My guest is Isaac Saldana, co-founder and former CEO of Sendgrid, the API centric email platform which went public in 2017 and was acquired by Twilio for 3 billion in 2019.

Before Sendgrid, Isaac started multiple startups that failed and faced a ton of challenges as a first time founder, with very little business background and a very shy personality.

Today, we discussed Isaac’s challenges in transitioning from founder to CEO, his decision to bring in an external CEO to SendGrid, and the lessons he learned along the way. We also covered the company-building lessons he gained at SendGrid, including insights on product development, market timing, and team building. Finally, we talked about his latest venture, Memo, and how he aims to empower introverts to build their personal brands and social capital in a world dominated by social media.

Isaac is a very successful yet low-profile and humble founder, so I’m sure many of you will empathize with his personal story.
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Issac's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaacsaldana/ 
Issac's new company: https://memo.com/

Paulo Passoni is Managing Partner at Valor Capital Group, a venture capital and growth equity firm investing across Brazil, LatAm, and the US.

Before Valor, Paulo played a protagonic role in developing LatAm’s growth equity ecosystem as a Managing Partner at SoftBank, managing their $8 billion LatAm Fund. Paulo invested and acted as a board member of several Brazilian unicorns including VTEX, Loggi and Creditas. He also invested over a decade in Latin America’s public and private equities at Third Point Management and Eton Park.

In this episode, we talked about the non-obvious investing principles he’s learned over his career, why he’s bullish on LatAm’s venture and growth ecosystem, unlike other investors, and his reflections from his time at Softbank. We also d iscussed his frameworks for investing in growth-stage companies in Brazil and LatAm, including markets, regulatory tailwinds, business models, metrics, and teams; and how this has changed since 2020 and 2021.

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My guest is Kevin Novak, the founder and Managing Partner of Rackhouse Ventures, an early-stage venture firm focused on the intersection between AI and the real world. 

Kevin has had a long and respected career in Data Science and AI, serving as Uber’s first head of data science and inventing Uber's dynamic pricing feature. Before Rackhouse, he was the Chief Data Officer of Tala Financial, advised several VC firms, and personally supported over 50 companies as an angel investor.

We discussed all aspects of AI investing, from identifying when data and AI are core to a business model to distinguishing between wrappers and new applications. We also talked about the common characteristics of industries most ripe for AI solutions. In addition, we explored how AI will shape the future of company formation and the venture capital industry itself.

Kevin is a Silicon Valley insider when it comes to AI and Data Science, so our conversation offered many insights into what leading tech companies and investors think about AI. I hope you enjoy it.

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My guest today is Rodrigo Baer, co-founder and General Partner at Upload Ventures. I met Rodrigo a year ago during a trip to Brazil and was impressed by his knowledge of the history of the Brazilian market and the trends of where it is going.

Rodrigo  investing in Brazilian startups in 2010, then went on to become a Managing Director for Redpoint eventures and a Partner at SoftBank's Early Stage fund for LatAm. In the process, he's invested in over 6 unicorns, including iFood, CargoX, and Pismo.

Today, we talked about the history and trends of the Brazilian venture ecosystem, the lessons has learned from investing in multiple unicorns, why he decided to start his own fund, and his approach to helping startups.  

This conversation was a masterclass in the Brazilian startup ecosystem. I hope you enjoy it.

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This week I talked to David Zhou, Head of Investor Relations at Alchemist Accelerator, to understand who emerging Limited Partners (LPs) are and what motivates them, and how General Partners (GPs) can raise capital from them.

Over a year ago, David wrote “The Non-Obvious Emerging LP Playbook”, which has become one of the best blog posts on the somewhat obscure world of Limited Partners, the money behind the Venture Capital industry. 

Since then, David has become one of the best community builders in Silicon Valley, focused on helping emerging Limited Partners think and invest like the most established Limited Partners. David also hosts a fabulous podcast called Superclusters, focused on demystifying the world of Limited Partners.

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There are nearly 5 million Latino-owned businesses in the US and nearly 1 in 4 new businesses are started by Latinos. And yet, access to banks and financial products is not as easily available for these entrepreneurs.  

Sean Salas decided to change that by co-founding Camino Financial. Through technology and AI, they offer affordable loans to satisfy the demand for credit that rises to 20 billion dollars from Latino micro and small businesses.

Camino raised over 150 million dollars of debt and equity funding, and in 2023 they merged with Fundation, an SMB tech-enabled lender and specialist in bank channel partnerships.

Sean and I talked about the Latino market in the US and the challenges it faces, how the business model of Camino works to allow them to serve micro businesses, and the lessons he has learned about building a company and fulfilling his vision.

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 Numerous startups like online bootcamps and MOOCs have tried to disrupt and reimagine the higher education system. 

However, the idea of merging these modern educational models with traditional universities seemed far-fetched until recently.

With over 120k paid subscribers and 1M users, Alura made headlines by acquiring FIAP, a well-known private technology university in Brazil. 

This move was a strategic step towards offering comprehensive courses and in-person classes complementing their online programs.

 I sat with Paulo Silveira, Alura’s founder, to understand the reasoning behind acquiring a traditional university, why online education can’t grow as fast as SaaS, how to balance rapid growth with the quality of learning, and whether startups will actually be able to disrupt traditional universities.
 

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Today’s guest has a habit of explaining how the payment ecosystem works on any opportunity he gets. Leveraging this expertise, Richie Serna founded Finix, a fintech that started as a payment infrastructure startup and gradually expanded into facilitating and processing payments.

To date, Finix has raised more than 130 million dollars and processes tens of billions of dollars in payments.

Riche and I talked about all things payments, the product insights he gained from the industry’s history, Finix's business model evolution from enabling vertical SaaS to becoming a payment processor, and how payments will shape the future of software.

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Elias is the co-founder of Drift, a software platform that’s reimagining the B2B buying experience by helping businesses deliver personalized conversations with their customers. Drift serves over 50,000 customers including companies like ServiceNow, Okta, Mindbody, Adobe and Snowflake; and reached unicorn status in 2021 when private equity firm Vista Equity Partners acquired a majority stake. Prior to this, Drift had raised more than $100 million in funding from the likes of Sequoia Capital, CRV and General Catalyst.

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This is my first episode, and I couldn't be more grateful to start with such an incredible guest. 

Today, I had Kevin Efrusy on the show. Kevin joined Accel Partners in 2003 and was the lead investor in companies like Groupon, Couchbase, and Facebook, which is likely one of the best venture investments of all time. The story of how he leveraged a “prepared mind” to source Facebook and convince Mark Zuckerberg in 2005 to accept the Accel deal earned him a feature in Sebastian Mallaby's book 'The Power Law'.

Kevin also began Accel's Latin America initiatives, leading to investments in Despegar, Gympass, Nuvemshop, and Quinto Andar. He has been a significant supporter of LatAm’s startup ecosystem since its early days, personally investing in two of the leading venture funds in the region, Kaszek and Monashees, and helping many other founders.

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