Forward this email to your engineer peeps!

The 4th edition of Tech Talks by Latitud will be taking place on June 21st at 6pm BRT.

This time, our CTO Yuri Danilchenko will be joined by Natalie Glance, Chief Engineering Officer at Duolingo.

Come and chat about bringing science to startups, Natalie's take on the future of AI, and learn how product & engineering teams are structured at Duolingo.

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Third time's the charm

(Ou a terceira vez é o charme) (O la tercera es la vencida)

A couple of weeks ago, the Latitud Community received a slap of fresh and uplifting air from Steve Blank, professor at Stanford, low-key considered Father of Modern Entrepreneurship, and creator of the Customer Development model that's core to the Lean Startup movement.

Among the many things he shared with us – which were GOLD and you can find here – he told us this:

• First-time founders worry about the product.
• Second-time founders, after their first hit, realize it is the customer they oughta focus on.
• But if you are working on your third startup – my oh my – you worry about the ecosystem.

Sure, you must get to product-market fit. And sure, customers will help you with that.

But without understanding your channels, the demand creation, or all the other pieces, you might have PMF… but are you going to scale?

So here in the 🥷 Latitud headquarters 🥷 we started thinking: do we know any third-time founder with these characteristics in LatAm?

Tricky, but we actually do.

Let's take Florian Hagenbuch as an example.

✏️ 1st venture: Printi, an e-commerce platform for mass-customized items.

2012. E-commerce was hot, Florian knew the business, and nobody was building that product. It worked, got a mid-scaling face, and then, an exit for a strategic player.

"It was a small success, but a success nevertheless," said Florian in our Latitud Podcast.

✏️ 2nd venture: Canary. Ok, not a startup but hear me out: VCs work for both their LPs and their portfolio companies. And Canary realized they should cater for a different set of customers.

2017. While everybody was on Silicon Valley, Canary (with Florian in it) saw changes happening the availability of capital and talent in Brazil, so that's were Canary aimed.

The next year, the country saw its first unicorn. 🦄 Hot spot indeed.

✏️ 3rd venture: Loft

"What industries are large enough to support a company that has the ambition to be worth US$ 1B one day?", asked Florian to himself in 2018.

He found the founder-market fit at real estate. Cut to today, and Loft is a Series D prop-tech unicorn and that's all we gotta say about scaling.

You know who else is a third-time founder? Our co-founder Brian Requarth. Latitud is his 3rd startup 👀. Does that mean we will be blessed under his sacred mantle? Only time will tell. But yes.

What other third-time founder comes to your mind?

Did you come for Succession?

If you got here because Fe Caloi somebody eagerly promoted last week's edition on social media as if it was part of a competition (it was) and you're wondering what was all that buzz about, we got you.

You can read last week's newsletter edition about Succession here - no spoilers.

Actually, you can read any past edition on our web, we recommend:

• Your finances are screaming, for avoiding March 2023 anxiety from happening ever again.
• How to scare off a VC? On why incorporating your startup with your cousin the lawyer is not a good idea.
• B* better have my money, a.k.a our take on the capital gap for all-women-founded startups.

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Hot News Ahoy! ⛵

💰 Zumma is adding

Personal finance platform Zumma raised a US$500k and launched its AI-powered financial expert. This investment round comes a year after our fellows Marinella Piñate, Daniela Lascurain, and Maria Fernanda De La Colina founded the startup in mid-2022. Congrats, team! 🎉

🏃 Speeding things up

Compra Rápida, the Brazilian startup that accelerates e-commerce purchases, received R$ 18M in funding. The seed round was led by the American manager Olive Tree Capital and included Liquid 2 and Soma Capital funds. Congrats to our fellow Mário Marcoccia and to Leandro Cortiz! 🎉

🏥 A healthy Sami

Brazilian health tech Sami raised R$ 90M in a round led by Redpoint eventures and Mundi Ventures funds. Alumni Ventures, Endeavor Catalyst, Digital Horizon, and Tau Ventures also participated in the investment, as well as the return of monashees,  Valor Capital, and independent investors.

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