The Most Important Hat You’ll Wear as a Founder

A startup founder wears a dozen hats—but there’s one you can’t afford to fumble: picking the right problem to solve.

I’ve started multiple companies, from VivaReal (acquired for $640M) to Latitud and now Camu. Each journey was different, yet the ideation process was eerily similar.

If you’re stuck in that phase, here are three hard-earned lessons that can save you time, money, and frustration.

Lesson 1: Start With a Problem You Feel Deeply—Because Passion Isn’t Enough.

VivaReal? I struggled to find a place to live in Latin America, back in 2010.
Latitud? I knew how isolating it was to build a startup from scratch.
Camu? Years of dealing with Brazil’s tax complexity made it painfully clear something had to change.

One question I always ask before committing to an idea:
Would I want to work on this for the next 10 years?

If the answer isn’t an easy hell yes, keep searching. Startups are marathons, not sprints. If you don’t deeply care about the problem, you’ll burn out before you make a dent.

Your lived experience gives you an unfair intuition for what a better solution can look like. That’s your edge—don’t waste it.

Lesson 2: Validate Quickly—Because Most Ideas Die in Your Head, Not the Market.

You’ve heard it before: ideas are cheap, execution is everything.

When we started Latitud, we didn’t launch a product right away. Instead, we brought great founders together to talk about their challenges. Those conversations uncovered real problems, which led to real solutions (The Latitud Fellowship, Latitud Ventures).

The simplest way to validate an idea? Immerse yourself in your customers’ routines.

• Are they spending significant time/money hacking together inefficient solutions?
• Do they have a workaround for something they desperately need?
• Are they paying for something that still feels broken?

Those are the signals that tell you you’re onto something.

Lesson 3: Just Start—Because Perfection Kills Momentum.

Too many aspiring founders get stuck in the ideation phase, waiting for the “perfect” idea.

There’s no such thing. Your idea will evolve as you get more data. So instead of waiting for certainty, get moving. Pick a problem that resonates, validate it in the real world, and start iterating.

And if you’re feeling the crushing weight of loneliness… all founders do, to some degree. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

A strong community accelerates everything—ideation, validation, execution. Surround yourself with ambitious people, and you’ll get where you’re going faster.

That’s why we built The Latitud Fellowship.

LatAm has outsized challenges, which means outsized opportunities for those who can seize them. With the rise of AI, this is the best era for ambitious operators to take the leap and build something big.

If you're in the ideation stage, don't do it alone. Know more about The Latitud Fellowship, and get the push you need to go from idea to startup.

See you at the founder journey,
Brian