obviously there’s some things that you might want to control. For example, VC spot might ask, okay, if you want to expand on our country or can you need, I know some kind of extra votes right? So. So those kind of super big, big decisions, but I’d say 95% of our decisions in a company, even if it has VC investors will usually be taken by the founder. And they usually have freedom both legally and most of all from a, I’d say like support level will be done by them by themselves.

Diego: [00:46:28] Cool. We got one comment from the chat here, or I guess a question and then we’ll follow up with our final questions. So Gregory asks, how do you deal with political and currency risk or those risks models into the required rate of returns?

Enzo: [00:46:43] that’s a really good question. estimate forecasting returns or estimating returns in VC is super hard because of why I described the J. Right. Usually, most companies will go to zero or will be stagnated. And then there’s one company that if you do it, you are going to be, VC investors want to find one or two companies that do just super well.

And actually, if you see the data in most VCs, the VCs that do well in terms of returns, and they’re able to raise more funds because if you invest the fund and you do, bad more, the investors want to put money into your fund, right? Oh, here’s a court. Why would you invest in them? And so most of the funds that do well, actually have what we call in the industry of fund returner is basically one company that does most of the returns.

Okay. So it’s basically like that unicorn invested, right? That New Bank that they clip that Stripe, whatever. So if you get one of those companies, usually the currency and risk return political return. Are since, since these companies are such outliers, that they grow so big, usually those kinds of risks are minor.

I mean, in my, in investing Mercado Libre a company based in Argentina, Currency risk and political risk, but Mercado Libre has done so well, they’ve done better than anyone would have imagined. They’ve become literally the most valuable company in Latin American is a private and it’s a techno what is not by a public company, but it’s a technology company more valuable than Pemex and all the big petroleum public companies in Latin America.

And literally that risk from Argentina political and currency matter because it’s, it, it’s just such a, literally like something extraordinary that the returns are so big that even if, even, even if Argentina closest, unknown date, something crazy, a prescient comes and push back Ali without Argentina.

There’s a giant, I mean, Brazil and Mexico Oh, the market, eh, they finished rated just giant. So those things don’t matter. Right. Obviously for our companies that don’t do it. Well, those risks might be more game-changer for the returns. Right?

Diego: [00:48:52] So on the topic of currency in particular, does this imply that most of the investments are looked through a looking glass of the U S dollar currency for clarification?

Enzo: [00:49:02] Not necessarily. I’d say my, what most VC investors in the United you, most investors in BC, in Latin America, and even in the U S coming to America, they do think about currencies that’s for sure. So how you hedge currency risk? Because as we know, according to see is a problem in a region historically, how do you hedge going to our countries?

Not all depending on the Mexican peso but depending on the Peruvian Sol, the Colombian pesto. On the Brazilian Real so you have a combination of, of currencies, even if one does Superbad, you can hedge and you can live, leave it. If you only depend on that Venezuelan bolivar 10 years ago, you are bound.

Diego: [00:49:38] Yeah. The, the inflation rates in Latin America have been ridiculous. So then, then I want to get at my final,

Enzo: [00:49:45] there’s a few companies that are able to sell in dollars to the U S for example, both are obviously there, the benefit, even right there, they are like extremely rare cases or weird cases in which you inflation actually favors them. Right. But you got to do a product so well that you’re able to compete in the us, which is not, not easy. Right?

Diego: [00:50:07] So the, the, the final question on the topic of currency for me is then I hope you saw this announcement that you know, If we’re talking about Latin America, central America here, and we love to bring crypto into our talks. So El Salvador has legalized Bitcoin as legal tender. So what is your take I guess it doesn’t have to be from a VC standpoint in particular, but as a Latin American in El Salvador. And I guess other Latin Americans countries probably will follow suit to legalize a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

Enzo: [00:50:42] I don’t think, I mean, I, to start, I haven’t read the, I’ve heard about other music. I really haven’t get into it to know the details, but more from a macro perspective, I do think there’s a big role for crypto in Latin is probably, probably more from Bitcoin that crypto, at least right now, I’d say. And it’s because what they’re describing, if we all suffer from inflation, it’s literally like a pain in the ass and.

The only option we have is dollars. Really. I mean, I, I’m not sure how it’s in Sydney now, but, and central America in general, but for some of Peru is a really dollar. We say dollarized economy. I’m not sure if that’s the right term, but basically a huge percentage of the economy is moved in dollars people safe in dollars in Peru.

Why? Because in the eighties, yeah, between the eighties and nineties, we had huge hyperinflation exam, like Venezuela whatever, not what I’m to about Venezuela type inflation during the nineties. So basically people stop believing on the Sol and even right now, after the Sol in Peru has been quite stable and the central bank has done a pretty good job there wasn’t no, I’m not going to take the risk that certainly a crazy president Thompson start printing money.

I’m just going to save in dollars. Literally I did it and I, I was born after that crisis, but it just passed from my family. Like no saving dollars, just being let’s be better. But for example, I came to Mexico and in Mexico opening a bank account in dollars, is hard, there’s like a lot of a process like the have procedures you have to make to be able to do it always need to be cause of, of, of money laundering, et cetera.

And in brood super-easy for access. So that’s great. But yeah, actually most countries, Latin America getting dollars hard. So the Mo there are all the options that you have to protect your wealth from inflation and crazy presidents is in most countries restricted. What’s the alternative crypto becoming particularly Bitcoin, which is easiest to access.

And you just do to do turn to cash or whatever you need, if you are wanting to consume. So that I think, Bitcoin for sure and gripping, you know, specifically for, for reserve of value of a really good.

Jean-luc: [00:52:46] we’re laughing so hard and you’re describing exactly what’s going on for us as well.

Enzo: [00:52:55] So, yeah, and I, I mean, it’s like I meet more people that from a company’s in, in Peru or actually a lot of companies from Peru, Mexico, Columbia hiring people from Venezuela or Argentina, and they pay them in Bitcoin because they obviously don’t want to receive because they can pay them by dollars, but it’s super expensive to get dollars in their country. So in the end, those same workers are there, no, just pay me for Binance or whatever.

Jean-luc: [00:53:20] I’m I’m proud. I’m proud of my fellow entrepreneurs. I’m in an entrepreneurs group and I want to shout them out because there are at least three entrepreneurs in our entrepreneurial group that actually allow payments in, in cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency at the moment, like local entrepreneurs that like, you want to pay me in Bitcoin?

Okay, fine. You can pay me in Bitcoin. So that’s in R D and either move that,

Enzo: [00:53:43] I think that that is going to have a great role. There is BITSA, the Mexican, Mexican Coinbase. They are really in Mexico Argentina and Brazil. And they think that they could do something really great. If you mind, if they opening, get to opening all the countries in Latin America, it’s basically like another banking system where you can send the government is like, and at that point it’s like, okay, we’ll no longer need to depend on fucking Peruvian Sol, Mexican Peso, whatever that devaluates. Whenever our presidents go crazy. Right. So yeah, so a lot of opportunity here.

Jean-luc: [00:54:21] I actually wanted to ask a football question, but there are so many questions coming in. We’re gonna pick three more questions and then we’re going to close it off. So Theo wants to know it’s a little bit more about startups in general. Any advice, how to deal with team dynamics in startups?

Enzo: [00:54:37] super open question I mean, I, I think it’s hard to answer because there’s, there’s a styles. I remember like a couple of weeks ago I had a, a F a founder from a company that we invested in the fund that I am working right now in the U S.

He just exited his company. He sold it for $700 million. So he’s super successful. I that’s something that’s stick to him the best founders, the nurse we’d write the rules. You know, they listen to advice, but then they rewrite the rules by themselves because it’s what works best for you. Right. And there’s always be something they’re not principles.

I think in that, in this remote era, what I feel like best entrepreneurs are doing is being a, practically from two things, communication, culture, communication in the sense of documenting, I mean, using Notion to put your processes of things, as simple as how you onboard a new, new hire, how do you do sales? What’s your branded type of communication?

How do you copy? And it just saves you a lot of amount of time. I think in a remote world, a lot of the daily job has become, has become a lot of ops with the mess for that, because otherwise you’re just going up. I mean again, it’s like, if nobody’s in the office, you don’t have a way to control your people, right?

So you need, and I was really, it connects also compared with just culture, like what kind of people do you want to attract? And I think that the best founders are usually super intentional about that. Like, okay, I need people who are productive, who are good communicators. If you, if you need someone to tell you to do your job, then don’t work with me.

And that’s as important is what people will go down hire, fast fire, faster. If are building a startup. Sometimes you have problems. And I mean, people will say that. Yeah, hiring is the best important area is the most important part, recruiting and invest a lot of time in that. But sometimes you just need someone to do sales and he’s like, do I have two months to interview all the candidates in your country or your network to the assignment

take a risk and if he fits school just fine. Do it super fast.

Jean-luc: [00:56:36] I want to jump into that because I think you, you mentioned it two most important things, communication and culture. So for my advice to deal is, is the founder or the CEO he defines, or she defines the culture and you, you, you just cannot have people that want to work to a different culture because they won’t fit.

They won’t stick. It will be come a power struggle because they want to do something a different way than the majority of the company wants. And yeah, unfortunately, if the culture is bad and the culture doesn’t work and the father has developed a bad culture, the company will feel, but, but it will fail anyway.

Whether or not you do hire people that go against the culture or not, unless you hire somebody that you allow to say like, okay, I’m letting go as a follow there and you take over and you probably are more going to be more successful with that culture. But in most cases, the founder decides the culture and you want to hire people that fit into that culture as well.

The communications, I mean, most problems that arise within a deep dynamics are just lack, are missing communication between different parties, because the intent from everybody working in a startup is always positive, but there have, there’s something that’s happening, which and it’s not talked about. And when it’s not talked about people assume certain things. And that’s basically where I feel it goes wrong though. Most of the time,

Enzo: [00:57:54] Would you say like culture is defined by a CEO and founder fundraising founders, so it’s and, and show you what happens is. I mean, for example, in mind, with we three make a make a startup.

And the startup is going to get things of both of the three of us, four of our culture and personality. And there might be things that I have negative that I don’t want my company to get us culture. And there are things that Diego has positives and I want them. So if you’re not intentional about that company might grow into that thing that you don’t like about yourself, but it’s because, and then you can’t complain because it’s literally a reflection of yourself.

So if you are an audience of people and you know, it’s bad, but you do it because you don’t have that bad habit, it’s gonna scale into once a company is 10 21, 20 people are going to be insulting themselves. And it’s because you, weren’t not you didn’t have a purpose at the beginning of saying, okay, I have this, how can I control it for myself?

How can I embed a different culture into a company or have Diego or Jean-luc put their, their site, which is much more positive in that sense. Right? So we can have like the best of each one and not the worst of each one. Right?

Jean-luc: [00:58:59] I think you answered because Theo  mentioned he was talking about a team of founders, but I think you personally mentioned as well, how important the intention is and, and seeing if, whether or not you, you are a fit. So to connect that, to going to venture capital startups. And, and I think this is a very interesting question. What sector are Latam venture capital startups mostly in, we have a competitive advantage in labor and disadvantage of tech. So I would imagine a lot of tech easy from Latham or actually the other way around. So what, what sectors do you see that are prevailing more in, in, in VC startups in Latin America at the moment?

Enzo: [00:59:35] I mean, think that my farm it’s a bond that has the most, most money. I think that in, in, in two terms, What is the, the thing that we’re, what are the problems, but not two that are that most, eh, unique to Latin, were you as an entrepreneur or as a startup can have a edge versus an international company coming to lotta, for example, that’s one.

And the other one is, okay, what, where do we actually see a lot of business? yeah. We haven’t had much work, but that’s why kind of labor right. That’s the question. So there’s for sure. Yeah. That’s not an advantage that’s what I mean.

Right. But I mean, I do think talent in Latin America is good. There’s a lot of good technical talent. And I have invested in  a company that does actually that train technical talent. but you also have to think about how can I say, like there’s more of the business side of building a tech company.

That’s I think where we still lack. So I think we have the Latin America’s entrepreneurs, like a good technical side coding, et cetera. But I think what’s lacking is the more detail business skills, like growth for the management, a direct at a more, at a more scale. actually I’ve seen a lot of startups, import people from abroad from the us, et cetera, because it’s just because of our, our ecosystem is still early.

Right. They’re have New Bank gets to one company. There hasn’t been, we need a net the second New Bank, the second Mercado Libre . So those first ones can teach the second ones. It’s just a cycle. And I think it’s just a matter of time I ran a few weeks ago. I had some, I had an interview and I read a note about talking about New Bank.

Can people say that you go to Southeast Asia or Europe and people talk about, Hey, I want to make the new bank of Europe. I wanna make the new bank of Southeast Asia. So it’s because no one has got to make a, literally a world class product that other people want to build. Like it’s no longer the Uber for LATAM.

It’s the new bank for my region. it’s just a matter of timing and fintechs for sure is going to be the first, vertical. I’m not sure what our, to be honest, what verticals will follow? I think fintechs definitely had a lot of, advantage because just financing is so, so bad. And in comparison in the U S and Europe, the banking systems are much more advanced.

So that’s what people always say, like doing a FinTech in the us or Europe is much more easier than doing one in LATAM. So that’s why exactly like new one, because. Like highly being highlighted in a sense, because they’ve, they’ve built a lot of things from scratch that they could, they couldn’t access through third party software or, or providers. So that’s why they now people talk about building new one for our countries. Right.

Jean-luc: [01:02:14] Interesting. I actually have a pitch ready for you after this,  podcast now. Okay. So we have one more question. It’s in Dutch, but I’m going to translate it. And this is the final question. We’re going to close off this on not your specialty, but what is Bitcoin got up to $80K?

Enzo: [01:02:31] I don’t know. I hope it’s tomorrow because I do have Bitcoin.

It all comes back to treating in favor of us. Not against us.

Jean-luc: [01:02:44] Yep. I actually did. Actually. He did. He actually treated already

Enzo: [01:02:50] two days ago, I think. Yeah.

Diego: [01:02:52] Bitcoin actually bought, broke the 40 K resistance yesterday. So that’s hope it, it stays up that resistance and bounces up, but two notes and no one can predict.

Jean-luc: [01:03:02] I’m going to be honest with you. I’m going to be honest with you. Sheldon for asking I’m not a predictor. This is not financial advice, but we’re most likely gonna, we have to wait to the next halving that’s my very conservative prediction, unfortunately.

Diego: [01:03:18] Cool. I guess that was a fun note to end it on and then to close off. And so to close it off. Where can people find you your busiest start to probably so well it’s

Enzo: [01:03:30] dot com.com.

Diego: [01:03:36] And is there anything in particular you’re busy with that, you know you’re looking forward to other people could look forward to expected from you in the near future.

Enzo: [01:03:45] a Startupeable thing. We’ve built a really good ecosystem for people that want to get into the startup ecosystem. So basically our target at Startupeable people we are building content for is the non pedigree. We talked at the beginning we’ve built a lot of resources and tools for. And entrepreneurs like starting entrepreneurs want to be entrepreneurs, but we now want to do things for people that want to work at startup because nobody has to be a, not, not everyone has to be entrepreneur. I think probably more people there’s more people that want to be just workers or employees for their companies and startups.

So I want to be on, we want to where we have a few ideas and projects and how can we drive more people and convince more people on, Hey, your university, instead of thinking about doing an industry with a bank, go do an internship at a FinTech. I think so. We’re thinking in building a platform like a job board and tools to teach people about how can they do a career in startups, because in the end, I mean the beta, the big vision or mission that I have in some of the valley, just bringing more Latin Americans into the startup world

I think it’s working in tech right now. It’s a great opportunity. So it’s just, and there’s the people that are there actually are profiting a lot. They’re getting super good salaries working for companies abroad. So it’s like, how can we bring more people here when it’s not only an entrepreneur side, but also people that just style it and want to work for others.

Diego: [01:05:01] awesome. Thanks for that. We are building all those in the description later on with that being said, Enzo appreciate you taking the time to have this part.

Enzo: [01:05:11] No, thank you. It was a great chat

Diego: [01:05:14] to the people sitting in. Thanks for tuning in as always and for the great questions the close enough, you all know the drill by now.

We’ll have the podcast episodes released in audio format on the website on Saturdays, and it will be distributed to our podcasting platform. So you can share that or relisten while you work out or run. Whatever. Thanks for tuning in Jean-luc look, close it up.

Jean-luc: [01:05:37] Yes. And this was once again, Social. Confoes see you next Tuesday at 9:00 PM.