Follow the biggest innovators and tech founders in Latin America as they cover valuable insights and inspire entrepreneurs facing challenges in scaling their business and raising capital. Presented by Brian Requarth, Co-founder at Latitud. 

Latitud Podcast

In the early days of Love Mondays, co-founder Luciana Caletti was encouraged by her investors to talk to every player in the industry, including competitors. Not only did that accelerate their learning as a startup, but it also allowed them to build a relationship with their US-born more developed equivalent, Glassdoor. 

Fast forward 3 years, they joined forces as Glassdoor expanded and Luciana became the Managing Director for Latin America. But even though her title might have changed, her role did not. 

Today, we talk about her journey leading a venture-backed company and choosing where to focus her attention to generate growth. She also shares a few learnings on: 

Things to keep in mind when you start hiring 

How to create news pieces around your company 

And how to build employer branding organically

Where and when founders should be hands-on: Luciana Caletti, LoveMondays / Glassdoor

Fabricio Pettená is a partner at Global Founders Capital, a stage-agnostic lifecycle global venture capital firm. If you’re wondering what that means, this is the episode where he explains it!  

We also talk about: 

GFC's decision process and how they support startups; 

What good board meetings should look like; 

His analysis of Latin American markets; 

And the signals investors pay attention to. 

Stage-agnostic investment decisions: Fabricio Pettená, Global Founders Capital

Gina Gotthilf was the VP of Growth at Duolingo, the most downloaded education app in the world, leading the team that built its user base from 3 to 200 million. She also led Tumblr's growth in Latin America and participated in the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign to help oversee digital ad campaigns at a historical daily spend. 

In 2020, she joined Brian and Yuri as a co-founder of Latitud, to help engineer serendipity for the top doers and thinkers in the Latam startup ecosystem. 

In this episode, Gina talks a bit more about what we’ve been up to, but mostly about her own journey, challenges and learnings. Stick around to find out: 

What hyper-growing startups running seamlessly from the outside are really like in the backstage. 

Some of the growth tactics early-stage founders can benefit from. 

And her takeaway from pitching Duolingo to President Obama in the White House.  

Mastering growth and taking Duolingo to 200M users: Gina Gotthilf, co-founder of Latitud

*This interview is in Portuguese.

Paula Crespi and Flávia Deutsch began to fundraise before Theia even had a business model. But the problem they were looking to tackle was so clear that they were never short of meetings with angels and VC funds.

To find and bring the right investors on board, they put together their own fundraising framework. Besides, they had one very important goal: half of their cap table should be composed of women.

The step by step on Theia's fundraising process

Takeaways from Paula's experience as a startup operator, before she founded her own

How to approach big changes in model and product

And how to stay focused when everything may seem like a good opportunity.

Pre-seed fundraising and the search for female investors: Paula Crespi, Theia [PT]

A few years after getting his degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University, and fresh out of his MBA at Harvard Business School, Antoine Colaço wanted to go into the VC world as an investor. But he’d always heard it’d be better to get operational experience first. So he joined Yahoo!. Then, in 2003, he took a risk and accepted a position at a small startup. It was called Google.

Antoine was there for 9 years, founding Google’s operation in India and launching offices all over Latin America. Although it may seem glitzy to build startups within what would become one the largest tech companies in the world, it came with the same challenges any early-stage founder would face. Some of which weren’t the least bit glamorous.

It was his impressive curriculum, but also his great feeling for business and love for Latin America, that led Antoine into becoming a partner at Valor Capital Group.

How different Latam cultures affect his investment approach

How he sees potential paths for founders looking to expand their business

And how intuition and luck can play a big part in investing in winning companies.

Expansion and venture capital in Latin America: Antoine Colaço, Valor Capital Group

A company’s DNA is what makes it stand out. It guides everyone’s behaviors and determines the quality of the people you have by your side, from the initial hires to the hypergrowth stage. It can be the difference between a team that is indifferent and one that is all-in.

This is something Eric Santos and his co-founders paid attention to from the get-go. Similar to what Netflix’s culture code means to Silicon Valley founders, Resultados Digitais’ culture code became well-known in the Brazilian startup ecosystem. The team scaled from 30 to 100 employees in just a few months, then to 230 employees the following year. But RD’s DNA remains the same as it was in the very beginning, 10 years ago.

How the founding team identified the virtues that were authentic to them

Some of the difficult conversations they had upfront

The challenges they faced while hiring fast

And how they operationalized these virtues at scale. 

Finding the right DNA to attract self-selecting talent: Eric Santos, Resultados Digitais

It’s here: the last episode of 2020. We started this year by interviewing Paulo Veras, the co-founder of 99, the first Brazilian unicorn. Now, we end the season on the highest of notes with the guy that was managing the company when it was sold to Didi. 

Peter Fernandez held leadership roles at Google and was an angel investor and advisor for 99 before he joined the team in 2016, becoming CEO 10 months later. 

When he left the position, he went on a sabbatical that took him on an amazing journey of self-discovery. Today, he shares reflections on fulfillment, giving first, and making a positive impact. 

Also in this episode: 

The top 3 things that are critical for high-performance teams; 

And why taking care of yourself is also part of your job. 

Self-care as the leader of a fast-growing company: Peter Fernandez, former CEO of 99

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