The Pomp Podcast - #493 Brian Requarth on Startups in Latin America

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

Brian Requarth is the co-founder and former CEO of Viva Real, the leading real estate marketplace in Brazil. He recently wrote a book titled “Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling, and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America.” In this conversation, we discuss entrepreneurship in Latin America, why the region is seeing an explosion of startups, global competition for resources, and where investors and founders should look for opportunity.  ======================= OKCoin.com is the leading crypto exchange for both beginners and experienced users. You can fund your account in under 2 minutes, and get access to the most advanced trading engine, all while paying the lowest trading fees in the industry (0.1%). Visit www.okcoin.com/pomp and open your account today.  ======================= Own crypto in multiple exchanges and wallets? Sync them to CoinStats so you track and manage them from one place. Track 8000+ coins and 300+ exchanges all from the Coinstats platform. Try it for free or go to coinstats.app/pomp and get 40% off your premium subscription. ======================= Remote makes it easy for companies of all sizes to employ global full-time employees and contractors. We take care of international payroll, benefits, taxes and local compliance, so you can focus on growing your business. Learn more about Remote and their new Remote for Startups program at https://www.remote.com.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Brian Recorth is the co-founder and former CEO of Viva Rio, the leading real estate marketplace in Brazil. He recently wrote a book titled Viva the Entrepreneur, Founding, Scaling and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America. In this conversation, we discuss entrepreneurship in Latin America, why the region is seeing an explosion of startups, global competition for resources, and where investors and founders should look for opportunity in Latin America. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Brian just as much as I did. Before we get into this

episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is OKCoin. They're a leading crypto exchange for both beginners and experienced users. You can fund your account in under two minutes, and you can get access to the most advanced trading engine, all while paying the lowest trading fees in the industry. They're a registered US-based exchange, and my favorite part is that they've been funding Bitcoin development. That's right. OKCoin.com, a regulated US-based exchange that is funding Bitcoin development. Anyone who funds Bitcoin development is somebody I want to be aligned with. So go check them out at okcoin.com slash POMP. Again, okcoin.com slash POMP and open your account today. A crypto exchange for beginners and experienced users,

okcoin.com slash POMP. Next up is CoinStats. If you own crypto in a lot of places like me, you know how difficult it can be to keep track of it all. That's why CoinStats is one of my favorite apps. Whether you keep your crypto on hardware wallets, mobile wallets, exchanges, liquidity pools, or somewhere else, CoinStats lets you track it all in one place on your iPhone, Android, Apple Watch, or computer. You can see all of your transactions and profit loss history and get advanced analytics on your portfolio's performance. You can try it for free or go to coinstats.app.com. Again, coinstats.app.com and get 40% off your premium subscription. Again, CoinStats.

If you own crypto in a lot of places like me, you got to keep track of it all. So go download CoinStats.app slash Pomp. Last up is Remote. In 2021, every business is a global business. But how do you pay your global team and comply with international labor laws? Remote handles payroll, benefits, taxes, and compliance to help companies of all sizes pay and manage full-time and contracted workers all over the world. No matter where your team lives and works, Remote's global employment solutions keep your team, your finances,

not your fiance, your finances, and your intellectual property secure. Remote never charges percentages or fees, just best-in-class global employment solutions for a low flat rate. The world's top global companies love Remote. GitLab, the world's largest all-remote organization, trust Remote to manage their global team. And so should you. Remote is funded by Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and a host of other top-tier investors. Learn more about Remote and their new Remote for Startups program at remote.com. Again, go check them out at remote.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Brian. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by

Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. all right guys bang bang i've got brian here with me thank you so much for doing this sir hey it's always a pleasure man thank you absolutely let's just jump right into your background you've got a really unique perspective uh on the world based on some things that you've done and then also where you're spending time today but maybe just walk us through where'd

you grow up and kind of how did you get into technology uh both as a builder and an investor Sure. I'm from the Bay Area originally, a small town called Sebastopol. And I ended up getting my car, drove from California to Costa Rica, bought a one-way ticket to Bogota, Colombia. There's a lot of times a woman behind these stories. I'd met my wife and my girlfriend in San Diego. She likes to say she imported me to Colombia. And so I ended up moving to Colombia, chasing the girl, and we ended up getting married. And then three months, planned to make it down to Patagonia, three months in Bogota, Colombia turned into six and a half years. And I basically ended up getting into tech and entrepreneurship out of necessity to kind of continue my journey down

south. And so that's kind of the genesis of how I got into building companies in the region. It's amazing. And the good part is that your story ends well because she ends up becoming your wife. So that's a positive development to the story. Let's talk about kind of you as an operator in Latin America? Maybe just walk through a little bit as to what you've done there. Obviously, you've got a highly successful business that you built, but kind of just walk us through it. Sure. I mean, you know, it was a long journey, right? And it was, this wasn't a straight line to kind of get to successes as we all know. Right. And so, you know, I did everything in the early days. I mean, just to pay the bills, I would literally, I bought this like business book or

for business English because no one would hire me. Right. And so I literally walked the streets of Bogota, Colombia, knocking on office buildings and selling my English classes because I needed to pay my rent. And so that was how I started off. And the ideas kept increasing in size over time. But I did that in the first year and a half, 2 years. I hired a teacher because I was like, I'm a terrible teacher. And so then I started getting into... I actually met my co-founder, paying a fine at immigration services because we both overstayed our visas. He was from Germany. I had a student that wanted to learn German. And so I basically saw him in line paying this fine. I'm like,

Hey, you got a German password. Do you want to teach German classes? The guy, he wanted to keep his trip going. So he ended up... We didn't end up doing the German classes. But he and I both had an interest in tech. And we both came up with our first business, which was more like websites and not high-tech entrepreneurship, but just websites and translation services. And then that evolved eventually into building the main startup that worked out for me, which is called Viva Real, a real estate marketplace, like Zillow of Brazil is the way I would describe it. And talk about that business a little bit, because you're being incredibly humble, but you raised tens of millions of dollars for it. It's

been incredibly successful. So talk to us kind of what was the impetus for the idea, why that specific market, and then kind of how you guys executed on the business. Yeah, it's a funny story. When I kind of had the idea for the business, I think it was two major factors. One, I was living in a piece of crap, you know, hotel, motel. You know, by the way, motel is different in Colombia that I didn't realize when I first got in. I thought it was like a motel aid, but it was not a great place to be. Let's just say that. And when I ended up, wanting to move out of there because frankly, my wife's family, girlfriend at the time, dropped me off. And they were scolding her for letting me stay in this very, very dumpy place.

And so I ended up trying to find a place. I went into the classifieds. That's how long ago this was in 2005, 2006. And I ended up talking to a real estate agent and the real estate agent said, I got the perfect property for you. They were all confident on the phone. We sat down in a cafe. The agent pulls out a piece of paper from their briefcase and says, I've got the perfect property you're looking for. That'll be 10,000 pesos, which sounds like a lot of money, but that was only a few dollars at the time. And I reluctantly... I need to get out of this place. I reluctantly paid the agent just to see the information and spent the whole day. First property already rented, second property too big, third property too expensive,

waste of the entire day, money, time. And I'm like, there's got to be a better way. And so around the same time, I read a case study for MercadoLibre. For the audience that doesn't know MercadoLibre, it's one of the biggest internet companies in the world. It just kind of touched the $100 billion market cap company. And I came across a Stanford case study that I read at an internet cafe. And I thought, putting those 2 experiences together, crappy experience, largest asset class in the world, and amazing business that touched upon real estate, but was more classified in general. That was the genesis for the idea of wanting to start more of a real estate classifieds marketplace business. Got it. And so once you start the

business, does it take off right away? Do you guys have to tinker with it and really find product market fit? How do you eventually get it to where it starts to scale? Well, Pomp, there was no pump investors back then in Columbia. I didn't have access to capital. So I like to say I bootstrapped. But really, that makes it sound fancy that I decided to bootstrap. There's just no money, right? So we had to get the customers first. We had to create revenue initially because I got rejected by 30 investors when we were trying to raise money. This is 2009 when we actually started the business. I had the idea in 2008, 2007, and then we deployed the website in 2009. But we all know what happened in 2009, 2008. This is the backdrop of the financial

crisis. So coupled with the fact that Latin America is not exactly the hotspot around that time, the aura of Colombia isn't... The first thing you don't think of is tech innovation. We all know the first thing that happens in the minds of most people when they think about Columbia, the image is changing in the country. But back then, it was a little bit more dangerous and not as traveled to. And so we struggled then. We had 2.5 years, just bootstrapping, hustling, selling websites and marketing services and anything we could to eventually evolve the business into more pure play marketplace classified site. It took us 2.5 years to raise our first capital and 30 no's. And really, the breakthrough moment for me was when

I ended up connecting with 2 different investors. They were angel investors. One of them had been the former CEO of a company called REA Group, which is a $10 billion market cap company in Australia. And he was the CEO during a time of extreme growth. And he, along with another guy by the name of Greg Waldorf, who used to be the CEO of eHarmony, and was an early... I think he was the first investor in Trulia, the real estate marketplace in the US that was acquired by Zillow. The two of them ended up investing early on. And so I had zero signals. I didn't go to Stanford. I didn't go to Harvard. I didn't have a network. And no one thought Latin America was a place to be investing. And so when they invested, Greg was a CEO in residence at

Excel. All of a sudden, it just popped into this network that I was unfamiliar with and kind of, you know, became accepted as, oh, this entrepreneur might be onto something. And then the trajectory of the company changed immediately after that. Yeah. It's absolutely fascinating kind of how, you know, once you start to hit an inflection point and momentum bill, it's like, here we go. Talk a little bit about, as you guys scaled the business, I know there were some transactions along the way, but kind of where did the business eventually get to? Why did the transactions and kind of how does the business look today? Yeah. So the, you know, the 2011s, raised our first kind of institutional capital we raised from two local investors the founders of

mercado libre spun off and created a fund um and so kazek and then another top tier fund called monashies kind of led our series a and then we piled on some additional growth capital um spark uh you know spark invested lead edge and a handful of other dragoneer valiant a couple hedge funds um so we raised about 74 million dollars of venture uh scaled the business it was quite competitive. We went against a Tiger-backed competitor. And in the early days, they had raised much more money than us and were well-funded, had years ahead of us. So that was a real struggle to go head to head with them. And then our other competitor was the largest media company in Latin America.

And I'm not joking when I say that they basically own the media in Brazil. It's... I remember when we were competing, and I was in a cafe one day. And they have these telenovelas, which are soap operas, and they get Super Bowl audiences every week. Like this is... And I remember inside the soap opera, they did a plug for their products, are competing. They're like, you know, João, you got to go to Zap, the real estate place. And it's organically in the soap opera. So that was terrifying as an underfunded, scrappy entrepreneur going against this media giant. We were very scrappy. We bootstrapped hard in the early days. So we were very good with

managing our money. And so we were much more efficient in our growth. And we grew organically while everyone else was spending big dollars in media. And so that enabled us to go toe-to-toe with these larger companies. And one thing that I really knew, Pomp, was that there'd be consolidation at some point. That's inevitable in a market like this. So I had the realization that either you're at the table or you're on the menu. And so my goal was to make sure... Hustling to get at the table and make sure that we have our deserved spot there. What ended up happening is there was consolidation. We had approached a larger incumbent to try to do a deal. It got laughed off for a couple of years because we were so tiny.

As we started clicking away at them at their heels, we ended up doing a deal. It was essentially more or less a merger of equals where we did an equity swap, created a new company. And I became the chairman of the combined company. And so we put 2 600-person teams together and became the market leader, the indisputed market leader. After that merger, we then ended up getting an acquisition offer from a company, a joint venture of a South African and Norwegian listed company that was an all cash deal that was approved by the antitrust authorities at the end of November 2020. So we're fresh off the acquisition there. and, uh, you know, I'm, I'm kind of done, uh, you know, and, uh, and now, you know, I'm,

I'm onto my next thing basically. So I want to zoom out a little bit and just look at Latin America in general. Uh, you're probably one of the people who understands this best that I know, uh, talk a little bit just about the technology scene there and, uh, and kind of how that has grown over the last couple of years, even the last decade or so as, uh, as you were operating in the ecosystem. Yeah. I mean, things really have, have hit an inflection point over the last couple of years. It's not a region that got a lot of attention. In fact, I think it's an under-invested region. When you look at India, the GDP of Latin America as a whole is twice as large as India, yet it receives half of the venture funding. So it's a relatively nascent

market. I think over the last 4 or 5 years, there's been a handful of large softbank dropping in 2019 with their innovation fund, $5 billion. Marcelo and the team, they're saying, okay, we're going to invest in the future of the region. I think leading up to that, there was a handful of interesting opportunities. But we've seen in Brazil, the public markets are starting to heat up. More companies are going public. We're starting to see liquidity happen. And that's something that it was like Brazil and Latin America is the market of the future. And it's always going to be that way. That's the joke about the region. But I think that with the recent mega funding with companies like NewBank... NewBank, for those that don't know,

I'm sure most people know, is the largest... We're one of the largest neobanks in the world. And they just recently raised at a $25 billion market cap. That company started in 2013. So incredible value created. Sequoia was an early investor. I think wrote the first check along with Kazakh. So that tends to reshape the region, right? And all of a sudden, it's not seen as a market that, oh, it might be interesting in the future. Rappi is another example of a company that's been incredibly successful with their billion-dollar landmark funding round in the last year and a half ago. So I think that all these things have really helped to put Latin America on the global stage, where it's seen as an opportunity that

can compete on a global stage with the top emerging markets. And so that's something that is a recent advancement. But the level of sophistication of investors, more angel investors, angel operators reinvesting back in the ecosystem, these are all rising tide type things that are lifting all ships. When you talk about the global stage, is it a thing where, let's say, Latin America is competing with India or China or some other non-U.S. market? Or do you feel like, well, that's a cute narrative that might not be necessarily as true as people think? Yeah, I think that one thing that we're going to see over the next years is that there's a lot of big companies that are expanding into the region, right? like Stripe, you know, Stripe is now like looking at, you know, poking around with their operations

in Brazil and in Latin America. And so I think that given the proximity to the US and the kind of the time zone, you know, it's only, you know, it's only a few hours, you know, it's one hour ahead and, you know, from New York, right. Or two hours ahead from New York, depending on where you are in, you know, or so it's, it's has a lot of kind of connection with the US. And so I think that... I don't think it'll necessarily compete. In fact, I think China has been an early entrant in the region with the recent investment. It's not so recent now, but a couple of years ago, Didi came in and bought one of the ride-hailing companies, 99. And that minted the first Latin American unicorn of a tech startup. That was only a couple of years ago. Since then, it's been a

huge catalyst for the region. There's been a lot more activity. So I think that we look at these markets around the world. I think Southeast Asia is a very interesting market. I still think the region in Latin America is still a bit earlier even than Southeast Asia. So I don't think it'll necessarily fight for dollars or Bitcoins. But I think it's definitely an opportunity for a lot of global investors to start looking at the region, given that it's a 700-person population. It's a growing middle class. And the income per capita is higher than a lot of places in emerging markets. So I think those are all variables that will result in massive interest in the region. And we've seen that over the last couple of years.

You're talking a little bit about venture capital's interest and why they should be looking. Talk a little bit about some of the success stories or the size of the funds. I think there's kind of safety in numbers to some VCs, whether they should act that way or not. I just think that's true. And so how do you kind of think about the success stories that you can point to that give them confidence that not only are the demographics great, not only is there kind of a large market, but also there are companies that have been successful and can continue to do that and drive returns for their funds? The last couple of years, we've seen more than a dozen billion plus companies be created in the region. And so VC dollars is a good sign. Exits is better, right? So I think we're still early on the exits, but we've seen a handful of activity there. And I think that when you look at the fact that Andreessen has been doing more deals in the region and you look at the top tier, Excel has been there early. You look at those kind of top tier venture funds. I think that it's kind of like, don't ask me where you think, let me see where you're putting your money. And so when you see those investors starting to put more money into the region, I think that's a strong signal. But there's been dozens of companies that are raising $100 million plus rounds. And I think that secondary transactions are starting to happen, things like that, where those generate liquidity for early investors.

And I think that kind of kicks off the cycle. And so in terms of numbers, the numbers are still relatively small. I think last year it was a little over $5 billion went into VC, but it doubled, right? And so when you've got 2x growth, that's something that is a strong indicator of directionally where things are headed. And when you couple that with the size of the market and the recent success stories, those are strong indicators that probably some comfort in numbers there. Absolutely. Absolutely. You've got a whole bunch of stuff going on. And so you've got this really unique kind of understanding of both the North American market and the Latin American market. Is it a

thing where the Latin American companies are simply taking ideas from North America and then replicating them and localizing for the local market? Or are there companies that are actually saying, no, we have unique problems here. And so we need to build unique solutions that don't kind of serve as copycats of, let's say, North American ideas for companies? You know, it's a great question. And I get that question sometimes. And I like the question because there's a couple of things that allows me to address. So first of all, the first wave of companies were similar to mine, right? My company was a tropicalized version of Zillow, right? It's kind of a no-brainer. And it's an obvious one where it's

like, okay, this works. Why don't we kind of take this and drop it into this large market that's underserved. What I think that we're seeing now is a new iteration of companies that are solving intrinsic problems in the region. And I'll come up with another company that I actually invested in that was in the same space as real estate. There's two companies that I would like to mention in real estate, given that I'm pretty familiar with the sector. The first one is Quinto Andar. Quinto Andar, they recently raised a $250 million round led by SoftBank. GA was an investor and they're kind of series B or series C, I don't remember. And that company, they solved a very specific problem. When you're renting an apartment, and I had this specific problem. So I was able to

see the problem early. And that's why I wrote an early check in this company. When you want to get an apartment, in order for you to rent an apartment, you need a co-signer. The co-signer needs to own real estate in order for you to get an apartment. I remember this problem because it was extremely embarrassing when I had to go to my wife's family and say, Hey, can your dad help me get an apartment? Because I'm this person that doesn't have the independence to be able to get an apartment. So that's a massive pain point, right? I mean, think about how large the asset class is, rentals across the region. And so we've seen that model. They came in and they built an insurance play where they could assess the risk. And they basically just made it much easier to

reduce the friction for those that wanted to rent. The same kind of on the sales side, you've got a company like La House. They just raised a $35 million round from Greenspring and growing incredibly fast. And they're kind of combining a bit more of like not just a traditional kind of for sale compass or a Zillow model in the US. They're actually combining a little bit more inspired in a Chinese company called Beike. This is a $70 billion market cap in China company. It's an enormous company. And it combines a marketplace, a verticalized solution for those looking to buy and sell real estate. And so what starts in tropicalization ends up becoming innovation. And that's something that I think the best entrepreneurs do

because all the best companies solve real local problems. And so I think we're starting to see a level of maturity of the startups. It's not just MBAs that are coming down from Harvard and copying an idea, which is more than welcome. But there's more innovation happening where they're solving local problems and attacking enormous markets that way. So you've got a whole bunch of stuff going on. And you've got a book that you've written. You're doing a bunch of investing. Maybe let's start with the investing and then we'll get to the book. Sure. a little bit about the investing activity that you're doing. Are you doing this personally?

Do you have a fund and kind of how you're looking to deploy capital in the region? Yeah. So Pomp, it's funny. Last year, I was sitting there waiting for the antitrust to approve our deal. And as an entrepreneur, this is nerve wracking. Zero control. What the hell is going to happen? One of my buddies in Mexico, his deal got blocked in Mexico. And I'm like, he's in my ear like oh man i hope it works and so uh i was like okay i gotta do something right i gotta get distracted so i basically just like opened up you know my dms on twitter i opened up like you know all the messages and i'm like if you're an entrepreneur in latin america and you've got a problem you're trying to solve let me know and i'm going to provide kind of some free advisory

work no strings attached and it was kind of wild right i got like a lot of people interested because I had some degree of success in the region. And so I took 150 phone calls from founders, basically just Zoom. And this was during the pandemic, right? So there was a lot of interest and a lot of uncertainty. And what happened after that was I ended up connecting with 2 other co-founders who... Gina Gotthil ran growth at Duolingo. She was an early person there that took them from 3 to 200 million users globally. And then another friend of mine who ran tech at a venture-backed company in Sao Paulo. And the three of us formed a small team. And we basically just started helping these founders. No strings attached. We didn't take

any equity. I ended up cutting a bunch of checks in these companies because we were organizing all these sessions. I wanted to tap my mentor network because I was very fortunate to have amazing advisors that helped me over the years that I couldn't have done it without them. And it's a journey as an entrepreneur. And so we wanted to bring all this expertise globally, help these very bright-eyed, bushy-tailed founders that are trying to build incredible companies to transform the region. And what we ended up happening is we hosted sessions on everything from fundraising, sales, marketing, products, PR, and magic happened. All of a sudden, we had 40 companies. They're all helping each other. Mentors are helping them. And so we essentially built a

community is what we built. And I ended up writing 10 checks. And then I'm like, okay, how am I going to let people know about these companies? These are really interesting companies. So these are just angel checks. So I'm like, I got to call my friends and let them know about these companies. And so given that here we are on Zoom, I basically hosted an event, call it a demo day or whatever it is. And we had 17 entrepreneurs pitch 4 minutes back to back. And we had... Originally, it was going to be a few of my friends, 97 investors from all around the world listened in, asked questions, and then some funding kicked off after that. So it was a good way to mark up some of my angel investments and a great opportunity

to source the best deals, given that I have a pretty strong network in the region. So that organically happened. And then we ended up like, this sounds like it could be a business. We haven't really decided what the business model is going to be yet. we're really focused on building the social capital first um but we're basically we do have a fund that's a rolling fund you can go to fund.latitude.com it's latitude without the e because it's in spanish so fund.latitude with no e.com and that describes the the funds we're really looking for uh operator people you know similar to kind of you know you know what you've got going and people that can add value and are interested in the region. So it's a great way for

a little R&D, throw a small check in, you know, free R&D, hopefully, you know, that it generates some returns for you and learn about the market. So that's something we just launched. In fact, this is the first time I'm publicly speaking about it. So, you know, I guess now is a good time as any, right? We will make sure to drive a couple of people there. Just don't yell at me if there's too much traffic. I heard, you know, a few people pop, uh, let's talk about your book, uh, that you've recently written as well. Uh, what, what is kind of the idea going on there? And then where's that at? Yeah. So the book, uh, you know, it's, it's called Viva the Entrepreneur. My company was Viva Real, uh, and it's, you know, founding scaling and raising venture capital in

Latin America. And we launched last week. Uh, we hit number one bestseller, um, in the U S in the venture category, which kind of blew me away. Because when I saw it passing venture deals from Brad Feld, the book that I literally read on the way to visit all the VCs on Sand Hill Road, that kind of blew my mind. But it just shows that there's more interest in the region. And so that book is live on Amazon. And it's really the book that I wish I had when I started. I would say Linda Rottenberg, who is the founder of Endeavor. Endeavor is a global organization 40 countries. A lot of the largest companies around the world that are in tech outside of the Valley are part of this network. 2,500 entrepreneurs, billions of dollars of value

created. And there's the support network for that. She was kind enough to write my forward and her description was, it was the hard thing about hard things for Latin America. I think it was a bit of an overstatement. And anytime I'm being in the senses of Ben Horowitz, It's a, it's pretty kind of a humbling, uh, humbling statement, but, uh, you know, I, when I read that book, it also kind of really affected me because I felt, you know, the loneliness, uh, being on the journey as an entrepreneur. And so I've tried to write the book that I wish I had when I started. Talk a little bit.

Um, and I think you cover some of this in the book, just around how important the people are, uh, in the region. Uh, and now that there's been more and more folks who've been successful, uh, I know there's Wences and a couple of others. Maybe talk just about how important that network is and how that's growing from kind of a people perspective. Yeah. So, you know, this is an important part of the region, right? And I mean, it's something that we take for granted in like, you know, hotbeds, like, you know, like the Bay Area or New York where there's like this ecosystem, right? And it's like, you've got success and they, people reinvest back in the ecosystem. And like

that stuff is at its early days. Like we're in diapers and not in, it's just like, this is, this is day one, right? And so when you've got people like success stories... I mentioned Endeavor. Endeavor... Wences was one of the first Endeavor entrepreneurs, actually. And so Linda was... They call her the chica loca, the crazy girl, because she's from New York. And she's like, I think that there's incredible entrepreneurs outside of Silicon Valley. And so she went down to Argentina. She discovered Wences. Wences at the time was launching... He launched the first ISP, Internet Service Provider, in Latin America from Argentina when he was 24. And then soon after, that didn't work out. He got moved out of that.

And he ended up starting Patagon, the first bank for the region. And she was trying to raise money to support these entrepreneurs. And everyone was like, Latin America, there's no entrepreneurs in Latin America. That's absurd. That's not going to work. And they ended up helping Wences. Linda actually kind of helps her find her, you know, find a COO. Uh, in fact, her assistant ended up getting married to, you know, to Wentz's, uh, Bell, uh, and Wentz's ended up getting married from, from Endeavor. And so, you know, 18 months later, Wentz has sold Patagon for $750 million in an all cash deal to Banco Santander. And this is like, you know, a month or two before the dot-com crash investors obviously made a pile of money. And all of a sudden they're like, Hey,

do you got any more 26 year olds or 27 year olds that are, that are, that are doing any interesting stuff. And so that, um, I tell that story, you know, and Wentz has ended up being, becoming an angel investor in our company. And if only I, I listened to him back in the day when he was, you know, talking about Bitcoin and, and, and bringing that to, you know, to, to the masses, uh, you know, I, uh, you know, so I think that we need more success stories like that and we need more people

reinvesting in the ecosystem. And so I think that, you know, that's kind of, we're at an inflection point there because now there's more companies. And so I, you know, I'm very grateful for Wentz's and other people like him, you know, Mickey Malka from, you know, from Ribbit Capital, people like that, that, you know, they paved the way in the region and they became advisors and mentors to me and investors. And so I kind of look at this as an opportunity to pay it forward. You know, I feel almost the responsibility to, you know, reach back and kind of pull up the next generation of iconic, you know, founders that are building incredible businesses

in a market that is enormous with a lot of friction points. Absolutely. And it feels a lot like, you know, once you are kind of in this together, right? And you're building a new region when it comes from a technology landscape and somebody makes it, they feel very obligated and loyal to turn around, not only say thank you to the people who helped them, but also to kind of help the next generation of entrepreneurs. And it feels like that kind of community is definitely present in Silicon Valley and is now kind of becoming present throughout Latin America as well.

I think that's perfectly said. And, you know, it's part of my conviction that over the next decade, this is what I want to do. I want to help elevate the ecosystem. And I think there's incredible talent and an incredible opportunity. And so it's something that I feel is part of my responsibility. And I think it's an incredible opportunity, obviously. It's not charity work at all. Before we get into the rapid fire questions to wrap up, the big, you know, kind of development, if you will, over the last 12, 18 months was COVID and this whole idea of now everyone is sitting at home. I used to do all of these interviews in person. Now I do them all remotely. You as well, rather than go and meet people in person, you now sit at home and do a

lot of this. How has that helped Latin America, right? Is it something where now it isn't as important for investors to get on a plane and travel there? They can kind of do things through the internet. And so that's actually increased accessibility to the region. Entrepreneurs and investors both get more comfortable fundraising online. Just what have you seen post-COVID really hitting in terms of it being a beneficial thing for the Latin American ecosystem? I would say I can think of three things. First of all, the fundraising, no doubt. This is opening up a world. Just like when we did our demo day and we had 97 investors, Our last one, we had 180 something investors from all over the world, particularly at pre-seed,

right? And seed and pre-seed, where it's just like, you're betting on the team, you're betting on the market opportunity. That's opened up a wide array of opportunities kind of connected to that, but a separate point. We look at the network of people that are available to help and advise. And so you can get an early angel investor that's located anywhere. and then they can also add value to what you're doing. I was very fortunate to find those two early investors that not only they bring money, more importantly, they added value

and could help me with kind of the strategy fundraising and ideas on execution because they had experience. So we're seeing this right now with Latitude where we built this amazing mentor network. And we have mentors in London. We have mentors across Europe and in the States that people that actually... Think of all the incredibly talented people that have gone through places like Facebook or Google or Amazon that... Luis, one of our mentors is at Zillow. He runs

product at Zillow. He's from Argentina, grew up in Venezuela. And now he's a mentor sharing all of his experience in product management at a company like Zillow. And these people have an intrinsic interest to like, you know, they had an opportunity to come to the States. They made it big time a lot, a lot of ways, and they want to, they want to lift up their, you know, the ecosystem. So I think that that is kind of the second point of, you know, there's a connection there. The last thing I'll say is that talent is anywhere now, right? I mean, I I'm building this next thing. There's, there's seven of us, half of the team, you know, three of the seven, I haven't actually met in person on my team. Right. And, you know,

I feel like I know them. I work seven months with them and we're just as close as we would be in an office. So wherever you stand on the remote versus office debate, I think it's incontrovertible that we're in a position now where companies are being built. And to add to that, there's big companies in the Valley that are starting to hire engineering talent because it's flat now. The world's flat. I remember reading that book from Friedman back in 2004. And I'm like, the world is flat and that is, it's couldn't be more true today. And so you're seeing, you know, engineering talent from Argentina, Buenos Aires, building products, you know, for companies in the States.

And that's just, I think, you know, we're seeing a decentralization of the Silicon Valley and the Silicon Valley now is in the cloud, right? I, uh, I love it. And I think you're dead on, uh, and the people who recognize this earlier rather than later will, uh, will greatly benefit for sure. um asking three questions to everyone to uh to finish up and then you'll get to ask me one uh to take us home uh the first is what's the most important book that you've ever read and you cannot say your own um you know i guess i'm gonna say business book like

the most influential book on my kind of trajectory is like i remember walking the streets of bogota colombia you know i was an english teacher you know like didn't have much going on but i knew i wanted to do something um you know in real estate i would look up at these big skyscrapers in in bolota and i had it on my my ipod at the time i had the book uh the long tail um you know by chris anderson and it was just like boom like oh this this whole concept of like you know the long tail the head like you know and that was when i had kind of that That contributed to the idea of real estate, getting all the inventory. When I started, no one had inventory. It was like they would just market a limited number of properties.

And so I went in and I got all the listings. And then all of a sudden, we built the largest marketplace with the most liquidity. And I wouldn't have done it if I didn't read that book. So I would have to give a nod to Chris Anderson in that book. And so that's probably... A lot of other books is a tough question. But that would be the one that probably had the the most impact on my career. That's a great answer. Second question is more personal. Sleep. This comes from our friends over at Eight Sleep. I used to be a five, six-hour sleeper. Now I'm more like eight or nine hours. And they've got these thermoregulated beds that essentially you can make it hot or cold. I basically sleep like I am in Antarctica at this point. And it's much,

much better for me from a sleep perspective. What's your sleep schedule and how has that changed over the years, especially when you were running a business to today, not running kind of that fast-growing technology company? Well, it's a great question. It's something that I have an internal struggle with, like I think a lot of entrepreneurs do, where there's the... It's just so... Building a company is daunting. It's exciting. I like to say that your best day and your worst day is the same day. And so it's just an emotional roller coaster. And so I think that i'm not the poster child for this uh i wish i was better at sleep and i'm i'm it's something that's a priority so i need to maybe check out the product that you mentioned because

i'm i'm working on that on my own i think that i go through kind of uh you know swings here with you know with with my my sleep patterns i try to get you know a good chunk of sleep and i try to get to bed relatively early um i find that when i'm going through an exciting moment like with this book. Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, we're talking on a few hours of sleep and it's because I'm, it's because I'm, uh, I'm, I'm excited about what's going on. Uh, but I am trying to rein in the kind of hyperactivity of my mind and the excitement of everything that's going on. And actually I wrote about this a little bit in my book. So, um, you know, and I'm not the, I'm not the expert on it, but I have, I strive to do what you've been able to accomplish there

because I just know how, how, how important it is as, as, you know, someone to be productive. I'm a convert, man. I'm a convert of the sleep religion. I know that it's, uh, it's kind of like CrossFit or, uh, uh, intermittent fasting or something else, right? If you do it, you got to talk about it. But I got to say that, uh, especially for somebody who, uh, who, you know, was flying all over the place and doing all this crazy stuff. Now, all of a sudden, if I don't get eight hours, uh, I feel like it feels weird. It's one of those things you're like, how did I ever lives like this. Um, so I'll send you some links to, uh, to eight sleep and everything. Please do, please do, man. I'm, I'm, I'm like, it's an important one. And like,

it's kind of like the people that I envy, like that meditate. And I'm just like, damn, I know it's so good. I got it. I, you know, and, and I'm, I'm like here on the sidelines, like, you know, once in a while I'll dip in and I'll like kind of get a hit of it. And then, you know, I'm, I'm, but I'm not, I'm not fully there yet, but I'm just a work in progress, man i still got some years left and i'm uh one percent every day hopefully i hear you i hear you all right last question that you get to ask me one is aliens are you a believer or a non-believer man uh hearing elon on clubhouse the other day uh you know with his uh statements around uh you know if if there was he would know about it um if we you know but that being said i think

I'm going to have to um I'm going to have to to go with the Drake equation here uh and and you know I'm not talking about the I'm not talking about the hip-hop star here where we're well you know uh you know the number of civilizations in our galaxy with you know which communication might be possible is too enormous for me to deny and so you know I'm gonna have to go with uh yeah they exist and uh you know it's a big place so I'm on that I'm on that train I'm on that intergalactic train. I'm right there with you. I don't know if we'll come in contact, but I definitely think that they exist. What one question you have for me to wrap this up? Yeah, man, I would love to know one. What was your, I got, if I can be selfish here and ask

two questions. What was your first investment that you made ever? And why did you make it? i mean the very first investment i ever made was definitely in myself uh which is kind of a cheesy shitty answer uh i was just buying books and all that kind of stuff um the first financial investment i ever made uh this is gonna sound really bad we can we can count we can count you know baseball cards uh that's that also counts to be honest i don't remember like a financial investment in terms of like a stock or anything like that. I don't think it was stocks. The first thing I can remember, this is wild, but after I came back from Iraq, I was 21 years old. And in the spring after I came back, somehow I got into foreign currency trading. And I had a hot

hand for about six months. And I turned like, you know, like 9K to $72,000. I was like, well, needs a job i'm gonna do this when i leave college like it's amazing and then got cocky uh over the summer i went and did it a uh an internship in new york city was trading on my phone like an idiot you know kind of the classic you know day trading nonsense and so very quickly realized like hey let me take my uh take my my measly profits that are left and get the hell out of this thing uh but that's the first time that like uh i remember like really taking like capital and and say, hey, I'm going to go and risk it to get a gain. And frankly, I'm thankful for it, right?

It's like, it taught me all the good things and the bad things all in a condensed period of time. And I haven't done too much trading ever since then. I hear you, man. You got to be long. The currency game, it's like that first taste of blackjack. And then you don't want to make a living out of that. Um, my second question is, so pop, I started a podcast, uh, you know, I think, you know,

you're a big inspiration and all the content you put out and, you know, I'm, I'm trying to take a, take a page out of, out of your book. Um, so I started a podcast and I, after listening to a lot of your episodes, I want to know what the story is on what's the origin of the story on bang bang i got a bad memory i guess because i don't remember you're just you're just you just you just knew that it would it would hit i you know what i'd love to you know either if you don't have one that's okay but it is it was a story it's it's a consistency thing like i knew that if i started it every time uh with the same thing like it would eventually just get you know like basically seared in people's minds and uh i think that part of it is just like you know other

people are like, uh, hello, welcome to, you know, whatever, uh, thing. And like, that's just not me. So I was like, how are we going to start this thing? And so I'll actually tell you a good story not to do specifically with bang bang, but, uh, for people who listen to the podcast, uh, when it was off the chain, now if you listen to the intro, um, the very first intro I ever recorded, uh, was one shot. So, uh, the guys that were helping me with it, uh, they basically were like, Hey, here's the music. And I, if I remember correctly, I think I had the, I had headphones and I was listening to the music and as it was going, I had a microphone in front of me. And so I just, one shot was like, you know, what's up guys? Blah, blah, blah, whatever. And in it,

I was like the best podcast in crypto. And so when I got done, they were like, dude, we haven't even recorded a single episode yet. And I was like, yeah, but we're the best, obviously. Like kind of like joking, but they were like, should we like roll with this? And I was Like if we say we're the best, we're going to be the best. Like we're going to run with it. And so like, I think it's just this element of, uh, you gotta have, um, you gotta have some like line, uh, or element of confidence and like when you're going to go do things at the same time, you don't want to be arrogant.

And so like that one kind of toes the line between arrogance and confidence. But I do think that, uh, there's this thing of like, bang, bang, I'm going to make it a thing. Right. And so I just did it a couple of times. The next thing, you know, people started leaving comments, you know, bang, bang, whatever. and it's like okay like this is gonna work the uh the crazy thing though is there's a couple of other people who have been like i've said i say that i'm like look man we must all be family or

something then because i guess well you know we all arrived at the same thing but i'm not i'm not stopping so uh so yeah yeah you you own that you own that um yeah i i after my first season i just finished my first season i was like man i need a bang bang what's my bang bang and so my mind that i started my second season and it's uh it's super like you know for me right like my my audience is vamos latam that's my that's my you know vamos latam like let's go latin america vamos latam you know so so that's my bang bang man i i love it and the whole podcast is in spanish well actually i started off doing it in portuguese um because i was in brazil and And then I changed it over to English.

So, but all of my audience is basically connected to Latin America or interested in Latin America. So it's Spanish and Portuguese. You know, I speak Spanish and Portuguese, but we do it in English because obviously that's the audience you want to reach anyway, right? Yeah. Makes a ton of sense. So yeah. Nice man.

Bang, bang. I like it. All right. Listen, I really, really appreciate you taking the time to do this, Brian. Where can we send people to find the book or find you on the internet? Sure, sure. So the book is on Amazon. It's Viva the Entrepreneur. So you can look for that. And Audible is coming out. The audiobook is coming out in the next month or two, which I read, which is a long period, a long process. So I'm on Twitter. You can find me

on Twitter. LinkedIn and Clubhouse are the main areas where I'm on the social web. So yeah, man, this is fun. I really appreciate the conversation. And it's an honor to be on here, man. I appreciate you taking that time to do it. You've absolutely been killing it. And I think it's important for people to understand kind of Latin America and the startup and investing scene there. So thank you so much for taking the time to do this. And we will definitely have to do it again in the future. Absolutely, man. Thanks a lot.