YouSaid · the spoken record

Nicolas Szekasy

lines on the record: 38
first: 2021-08-16
most recent: 2021-08-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Leading fund managers have made over 10,000 investments into 6,000 startups via Angelist, all online and all in one place. And with the recently announced rolling funds, you can easily find and invest in these top fund managers on AngelList.com forward slash rolling.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This new world of remote work is here to stay, and so are all the headaches that come with running a remote team. Rippling helps fast-growing companies automate their HR and IT systems, and now they're making it super easy to manage employees and contractors anywhere. When you hire people in new states, Ripling can now automatically register your startup with each state tax agency and keep you compliant with all of the different local labour laws. From there, Rippling lets you onboard new hires in literally 60 seconds. You can instantly set up people's payroll, benefits and all of that apps like Slack and GitHub. So if you're looking for just a much easier way to run your startup remotely, better head over to ripling.com forward slash 20 VC. That's rippling.com forward slash 20 VC. And finally, I have to say, I just love using Angelist fund admin platform to manage my investments. The team and the platform at AngelList, they take care of all my back office needs so that I can focus on working with great founders.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Real pleasure. This has been amazing. Thanks so much. Love that discussion with Niko, and what an incredible tenure it has been with Kazakh. If you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes, of course you can on the 20-minute VC.com. We have an amazing episode coming for you on Thursday with Angela Strange from Andreessen, providing their perspective on the burgeoning Las Am ecosystem. That one really is a must as well. But before we leave each day, Mercury is building full stack banking for startups, applying under 10 minutes from anywhere for FDIC insured bank accounts, physical and virtual debit cards, domestic and international wires, and integrations with gusto, stripe, QuickBooks and Plan, to name a few. They also offer unusual features like API access, custom team management, and their newly launched Mercury Treasury, a cash management product for high-growth startups, and they'll even help you build your startup with Mercury Rays, a program to connect you to Silicon Valley's top investors, had over to mercury.com forward slash sign up to apply, and speaking of foundational infrastructure to run your business with Mercury there, let's face”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So one is Bico, and we're very excited because we stayed for years on the sidelines on crypto and we made it in 2020. And this is a company that we were disciplined and we kept on following for years despite the prior rounds we had passed. And then after our first investment a few weeks ago, we doubled down when they raced again out of our opportunity. Final work, very excited because Bitso is the leading crypto platform in Latam. They have an incredible team, exponential growth, amazing company. And you asked for one, but I will add very shortly, not go because it came out the news, I think it was yesterday a couple of days ago. And here we participated out of our opportunity fund as well. We had invested in the company. It had like a small kitchen with seven employees in Chile several years ago when we led the Series A. So excited that we managed to invest in several rounds out of our early stage and now we managed to support the company.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is slowly happening, but in an industry that has been so silly centered for decades, I would love to see more and more local funds around the world leading more of the early stage investments in their countries.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I know that we should do that more, and it's healthy, and I say that, but I don't do it. I don't practice there with example.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say to others something like it is very important for your physical and mental health, but even for the quality of your work that you fully disconnect from work every now and then.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, that's a bad memory because Argentina was a serious candidate with basically the same team that won in 78 and they brought a young Maradona in addition, but overall didn't work so well. Italy ended up winning beating Germany in the final 3-1. But the good news is that in 86, the Maradona was at his best and he went to the workup with a group of very hungry players and then Argentina beat Germany in the final. You asked me about AD2, but I had to insert AD6 sorry for that.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One key strength is probably an ability to see what is important even in the most complex or even anarchic situations that we see so often in startups. And this extends probably to a good read around what is going on with the harder facts but also good perceptions around some of the softer intangible signals. And on the weakness side, I'm an introvert. I would define myself as an introvert and I really don't like the spotlight. I love one-on-ones. I love small groups, deep conversation, but this job requires one too many public exposure, many different types of occasions. I don't do a lot of those because I find them stressful. I wish I could relax and enjoy them, but so far have not learned how to. And I think this is a weakness to really get this job done to its best.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love to read one of my favorite moments in the year is doing the break around December when I write down the list of the fifty two books I intend to read over the next twelve months. Of course, it doesn't happen, it's an aspiration, it's impossible to read those many books.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a subset of those out of the opportunity and produce outsized returns as well in a higher IRR because these are shorter cycles, they are lower risk and maybe less upside, but they are great vehicles as well.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we are fully convinced that we are first and foremost an early stage investor and for that there's a certain size of fund that has a limit to ensure that you stay very effective and you continue to produce outsized returns. So that will not change. And maybe initially it took three years to raise between fund and two and then it took two years and the last time it took 18 months so maybe we raise with more consistency. But that will probably not change very much. We tend to like this opportunity fund complementary strategy. So we will see how that evolves but probably the size of that fund will continue to increase over time. Our first one was below 300 million. The second one was above 500 million dollars. Maybe the next one is larger than because we're also building a larger portfolio now we have 100 investments that we've made and we can invest”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stay close, and on the specific question about the references, we've got a bunch of cases, some of our best companies. We did references, and they are never stellar. They tend to be very good on some dimensions, but in most cases, if they were employees or managers in larger corporations, there's always some supervisor, some boss that didn't like them so much. So we try to put everything together within the tea leaves and see what we come up with and our own conclusions. And that is very relevant data, but it's not definitive because the role of a founder or entrepreneur is very different from the role of a manager.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interestingly, during this first decade, we didn't have a lot of misses. We know that in the second decade we will have many more because the market now is much deeper. If I had to name one company, it would be the local. They just IPO'd. We met the team many years ago. We really liked the team, so not only we referenced them, but we got to know them and we thought they were of the highest caliber. But their initial approach to the business was something that we were not totally convinced of. And then they adjusted and adapted their business model and our fault was that we didn't stay close enough to see how they were evolving in the right way. And by the time we realized that, we tried to invest, but it was too late, much higher valuation was not necessarily the right fit for this transaction to happen. The lesson there was whenever a team is amazing, but there's something that you don't like. So make sure that you follow up.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say sometimes there are businesses that you understand better and sometimes you understand them less. There might be discussions about some technical elements of a company that you have not much to add to. On the one hand, you need to educate yourself and try to get as intelligent as you can to be at the same level as others, but sometimes you will never get there because there are some skills that you don't have. In those cases, stay on the sideline and understand that there's not much that you can do to help and allow others around the room that can provide better advice to take the lead on those topics.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I think part of us being motivated to start CASEC with Arnan was that we had board members at Marcado Libre who were members of the banks or these financial institutions and they were really great guys and really smart guys and well intended but they had no idea of what was going on in our daily lives and how hard it was and how stressed we were and I think empathy and the teams and trying to understand what is happening there be available and make sure that you don't want to be the smartest guy in the room you're there to help you need to understand that your support cast you're in the passenger seat be very humble about that everything that you've got and when something is wrong you have to raise your hand as I really think this is not working we should do something about this but then at the end of the day you don't operate and you don't decide so it's more influencing and making sure that you gain the respect that you're hurt”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I guess part of that is personality. So, when there is something stressful going on, I guess I tend to focus on what is the problem and let's discuss what are the solutions and let's try to see how collectively we can get out of this mess. So this is, I guess, how I am. But also, when you think about this, if you're the board member and the team is about to collapse because there's a catastrophe, the last thing that they want is a nervous board member that is adding fuel to the fire. What they need is someone that is going to be there to try to calm things down and to help everybody get out of the mess. So even if it's not who you are, I think you should try to behave like this in these types of situations because that is the way that a board member can really help a nervous team get out of a tough spot.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You make yourself available 24 by 7 and you provide brutal, honest feedback on anything that is going on. You say what you think, what you believe in, you don't think that diplomacy is something that makes any sense in our industry, but you do that very respectfully. And then you tell the team, this is your opinion, this is your view, but the team makes the decision, they make the call. This is just...”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we still think that investing locally is very important, and even though you have Zoom, we believe that the fact that we have been around for 20 years gives us an edge on many dimensions where one degree of separation from anything that a founder might need might argue that we could not be successful VCs in Indonesia, for example. So we really believe that the local factor is very critical. And the building of the relationship is something that you do over the long term. So we try to connect with the teams before we invest and we spend as much time as possible on our decision process. We do a lot of reference check calls. Maybe we do 20 for a founder. By the way, we talk to something like 200 companies for everyone that we invest in. So we spend a lot of time talking to everyone in the ecosystem. And then building trust is by the actions that you take, by what you say, but what you do, you lead with example.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“IPOs for companies that maybe are a billion valuation or below a billion, and there's been plenty of demand. So that's another channel for accessing liquidity. So these are all the stages of how an ecosystem evolves and this is happening as we speak. And by the way, when you look at our portfolio, there are many companies that have IPO in their sites over the next 24 months. So there will be many more coming in the US.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Five ten billion dollar invaluation, they are making acquisitions, so we think that the combination of the startups that have scaled, plus the incumbents that desperately need a digital strategy in their space, plus some of the international tech companies that want to have a presence in Latam, overall, MA will be happening more, but this is lagging some of the other key elements of the ecosystem and NIPOs. There have been a bunch of Comes IPOing we pioneered with merely two thousand seven. There was really nothing there and we thought there were going to be plenty of IPOs following us. It took a while. We got to 2008 and the crisis took a while. But now you have stone and Paxeuro and XP and Globe and the local and so many others that have done incredible IPOs in the US. And one window that has opened that is very interesting is in the Brazilian market. There have been many local”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So this was being asked to us in 2011. You were asking when we were raising our first fund was fully leap of faith, but at the end, with a little bit of skepticism, everybody asked. So are these companies, once you fund them, is there going to be enough capital to follow on? And then they would ask, and once they scale, is there going to be any path to liquidity? To the first question was fully answered, every one of our portfolios, the companies have raised billions and billions of dollars after we have invested. So there's plenty of interest and today more than before for sure. And in terms of path to exit, probably on the M&A front, we're still one step behind what you see in the US, where private equity acquires companies, or there are many strategics that would make this $100 million acquisitions. We're seeing more and more of that. We have a lot of confidence because the companies that have scaled in the region, the ones that are too...”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will become an incumbent bank, the number one in the world, and the same for Quinto Andar in properties and Kavak in cars, buying and selling, renting and embedded finance. And these teams are the best in their verticals in the world and they could go on and lead with innovation and with market cap.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Today, I think that is a very unfair statement, but by the way, we have a lot of respect for the copycats. They require amazing execution. They require a lot of adaptations. Over time, they diverge from the company that inspired them. And sometimes they end up being not only quite different, but also much better than the source. But back to the question, this ecosystem has evolved in such a great way that the region is now generating global innovation leaders. And we see so many cases not code that announced this round. It has global aspirations, it has the most original strategy in the space, it has proprietary and patented AI engines, and he has the best portfolio of products in the food tech in the world. And the list goes on and on and on, and you can add Newbank is not only the largest challenger bank in the world. We think one day it could become the largest bank without the challenger.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Necessary for building fundamental value, and even if after a while one of those teams emerges as the winner in the space probably is an investor on a price per share basis because there has been so much dilution along the way, appreciation is not very exciting. So we shy away from those types of spaces where capital is going to be the main source of mode and we really focus on themes that are building something that we think can become really large. And if the entry price ends up being higher than what our initial range indicated, but we have strong conviction, we will sit down with the team and we will figure out the formula that will work for everyone.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For a continent that has been historically constrained by capital, it is great that there's availability of resources and with the hat of the founders, this is amazing. What I would say is that we see two types of scenarios, some teams that understand that they need to build fundamental value, that they need to build a great business, at some point to have positive unit economics, and if with more capital, they can build something in three years that would otherwise take them five years. That is good news. That is really good news for everyone. And probably the entry point is higher, but maybe you get to a higher valuation before the original plan. So that is great. What is concerning is that some spaces get very crowded and there are way too many companies going after the same opportunity and each one of them gets funding and they basically compete for short-term vanity metrics and not”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have a model where we have a team of investors since day one, we thought that our value add was that we would try to help the companies in whichever way they needed and we identified that the two key areas of interest were anything related to cracking growth and every company has a different challenge or sometimes it's product, sometimes it's text, sometimes it's marketing, distribution and also the other layer is recruiting people. So we have teams internally that dedicate all of their time and focus on helping companies and it is hard to scale sometimes these teams to make sure that they are fully available and as the portfolio grows we need to continue bringing the type of talent that will be there available to help the teams.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Evaluation where we still thought it could be a fan maker from there. We ran out of resources, of dry powder. So that inspired us to raise an opportunity fund, which is designed mostly to continue following up on the companies that we know really, really well. And the criteria is that at a minimum, the return will be 5x from the point at which we invest, hopefully 10x from the point at which we invest. And so far we have invested like in 10 companies out of our opportunity one and it's doing incredibly well.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are a very focused early stage fund, and that's what we do, and every investment the bar is that it will become a fund maker. So if we don't think that he has the potential of becoming a fan maker, we would not do an investment. Of course, that happens in some cases. It doesn't happen in all, but we don't have the crystal ball. But in theory, when we analyze the opportunity, that is the criteria. Now we have developed this opportunity fund that is born out of frustration. For example, in Newbank, we invested in the seed investment together with Sequoia, so it was a PowerPoint really early on. David Veles by himself, and that's when we joined. And then we participated out of the fund one in several rounds in their series A and the B and the C and the D, but we ran out of reserves, of course. We had reserved most of the fund to continue investing in Nubank, but we ran out of reserves. And when the company was racing around”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. So we decided with Hernan, let's start with a $50 million fund at least, and we go from there, and we became the first LPs, then we went to our Mercado Libre colleagues, and everybody participated. And with that, we went to some of the investors in Mercoli's Cup Table, and many of these funds have a partner's vehicle, and they invested from there. And then we went to Silicon Valley, and we talked to some of the funds that had not invested Meli but knew about us. Many of those decided to invest. So it was mostly very sophisticated friends and family that participated. Towards the end of the process, we got calls from a couple of institutional investors that they joined at the very end. By the time we were at 100 million, we said this is the right size. Let's wrap it up here. So it was not so hard. It was fully built on a leap of faith, on our past as operators entrepreneurs, and our potential to transition in”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Culture chain in the last 10 years, if you were to go to a graduating class in university in 2011, 90% of the students would aspire to join an investment bank or a consulting firm, that has fully reversed and today 90% want to become a founder or join a startup. So all of the elements are here.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To look into some of the surviving companies, and they began to do some later stage rounds. But when you look now at the picture in 2021 versus 2011, when there was very, very little, it is obviously materially stronger. You read the headlines So many things going on. To put this in perspective, 2021 versus 2011, our first fund was $100 million in 2011. This year we raised a billion between our early stage and our opportunity vehicles. There are several other local funds, every global investor is looking into the region, mostly doing Series C and beyond. But the most significant difference today versus 2011 when we were launching CASEC is the depth and breadth of entrepreneurs. It is extraordinary to see the strategic vision, execution capabilities of the teams we are currently meeting on a daily basis. And also we see a very dramatic positive”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you allow me, I would go all the way back to the founding of Melidays and say that until 989 there was nothing that could be called a tech ecosystem. There wasn't even a word for entrepreneur or a word for startup in Spanish. And then there was suddenly this brief window that opened in 1999, maybe for 18 months, and then the bubble burst and probably nuclear winter for the next five, six years when we raised money at Meli. There was not even one VC firm that was operating out of Latam. This was 20 years ago, and no international VCs had any interest in Latam. So all of our funding at Mele came from some vehicles that were set up by banks that had a presence in the region like Goldman and JP Morgan. They were our investors. Then nothing at desert gradually 2006, 7, some funds like Tiger, GA.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was extreme hard work to get there, all of the things we were doing. We had to reinvent the wheel many times. And I stayed on board after the IPO for a couple of years as CFO of a publicly traded company. And I was ready to move on. I was quite convinced that I would have more impact reinventing myself as an investor versus continuing as an operator. It was an incredibly hard decision because Melly had a great culture. By then, we were a group of friends as much as professional partners. But the timing to Lee was the right one. We had successfully IPO'd in the most volatile times. We talked about 99 within 2007 and 2008. We IPO'd in 2007 when the subprime mortgages thing was beginning to appear and then 2008 we were running the company thing that we're stock price we had been public for a few months went down 90% like”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has impacted us in a very significant way. We don't back businesses that claim that they have capital as a source of mode. We don't believe in that. We really believe in building sustainable businesses with fundamental value, with solid unit economics at the right time. In the first few years, you really need to invest and you need to have a leap of faith. You need to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But we're very focused on building businesses that if things get tough, you can pull a few levers and you survive and you'll be doing something for a couple of years and then when capital is available again, you will reaccelerate.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when you are born and raised in Latam, they give you financial crisis for breakfast. This is something that we have all grown up with even during our elementary school days and high school days and college days. There's always something going on. So of course the mention of the bubble bursting was of a different proportion and it was extremely hard because everything vanished, everything disappeared in front of our eyes. But I'm sure that we were better suited than most of the founders from more developed countries that they were not aware that something like this could happen. And the DNA of the company, Mercabo Ribe, even before this, even in the crazy days when we were getting really huge checks, we had this DNA where we knew we had to build a sustainable business because the music when they could stop. We had to be ready for that.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mentality at the time we acquired some of our competitors to consolidate the market. We brought eBay as an investor and as a reminder eBay in 2000-2001 was the equivalent of Amazon in 2021 and this gave peace of mind to our investors as we had generated a potential source of exit and then a few more things in 2003 we incubated our payments platform Mercado Pago and today you would say that we launched our fintech strategy no words like that in those days Fast forwarding a few years, we took the company public on NASDAQ in 2007, and I was the CFO, so I led the charge there. We did that with half of the capital we had raised in 2000, still in the bank, and we had a very profitable business.”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. Before Kazakh, I was part of the founding team, Marcado Libre, and that was hyper intense experience that led me to venture. We had the most extraordinary roller coaster journey with something like a hundred competitors in the region doing exactly what we were doing at the peak of the bubble in early 2000. We had a slide in our pitch deck that showed all of the logos of each one of these competitors. And then the bubble burst and a nuclear winter came where there was no funding available at all for the next five years or so. And this sounds really difficult to understand in the current environment, but it became impossible to close around. Zero additional capital was available and all sources of financing advanced. So I think we recognized faster than others that the times had changed and we focused on building the best technology and the best product experience with a disciplined”
2021-08-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source