Scott Hartley was a researcher and went on to work with product and operations at companies like Facebook and Google. But the most well-known part of Scott’s journey began when he hit Sand Hill Road.

Scott went on to become a co-founder of Two Culture Capital and Everywhere Ventures. Across these two VC firms, he invested in over 300 startups around the world — Latitud and LatAm included.

In a world now ruled by AI, Scott talks instead about IA, or intellectual amplification. On a similar note, he’s also the author of The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule the Digital World.

In this chat, Scott and I talk about:

• What makes him confident about investing early on and in multiple countries;

• The difference between fuzzy and techie entrepreneurs;

• And the advice Scott shares most often with startup founders.

My name’s Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos, LatAm!

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

• Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
• Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
• Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
• And follow us on Linkedin / Instagram / Spotify to stay in the loop

Back in 2018, Santiago Gomez and Alejandro Casas were just two young and hopeful founders, fresh into YC. However, with a team of 25 working on an e-commerce business, they struggled to find funding.

"There's no founder-product fit", the investors would say. After a while, it clicked that their passion was elsewhere.

They were challenged by a mentor to kill the startup and start building something, just the two of them, that really lit a fire under their feet. Oh yeah, and they should also be generating revenue in 6 months.

Santiago reached out to his network and signed a 3-month contract with Rappi to map out problems within the company that they could solve through software. After an intense quarter, they came up with a platform to conciliate all the financial transactions ran through the super app, and an easy and reliable way for any company to manage their financial data.

Simetrik was born, with Rappi's founders investing 2 million dollars in its pre-seed round. The product naturally evolved and now has customers in over 35 countries. Santiago and Alejandro also got a lot more funding – including a $20M Series A in 2022 and a $55M Series B announced just a few days ago.

In this chat, we talk about:

• How Simetrik's culture contributed to its success
• The tricky balance between technical excellence and rapid growth
• And the challenges in fundraising that they didn't see coming

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

• Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
• Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
• Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
• And follow us on Linkedin / Instagram / Spotify to stay in the loop

Over a decade ago, Matias Recchia created a startup to take home maintenance services online. IguanaFix expanded across Latin America, and eventually attracted the Brazilian unicorn Madeira Madeira.

After the sale, Matias dived into a new challenge: bringing more efficiency to the US real estate market. Keyway uses data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to improve how Americans manage investments in commercial properties.

In this episode, Matias and I talk about:

— Whether it's harder to operate a startup in LatAm or the US;

— His company-building lessons, including how to efficiently use AI in your startup;

— And how to divide roles between co-founders.

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

• Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
• Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
• Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
• And follow us on Linkedin / Instagram / Spotify to stay in the loop