The Enthusiast: Founders and VCs beyond the Valley

On this episode Pat sits down with Pedro Vallenilla, Co-Founder & CEO of Cashea, Venezuela's leading BNPL and Fintech platform in the country that is reinstalling access to credit for millions of Venezuelans. Pedro is a true serial entrepreneur with Cashea as his fourth venture, he has shown incredible grit and is now bringing consumer credit back to his home country.

We chat about:

- What happens to an economy if you remove access to credit

- How Cashea is fixing it

- Putting the flywheel together and why Cashea won't stop with BNPL

- The early days of Cashea, getting the first customers in and building the product

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On this episode Pat sits down with Bernardo Garcia, Co-Founder of ripping remittances startup Felix Pago to dive into the early days of the business, finding product-market-fit and doing things that don't scale. In particular we chat about how they realised that the existing solutions were not really solving the problem for hispanics in the US sending money to their home countries and how they put the flywheel together relying on WoM.

You will learn about

- Finding product-market-fit and launching on the back of your customer needs

- Be where your customers are and acquiring customers manually

- Scaling beyond the early days, geo expansion vs. product expansion, what route will Felix take and why

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On this episode Pat sits down with Puren Ucar, the fmr Head of Talent at Earlybird Digital East, to dive into building out the talent function at one of Europe's leading VC firms, Earlybird, what does it take to build high performance teams and why founders up until Series-B still need to dedicate 40% of their time on hiring and how AI changes the game.

You will learn about

• The intersection of recruitment, incentives and retention in building high performance teams
• How AI will impact startup roles and efficiencies are distributed unequally

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Follow The Enthusiast wherever you are getting your podcasts and make sure to check out our newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ to stay up to date on our latest episodes with founders and investors beyond the Valley.

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On this episode Pat sits down with Gaurav Biswas, Co-Founder & CEO of leading freight forwarder and logistics scaleup Trukker. We dive into the company’s journey from their initial launch in India, focusing on MENA scaling to 200M+ in revenues, servicing 1,500 clients across 9 countries and raising $300M+ from the likes of ADQ, Ruya and Investcorp 

You will learn about

• Scoping the opportunity and setting your target focus
• Scaling in a fragmented, archaic industry picking your battles and finding your sweet spot
• Let expansion be driven on the back of your customer needs 
• Excel doesn’t lie if the numbers don’t add up you are on the wrong track

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Follow The Enthusiast wherever you are getting your podcasts and make sure to check out our newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ to stay up to date on our latest episodes with founders and investors beyond the Valley.

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On this episode Pat sits down with Lucas Vargas, CEO and Founder of Nomad, a leading cross border account and investment solution for Brazilians that want to reduce their exposure to the local currency investing in US dollar dominated assets. Lucas takes us down the rabbit hole on building out the product, scaling to 100M in ARR within 5 years, incorporating new features and his take on dollar primacy, other fiat currencies and stable coins. 

So much to unpack there. 

You will learn about: 

• Prioritizing always jobs to be done and customer needs for your product roadmap
• How to build generational wealth and allow the 99% to invest like the 1% 
• The FX, investing market opportunity in Brazil 

Want to stay up-to-date on latest episodes?

Follow The Enthusiast wherever you are getting your podcasts and make sure to check out our newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ to stay up to date on our latest episodes with founders and investors beyond the Valley.

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On this episode Pat sits down with legendary operator and former MELI CFO, and of late CEO of dLocal, Pedro Arnt, to dive into his learnings of 20+ years of company building.

We discuss

• Why he is bullish on emerging market's potential
• His learnings around the early innings of MELI riding the wave of digitisation in commerce in the 2000s and why long term building beats short-term CAGR ambitions
• The parallels he sees across verticals around digitisation in emerging markets from commerce to payments and how slower consumer adoption calls for more discipline and consistency but allows you to grow at +30% CAGR for many years
• His take on balancing startup agility and processes and org. complexity of a big corporation
• His new chapter with dLocal and why going from emerging market to emerging market makes all the sense

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On this episode Pat sits down with Camila Vieira, Partner and head QED’s Brazil operation. We dive into the fund’s evolving commitment on the region, how they got it right investing in Nubank in 2015, what their thesis and structure looks like today 10 years later and whether LatAm’s next outbreak success will also be Fintech? 

• How do sector specific funds differentiate from generalists in their way how they look at Fintech
• Taking a unit economic and defensible moat lens instead of following a themes based investing approach
• The last whitespace in Fintech in Brazil 
• How should founders think about liquidity and how QED is preparing their portfolio 

You can find Camila on LinkedIn here. 

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Follow The Enthusiast wherever you are getting your podcasts and make sure to check out our newsletter on LinkedIn⁠here⁠ to stay up to date on our latest episodes with founders and investors beyond the Valley.

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On this episode Pat sits down with Michael Lints, Partner at leading South East Asian VC firm Golden Gate to dive into their expansion into MENA, his move to Qatar, why now and how he sees the two regions complementing each other in terms of ecosystem maturity, VC and LP landscape. 

You will learn about:

• Doing business in MENA
• Cross pollination opportunities between the two regions
• Liquidity and exit opportunities and t he importance of Secondaries in SEA 

You can find Michael on LinkedIn here.

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Follow The Enthusiast wherever you are getting your podcasts and make sure to check out our newsletter on LinkedIn⁠here⁠ to stay up to date on our latest episodes with founders and investors beyond the Valley.

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On this episode Pat sits down with Mihai Faur, CIO of UiPath to discuss his 10 year journey with the company from a small startup in Romania to the global automations company it is today. 

We dive into the IPO readiness piece, how as a Chief Accounting Officer he set the company on the path for IPO following Daniel Dines' vision in 2019 to bring the company public in 2 years. 

You will learn about

• What does it take to get a company from startup mode to IPO ready 
• How to get to operational predictability 
• The role AI will play in UiPath’s 2nd act merging AI and Automations 

You can find Mihai on LinkedIn here. 

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Follow The Enthusiast wherever you are getting your podcasts and make sure to check out our newsletter on LinkedIn⁠here⁠ to stay up to date on our latest episodes with founders and investors beyond the Valley.

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On this episode Pat sits down with Managing Partner of Across Capital, Rafael Costa, to dive into his journey building Across investing cross-border in the US & LatAm after a successful career at Summit Partners and Vulcan Capital, how he things around portfolio construction and liquidity for growth stage, getting to conviction when deciding to invest and a lot more.

You will learn about

• How Rafael broke into Venture
• Why he decided to position Across as early growth stage cross border fund
• Why he is all about high conviction, concentrated bets
• His take on driving liquidity and how it influences his decision making around portfolio construction

You can find Rafael on LinkedIn here

Want to stay up-to-date on latest episodes?

Follow The Enthusiast wherever you are getting your podcasts and make sure to check out our newsletter on LinkedIn⁠here⁠ to stay up to date on our latest episodes with founders and investors beyond the Valley.

Follow Pat on LinkedIn ⁠here⁠.