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Marcos Galperin

lines on the record: 24
first: 2021-05-07
most recent: 2021-05-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Was saying earlier, I think the next five years and the chapter of success for me would entail maybe transitioning out of my role to, I don't know, to a chairman role or something like that and being able to see Marcado Libre with the same entrepreneurial spirit that it has today, the same combination of risk taking and persevering that we have today, I mainly try to see that we maintain our culture without me being there in the day-to-day of the business.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would say in our industry and in our era, obviously look up to Bezos and to Elon Musk a lot because of how they like to take risks and how long term oriented they are and how much value they have created and the amazing organizations they have created. Historical leaders, I'm a bit skeptical because sometimes the way they get portrayed maybe it's not exactly the way they were. Definitely church it is someone I admire a lot, but I'm not sure if had I lived”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would love my children to be very persevering, I would like them to be risk-takers, but above all I would like them to understand that they need to enjoy the right, that there's never an end destination that is the one that provides you happiness, that you need to enjoy life every day and basically that life is a trip. It's a voyage and then you need to enjoy that trip.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say where I'm spending a lot of my energy is understanding what's the best way for me to transition out of Marco Volure and have Marco Liber continue to execute as well as it has executed in the last 22 years for the next 22 years. So I believe I'm going to be 50 this year. At some point in time, I will want to take a different role. And I think in the technology companies, founder, CEO, transitions are hard. And that's one of the hardest part of my role today, understanding how I transition out of my role without this having a negative impact in the company.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, most of the time, I'm reading daily news, not so much books, to be honest. I read maybe a book a year or maybe two because I just have to spend so much time understanding what is going on in our business and the things that are coming, what is going to come, et cetera. So right now, if you ask me, I'm spending most of my time learning about crypto and DeFi than anything else. Having said that, if I would have to pick my favorite book, I would say it's two, build to last and good to great. I really enjoyed those books. I read them over a decade ago. It was more in the times when we were building Marcaolive, the early days of Marcaolire, so produce early 2000, and they had a big influence in me. And I think in the way I tried to build Mercado Lure.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unfortunately, I think that that hasn't changed with me at all. I think it helps to live where I live and to be surrounded by the people that I have always been surrounded with. So obviously I live with more comfort than what I did in the past, but my day-to-day life is exactly the same as my neighbors and my kids live exactly the same as the kids that go to school with them. And I think in that sense, living in Latin America helps to keep you very grounded.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great question. It's probably the answer is very long, but trying to summarize it, I think it depends on the stage of the implementation of the business you are in. For example, in fintech, you know, we started doing payments and now we are an acquirer. We just got our acquiring license. We also got in Brazil the license to be a financial institution, so we were able to finance ourselves with bank deposits. We are also now issuing our own credit card. So you start integrating vertically one way and the other basically to try and reduce costs and transfer those savings to your user. So initially you start in one layer of the stack, but once you have become very successful in that layer, it's very likely that you will want to integrate one way or maybe the other way as we're doing in fintech because you need to become more efficient. There's a lot of competition and you need to pass on those savings to your customers.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Logistics, for example, and we had no idea how to do logistics. We were a software firm, you know, a technology firm. And now we are having thousands of people working in warehouses and managing packages. And we have become experts at doing logistics in Latin America, but we understood that this was a capability that we needed to develop to be successful in the next decades. Otherwise, we were not going to be able to compete successfully. And we have developed it. And it has also given us tremendous confidence because once you understand that as an organization you are able to put together your resources and learn a completely new skill and you're able to do it at scale and you're able to do it while your competitor is doing it at scale and you are able to do it as well or even better than they are and it gives you a lot of confidence that as an organization you can take risks and learn new skills and implement them at scale and that is something that is fascinating to see.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we were almost like an eBay subsidiary in those years because we provided monthly information to eBay and there was a best practice sharing agreement and we had an amazing relationship and there was a retreat in Lake Coma. I think it was, I don't know, 2003, 2004. I can't remember it was still in those days. I think eBay's media category was bigger than Amazon's GMV. So eBay was really in those days like Amazon plus Google. And I think it was the days when they were interested in having a larger share of Marca Olibre and we were not that interested in becoming a part of eBay. And yeah, since late Como, unfortunately things for eBay didn't go that well. I think that for us it was also a lecture with respect to how fast things change in this industry and how you need to focus on the long term and how sometimes you need to develop completely new skills to be successful. And that's one of the reasons why we have like five years ago decided to go.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are much harder to build when you have high inflation or political crisis or recessions or very strong swings in the economic directions that a country takes from one year to the next. So definitely it has an impact. Having said that, I think that the talent that you find in the region, the people that are able to succeed in this environment tend to be incredibly resilient and very talented.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“While it certainly holds back the ecosystem because so much volatility makes it harder to create long-lasting companies, I think it tends to give the entrepreneurs shorter term horizon in the way that you've gone through so many crises that if you have an offer to sell, maybe take the offer because who knows what can happen in the coming years. I think it makes it harder to retain top talent in the region. And I think it makes it harder to create all the infrastructure that you need to create an ecosystem like the one you have in Silicon Valley, right? You need great entrepreneurs. You also need great educational institutions. You also need great infrastructure for Wi-Fi or 5G or whatever. You also need VCs. You also need angel investors. You also need companies like Y Combinator. So you need all this infrastructure to create this machine of one successful startup after the other.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think Mercado Bau is already very big, but I think the potential for Marcado Bau in the next two, three decades is just beyond my imagination because what is happening right now, it's like everything is compounding. Marcao Pau is very large and it's doing really well. But fintech in general is gaining traction in the region. And I would say in the Western world. And then you have DeFi coming along. So you have these three things that are exponentially. They work together and I think they create so many opportunities that is very exciting to think about all the things that are going on. But more importantly, all the things that I think will happen in the next two decades.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mainly, we focus on ourselves and playing our game and executing our plan. That's what we like to do. And I think that's the best way to be in this industry for many decades. We have been here for 22 years and we aspire to be here for many more decades ahead. And when you look at in the last 22 years, had we focused on the competition, our main competitors have changed so many times that it would have been the wrong strategy. And I'm sure in the next decades, our main competitor is going to again change many times. So what has remained constant is there's a lot of change. There's a lot of innovation, there's a lot of growth, and we have a great company, we have a great team, and we need to allocate our resources, financial and human resources in the best way to capture the opportunities that we have, regardless of what our competitor at certain point in time is doing or not.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We like to play our game. We like to play our game. We like to understand what are our strengths and what are our weaknesses and what are our opportunities. Obviously we look at our competition as much as we look at our industry and adjacent industries, but more to understand the things that are going on and the features or the products that we like, but we don't play the game based on what our competition is doing. And that's why we have built something that is pretty unique because if you look at what we have, the combination of different platforms from our own shops, if you want our own version of Shopify to our own version of PayPal, to our own marketplace, it's something that is pretty unique. There's nobody that has done it like that. Maybe the combination of Alibaba and financial put together, but they are not together. Going back to your question, I think we like to obviously we look at our competition closely, but we also look at the industries, technology in general closely.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that it's a balance. Obviously, you want to be well funded, but obviously, you want to minimize dilution as much as you can. And you want to focus yourself and your company and your team in building the best product. So when everybody else is just spending like crazy, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do the same. You need to spend whatever is necessary to build the best possible product and therefore you need to raise the money that you require for that. And anything beyond that will increase your dilution and will start spending much more because simply there is more to be spent, which is probably not the right strategy. So obviously when the money is easy to access, I would go ahead and access because sometimes the market's shut down and you don't want to be raising money in those periods. But you don't want to overdo it either.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tide goes away, you see who has been swimming naked, and I think that these things clear the market of many competitors and of many companies that have a great story, but they are not really delivering, and they actually help the companies that are delivering.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think those crises have had a big impact on our culture, but I also believe that we had that culture that enabled us to succeed in that environment whereas some of our competitors were more short-term focus, were more inclined to build something to sell, more inclined to hire people that are after the hype than after really building a sustaining and successful organization. We've always wanted to create a company that could prove that you can build an amazing organization from Latin America and that we could innovate and have a world class execution and a world-class product. And I think that as we were saying before, when you're focused on those things, market crashes and financial crises are not that big of a deal. You try to focus on the real thing. So I think that actually those crashes, when you look at it with hindsight, I think they were helpful for us because they, as they say, you know, when the”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we've always liked to focus on the real aspects of the business, you know, and the financials come and go, the markets on a daily, weekly, or sometimes monthly basis. They are very volatile. But we have always stayed focused on our key operating metrics, and we have always seen our new users going up, transactions going up, different products that we launch, starting to gain traction. And those are the things that we really focus on. whether it's a stock price or the market indexes, we try to really not focus on those too much. So that helps to keep the composure. When you see that the KPIs continue to evolve well, despite the market”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To provide liquidity, that was the day we priced our IPO, so it was traumatic. And initially I was priced at 18. Initially, our stock went all the way up to 80, but a few months later as a financial crisis intensified, it came all the way down to $8. So it was quite painful.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think the crash had a big impact on us. I don't know which crash we are referring to because we went through two crashes. First, the dot-com bubble crash that came in the middle of our second round fundraising because we had signed the term sheet for our second round, but we hadn't closed the round. And the weeks that went between the signing of the term sheet and the closing of the documents were a nightmare for us because the crash happened right in the middle and it created a lot of tension between the investors and us and we had to renegotiate many terms. and it was very painful. And then after we did our IPO, but actually in the middle of the roadshow, it was when the financial crisis happened, actually, when Burst turns, when bankrupt. Actually, the day that we IPOed in August of 2007, that same day was the first time since 9-11 that the federal reserve, the Japanese Central Bank and the European Central Bank had to intervene in the markets in a coordinated fashion.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a great idea. Sometimes you're forced to do it because obviously every year you need to allocate resources and you have a certain number of resources. Unfortunately every year we have much more ideas that we think are great ideas than the resources available even though we are growing the resources every year and sometimes you look at the ideas that you are not going to be able to allocate resources to and you say, you know, I've been trying this idea for three, four years and this is enough. I'm not willing to let these other ideas off the list to continue pursuing this one. And that's typically what happens. There's other ideas that deserve the resources that maybe for one year or two years you have postponed those ideas and at some point in time you say, okay, not any longer.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From one year to the next, and that is because for many reasons, but always we were required to iterate behind every idea. So we are very persevering, but we also like not to be starborn. So at some point, something that hasn't worked that well for two, three, four iterations, maybe this is not the right idea and let's drop it. But let's make sure that we iterate several times before we conclude that it is not the right idea because often it's a right idea, but it's a wrong implementation or the wrong execution.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. We try to create an environment where people are not afraid of making decisions and taking risks. That's why we try to foster entrepreneurship all the time within Marcadolibri. And as I was saying before, when we get it right, we try not to make the person who brought the original idea the hero. And when we get it wrong, similarly, we don't try to create that person as a villain. I think it's mostly focusing on the process and the discussions. And then we are very, very persevering when an idea initially is very unlikely that we do something and right away we get it right and it's a home run. It's almost never been like that in Latin America. I always say that's one of the big differences between the stories that you read about the big success cases in Silicon Valley and us. We never had that hockey stick growth moment until maybe now with COVID, but we were always growing at 30 to 40 percent for 20 years, but we never grew 700%.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, definitely when you're a founder, CEO, there is a lot of weight to the opinions that one has, but I believe that if you work with a great team, I believe founder COs are also very prone to working with teams that are able to contradict and argue against one's opinions. Otherwise, it gets very boring. And otherwise, it's unlikely that you will be successful in the long term. And I have a team that actually have a harder time implementing the decisions when they are mine than when they are others because there's a lot of discussions, open discussions, and everybody understands in Marcado Libre that when we get something right, it's never because of someone had the idea. And similarly, when we get something wrong, it's so, so not because it was his or her idea. So at the end of the day, it's a discussion, it's a process of having the discussions that is very rich. And that process is pretty independent from who had the original idea.”
2021-05-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: MercadoLibre Founder Marcos Galperin on Optimising Decision-Making, Effective Resource Allocation, Growth vs Profitability, Fundraising Strategies and more on the Journey To Build a $72Bn Market Cap Company · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source