YouSaid · the spoken record

Sebastian Barrios

lines on the record: 88
first: 2025-06-08
most recent: 2025-06-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Perfect. I am not so active on Twitter. I mostly read and find interesting ideas, but happy to see you there. LinkedIn is another one. I know some people who are very into X and Twitter actually don't like LinkedIn a lot, but I think both work and they're both have their place. Yeah, happy to connect and feel free to reach out. Something that I love about the tech industry, you can just do things. Just reach out to people and they'll probably be helpful and help you. That has certainly been the case with me. And I'm also happy to do that for anyone who has any question or wants to connect.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Atatami is not something you would sleep on directly, but it's kind of made out of bamboo. like Google for just a Japanese house, what they have on the floor is at the Tammy block. So they'll put two, three, five, ten together. So it's kind of like that green floor that you see in many traditional hotels or photos. So I made kind of like a miniature version of that in the newly added second floor of my room.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think they were thinking about the future sale value of the house or whatnot. It actually turned out to be a thing people were interested. They didn't sell the house, but they used to rent it. And I was like, whoa, this is like strange. Maybe we'll put like something here. And it turned out to be a good decision. But they were very open to us exploring and making mistakes and going back even to the start of our conversation on how to not get stuck as a big company, as a big team. You need to make mistakes and take risks. And that's something that was always encouraged by my parents.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Underneath. So I kind of like turned my room into a two floor loft, which was pretty fun. I hadn't thought about that in a while. I used to do a lot of hacker projects and maker things. And I love using my hands. I love building products, technology, code, but also physical things. Had a lot of fun with Arduinos and building tiny robots. Yeah, that's a fun memory. But I did put a hole in the middle of my room. My parents were always happy with us having projects.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, that's from a long time ago. So you did your very good research. Yeah, talking about agency at some point, I wanted to have what's called, I think it's called Tammy Room, not an expert, but basically a room in your house where you have the Tammis and you can like meditate there or train or practice. My room, like my childhood bedroom was strange in that it had kind of like a basement, like two floors you could open a hatch on the floor and go down. I think it was like a thing from how the house was built. I decided that that was the best place for putting the Tammies, but I didn't want to have a roof on top of that. So I went and bought like construction gear and like huge diamond cutters and actually caught a big hole in the middle of my room, put a stair and put the tent.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a massive way, it's also possible just getting locked down to, well, you know, this is how it's done, or this is a culture here, or this is how it's always been done. I think we can change whatever we want.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Life and the world are malleable. Things aren't as set in stone as you would think. There's usually a way to get what you're after. You actually have to be careful, I think, about what you want because if you have enough agency, you can probably get quote unquote anything. So make sure you're looking for something good and that you're going to be happy with the result. But that's probably the main one. I've heard it phrased in many different ways. Steve Job said of like, well, you know, the world was built by people like you, like me, some of them not smarter than you, some of them may be smarter than you. So you can just go out and do things as a new meme, no, and the world will probably reconfigure itself to help you, which is that one's from Mark Andreessen. Yeah, just understanding that you can actually change the world doesn't have to be.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I recommend to parents. That one's great. And maybe the last product I would mention, David Protein Bars. They're very good. I really like weightlifting. It's sort of like one of the things I do too to get my blood flowing. Super high quality ingredients, very high protein. I think it's actually a venture-backed company. I haven't talked to the founders, but reach out. I would love to meet you. You guys are doing something fun. I think those are the ones that come to mind. 3D printers are also fun. I made a telescope with my son a couple of months ago. That was very fun. There's a lot of new products now. It's a fun time to be alive.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he's five, and it's actually designed for three, four, five-year-olds. So he was probably late to the reading early bandwagon because I haven't really seen strong evidence that it actually changes outcomes in the future. The best argument I've seen for it from Matt Bateman, I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he's great on education and Montessori, is that it can lead to a very enjoyable childhood if you can read early. So if you're like a four-year-old, a five-year-old that can read very well, you'll have a fun childhood with access to a lot more information. So for us, it wasn't like a reading early. It was just making sure you have a really good fundamental on reading. It was just a base skill that propagates to the rest. And in that vein, actually, Beast Academy for Math is another great one that”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, yes. Yeah, say more. Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, as a product, and it's great. I did it with my son and kind of like I quote unquote taught him how to read using the program. I know he's probably the top reader in his class.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, recent, I don't go to the movies as often as I used to since I had kids. Sometimes we go with them, but I think probably the last one that resonated with me or that I thought was awesome was everything everywhere all at once. Just really fun movie, great acting, low budget. I didn't know when I was at the time, I sort of like did research on it later. That one was super fun. Dune, I enjoyed a lot because I like the books. It's one of my favorite books. But I do watch children's shows from time to time. There, I'm sure someone has probably mentioned Bluey already, but it's amazing. It's really well made for the kids, for the parents. Great messages, great animation. That's just a gem that I really recommend.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's also a great one to understand some of the things that we rely on and these sort of like we stand in the shoulders of giants constantly to build the things we do. I think that's another great one because the rest are probably more fiction and I love Dune. I love science fiction. You would expect”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a good one. I think it depends on the person that I'm recommended to. I try to actually make it relevant to what they're doing. If we go statistically, it's usually within the company, so management related, high output management, I think is a great one. But I also have been recently recommending people read the Odyssey. It's a super, super inspiring story. It's not a coincidence that it's survived for thousands of years. It's like a really fun read and something that just resonates with a lot of people. Another book that I really like, it's called The Dream Machine. And it's kind of like the story of computers and computing and the internet and like, for example, why is Ethernet called Ethernet? There was a low”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we covered a lot. I'm also happy to be able to share. I think that's the main reason why it's not such a well-known tech company. I think it's changing with the stock growing as well. It helps a lot of people actually know it from investing and being.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe we also did a lot of skiing, biking, trekking, and also the action parts of the SPI experience. We used to tease her still that she didn't enjoy activities that didn't have a liability release before you did them. So yeah, repel, climbing. We had a very fun childhood.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was she would drop us in the middle of the city and this is Mexico City? She says she would then just like leave us alone. I don't remember. I think she was just following us, but it would be like you have to get back home and then you have to like know public transit or ask someone for help and basically solve problems. She would send us on international trips also alone. So I think there are many things that she did. She called it independence. She wanted us to be independent. I think the term that we could use now is like agency, if solve your problems, just go and get things and get things done. So I think that was also very formative of the way I am and I approach different problems.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I'll share one fun story one morning she wakes us up like, hey, we're going camping, everyone get ready. Like, no warning. We're leaving right now. I remember my little brother, just so you understand how that plant worked. His only question was, should I go on my pajamas or should I change? So we go and turns out I think it would be actually hard to call it camping because we were camping with no gear. So it was a survival camp training is what we were going to do. There was an instructor and it wasn't like completely irresponsible, but it was like find your own water, build your own shelter, boil it, start your own fire. That was a fun one. Another fun one, and that was to celebrate New Year's fun one.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Developing curiosity. I think I would agree. I think the other one that you need is probably, it's also a trending topic now, but agency. I was saying like it's not probably enough to just be curious, but be curious and go get what you want. We were raised in a very intensely independent way. So my mother mainly had these fun ideas on how she wanted us to be wanted us to be able to handle quote unquote any situation. And the analogy that she used is that she wanted to train us like spies.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not going to be like something I have to force myself into. So I think that's something that I've done throughout my whole life and career that's worked very well.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thankfully, I think I have good intuition. But even in life, in my work, it's hard to say like, well, this is a formula for what you should focus on today. I have an intuition of what I'm most curious about. And thankfully, that usually aligns with what we should be working on and where I can add the most value to my teams, to the company, to my family, to my career, to the things I'm learning. I think that that's probably what's been the guiding principle for me. Follow your curiosity, what excites you. It's also probably what you're going to be good at because it's hard to compete with someone who loves what they're doing if you don't love that thing. But if you go in and say, well, this is my curiosity, this is what I love, I'm probably going to be good at it.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't have a stricter routine as you would expect when you talk like to executives and whatnot. Like, well, this is the time that I do this, the time that I do this. I think what's worked great for me is to follow my curiosity.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely right out of, I can't imagine our brains were evolved into, well, you know, you open your phone and you get like unlimited information about any single topic that you want. I think you have to be purposeful of what you're reading, what you're seeing. You can find absolutely anything, amazing things, horrible things. So why am I going to like focus on the horrible things?”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was more in that sense, but it probably stuck with me of being very independent minded and do your own research and actually understand what you're hoping for and what you want to do. Again, I'm not closing my ears and eyes to what's happening in the world. And I do follow a lot of tech coverage and that I enjoy a lot, like new programming languages, new frameworks, new model development. So when I talk about news, it's probably like the bad news that I think people can sometimes even get addicted to of like, okay, if I turn on the TV and put the local news channel, it's just going to be bad news. And I know that statistically it's not all bad news. So why am I going to watch a show that's pointing out very unique things that don't happen very often that are not happy stories?”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think she meant it for news and she didn't get into the whole misinformation thing and whatnot. It was mostly on like, well, you're going to watch cartoons of like people flying and be careful don't jump off the roof of the house.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to find out if something extremely important is happening now, the whole political and geopolitical environment is extremely volatile. And I hear about that from people that I follow, and sometimes I'll retweet articles and I'll read them. There was a fun memory of my childhood when we had a TV in the house. And my mom was also a very curious character, stuck a sign to it that said, everything you see here is a lie. She stuck this.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is true. That is true for a really long time. We didn't even have a TV, like the device. We bought one. My son was born and we couldn't go to the movies anymore. So I do media. I like movies from time to time. We do watch shows from time to time, but we can watch them on an iPad. I think it's a lot less addictive. If the screen is small. So even though we have a TV now, we don't use it very often. I love reading. And the social media thing, I think it's worth qualifying as well. Like I enjoy X a lot, like Twitter and reading what people are thinking, what's happening, what's not happening. That's probably my main source of news. I don't follow any news organizations just because I feel like”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could drink, but I just never think of drinking it, and I'll probably raise you even one stranger that, I don't know if the friends you interviewed mentioned, but actually also don't listen to a lot of music. When I program, I like to program in silence, which I know seems like extremely strange to a lot of programmers and developers. And I think the reason for that one and also talking about the interesting background is my dad's an orchestra conductor. So I went to maybe like hundreds of concerts for big orchestras and backstage. And it was actually very fun. But I think I had enough music for a while. And it's not like I don't enjoy music. My wife is really into music and we listen to music together and with our kids and everything. But I never have the idea of putting on music myself. So that's another strange one to share.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Control of my destiny and I mean control, right? We don't have a lot of control on our destinies, but at least physical control. Like, I want to walk there and can I walk there. I think that really marks you when you see young people over drinking. It's not a fun picture. Then I understand people like adults can drink responsibly and have fun with friends and whatnot. But I never got into it. And I think it's like an acquired taste. I don't particularly enjoy the flavor of like beer and different alcohols. Coffee, it's also similar. I don't like how it tastes. It tastes extremely bitter to me. I also think it's an acquired taste where it's like, okay, well, the effect is great because I get like a lot of energy. And then you start to appreciate the flavor, but I don't think it starts with the flavor. So again, I never got into it. Tea, I think, is something that I.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just love water. Water is amazing. I think it's not like the same reason for everything. It has turned now into like, well, I'm happy with water. Like, why do I have to alter my brain with chemicals? I like my brain. We have a good relationship. And I sleep well and I don't feel like I need stimulants of any kind. I already have a lot of fun. It did start in different ways. So the legal drinking age in Mexico is 18, younger than in the US. So people actually start drinking when they're 16, right? So very early, I got to see the effects of at least drinking a lot can have on your body. And I just never wanted to be in that situation where I didn't.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You got the flywheel and you got a lot of drivers and a lot of riders and the network effects. Then it started to scale and work. That was a fun experience”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we developed a very simple test. It's unsilly now that these companies are huge, but I was actually not sure are people going to trust getting on a car that they got from a phone in Mexico City when your parents have told you like, don't trust people on the internet and don't get into strangers' cars. So we're like combining two things that people were taught not to do by their parents. We decided to just do the passenger app and test whether people actually like this. So when you requested a car, we would call a taxi company and basically just call for you and send the car over. And that was enough for it to explode. Like we could not deal with the demand. We actually had to build an intermediary call center to call other call centers while we develop the driver side of the marketplace and actually got drivers on board.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we decided to sell the consulting side of that, keep the mainly mobile team, and start working on fun products that we could actually scale exponentially. One of those was ordering taxis from your phone. So at the time, Uber was starting in San Francisco. They started kind of like a private network of drivers and fancy cars. And eventually it was open to a lot of people. I thought, well, that would work great for taxis in Mexico City as a city with the most taxis on the planet, at least outside Asia. At the time in San Francisco, for example, at least taxis had kind of like a clunky computer and there were like these tracked by GPS or not, but like in Mexico, they use radios and you had to call a number and you never knew if your taxi was coming or not.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I also had to learn on my own, but then I was able to teach people, turn that into mobile app development company, did that for two years. And it turns out to be a very good business, but it's also boring to have to start over new projects and new projects.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“App store was just starting when the iPhone was getting big. So I actually got contacted by a lot of different companies like multinationals, governments, well, you have the number one app. So we want you to build an app for us. There weren't that many people into iPhone OS at the time. It was called Development. C and all the ways to build a good app. So I started building apps myself for a bunch of different people and companies. Eventually, I couldn't scale that and had to hire people. So I hired my friends from college and taught them how to do apps. We actually all learned from a free online course from Stanford. It was a great course on how to build apps. Because I remember going to my university professors and saying, hey, the iPhone is cool. I want to learn how to make these apps who can teach me. And they're like, no one, like, this is new. Like, no one knows how to do it.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did it for myself. It turned out to be a good investment because I ended up marrying my girlfriend. And she's still my wife and we have a beautiful family together. It also turned out to be a good business decision. So it cost $100. I think it still does to upload an app to the App Store. I thought, okay, I need to sell like around 100 copies. I mean, there are fees and whatnot, but let's say I have to sell 100 copies for $1. So I'll put on the app store. That was my business plan. And it absolutely exploded. It became the top-selling app in Mexico and in a lot of other different countries. It was not a free app. And I was also completely local. So there was like no back end, no cost, no advertising. So it was a very profitable endeavor that also very quickly turned into a business in itself. And then a separate business where people, this was when the”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One is super fun. So I had a girlfriend who I really liked at the time. I don't know if that happened in the US, but in many Latin American countries, and I think around the world, phone companies came out with something where you could call five numbers for five minutes for free, like five for five for five. So I had my girlfriend's number on there and we would talk for five minutes. But what they did is if you went over like one second, they would charge the whole five minutes. And phone balls were expensive. Now we're going to sound like old people when we talk about this soon. That was like a big deal, especially for a teenager. No, I didn't have like money to throw around and on my phone bill. So I made this app that was extremely simple. It alarmed you or like it sent a notification when you're close to reaching the five minutes. So you could just hang up and call again and have another five, three minutes and then call again.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, absolutely not. I was very happy to talk to Steve. I sent him a few emails. I never got a reply, to be honest, but sent some emails on feedback on, again, like the App Store, the iOS, and whatnot. I was super young, by the way, at the time. I think I was like 16 or 17 or 18 when I developed that app. So I was like, yeah, I didn't know what it meant to get a call from him and to send him emails and expect a reply and whatnot. It was a fun experience. And I kept building more apps. I actually started a mobile app development company a few months after that, which is another fun story.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. And it's not what you would against. You're typically hear from him. He was a lot more mercurial, I think is a term that. People use, but none of that on the call. It was actually pretty nice and chill. And so, like, well, we're not going to allow your app.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, because we just added a new rule that apps cannot overly drain the battery on the phones. So I'm happy to say there is an App Store rule that was made specifically for me at the time. I actually didn't realize I had spoken to Steve Jobs until like a couple minutes later. I was like, well, yeah, someone called Steve from Apple. There's probably a lot of Steve's. I was like, well, you know, that voice sounded extremely familiar. And I was like, okay. And then articles started popping up of like Steve and the rest of the executive team calling developers to let them know that this was happening. So I was happy to confirm that I had at least had a short phone conversation with Steve, quite the legend.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the executive team at Apple, including Steve, were actually calling developers to inform them that their apps were not going to be approved, that they were not taken off the App Store, kind of like trying to avoid them going to the press and just being more personal and explaining what was wrong with the app. And so one day I'm walking in the street and I get a phone and a blocked number, I can't identify it. pick up and said, well, hi, Sebastian. This is Steve from Apple. I'm here to, well, I need to talk to you about your app. We're not going to be able to have it on the App Store. This is training people's batteries, and we don't want that for people. I actually pushed back a little bit until I read all the rules of the app store before making this app. And there's no rule against draining the battery. And he told me.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. I always try to make it useful, at least for me. So I put it on the App Store. And this was the time where the App Store was starting and the app review process and people were actually getting very mad that their apps were getting rejected or used to a world where I just put my app out there and anyone can download it. So developers were going to the press to say like, well, Apple is not brewing my app. And then articles will be written and it would be like a PR thing.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we should clarify that the app was a bit strange. It was an app that literally helped you drain your phone's battery. There were two reasons why I made it. One was because I was learning about all the different sensors on the phone, like GPS and gyroscope and the screen and whatnot. So I said, okay, I'm going to turn them all on at the same time. That's gonna really warm up your phone. On the other end, there was like this trend. I'm not even sure where that ended up where it was better for your phone to run completely out of battery and then recharge it. I think now the recommendations actually that.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is not as easy as in other places, but I think going from that to saying like, okay, every single thing on the planet is going to run on the blockchain. That's where some of my alarms start to go off. And it's like, well, it can be a great technology and it can be very successful without having to take over the world, which can also turn into AI, where again, the claims are that it will take over the world and happy to talk about that. just understanding the fundamentals of the technology that's being potentially hyped and having a good understanding of how it could be applied to something useful for her people. I think where it's been helpful.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Involved probably in like what I would call quote unquote the real world and a business and like understanding the scale of what's necessary for things to work is it's helpful keeping a level head on like what are some of the main characteristics so we can talk about and by the way like we have crypto and Merco Liure we have our own cryptocurrency so it's not like we just say like well crypto is not useful and it's actually very useful in Latin America and countries where access to US dollars are”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not like I ignored what was happening. I'm definitely skeptic of most things, I would say. I like doing a lot of research, deep research is a great tool. I use it all the time for a lot of things. I do it myself as well. So with crypto, for example, I love the technology, actually. I think there are some very fun breakthroughs there, the distributed consensus and how you got a single thing. But then you start to run some of the numbers on like, okay, so what's the throughput? And then what can you actually put in there, at least with the technology that we had at the time? A lot of things are moving quickly and you got layer two and layer three and whatnot. But I think having a good understanding of the fundamentals and also being”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's true. It's true in some sense because it's not like I just ignore it. So I think I bought or even mined my first Bitcoin in 2010 or 12 or something like that. Leave it undisclosed how many and how many I still have. Why are you even working? No, not enough for that.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I probably got it from you. It's something extremely familiar. So I send the weekly email. I call it a weekly update. It's also not like what did I get done this week? It can be what I got done on the week, but important things are happening, new releases. That also frees up a lot of time, for example, with my COO or like, okay, on the weekly meeting, we don't have to talk about those specific things or we can pick out from that email what's relevant, what's working, what's not working. So definitely a great tool. And I'm pretty sure I got from your post just hearing you.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What worked? This is what didn't work. This is maybe something I need help with or something that stuck. Maybe we can unlock it together. I think it's strange that I haven't heard a lot of people doing it. I think actually read it somewhere a couple of years ago, and that's probably where I got the idea. I'll look it up to see if we can link it on your notes. So I don't take credit for it.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it became a meme, what was it, like one or two years ago? I used to do it before that, I should say. And I should also clarify that I don't actually have an expectation that people are going to send that to me. It's something I do myself. So I'll sort of go over what I did in the week, what worked, what didn't work, even what interesting things I discovered, and I will share that with the executive team, with our CEO who I report to. I'll share some of that with my team. It basically helps me keep track of what's working, what's not working. I usually also get feedback on those emails or help or saying like, well, let's talk about this and this and that. So I think that's something super simple that anyone can do, right? You can write a weekly email to your boss or to your team and saying like, well, this is what happened this week.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That their work has nothing to do with you, we can go out and have lunch. And we'll still be cordial. But this idea of, well, companies should be like families. And it's not true because you behave extremely different with your family. There's no expectation of high performance. I mean, in some families, obviously, and in some cases even in mine, we can talk about that. But it's always from a different perspective, whereas I think the analogy. Where the line is between yes, we can have fun together and we should as we work on interesting things. But when you are talking about work and the performance and what's working, what's not working, the Results speak for themselves usually, and we just don't hide that from anyone.”
2025-06-08 · Lenny's Podcast · How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source