Special Edition: On vacations but always connected to what I truly like - TECH!
#51 - Fintech & CVC reports, Meli, Gender Bias, Sam Walton... and more!
Happy Sunday!
I know I said I was going to take time off the newsletter while I was on vacation. However, in my view, if you love what you do - you are always thinking, reading, and listening to what you truly like. What happens is - I was indeed on vacations. But, vacations equals more spare time to read and listen about technology. As a consequence, I was able to hear multiple podcasts, read several articles - and of course, continued receiving readers’ job posts, ideas, and news. Therefore I decided to do a special edition!!! Hope you like it.
It will go like this: my favorite part of my newsletter is by far the “On another note” section. So, since I was on vacations, I will ellaborate on this part, giving more detail and brief summaries on everything I read and heard.
Next, I will include a news section - but only with articles I recieved from readers! The fact is, I did not do my daily current events reading routine when I was off - but I indeed recieved by e-mail and Whatsapp several tips by you. So, these will go at the end.
As always, feedbacks are more than welcome!
Happy Birthday to George Jetson - according to Twitter, the iconic character was born today!!!!
What am I reading? (links + TL;DR)
FT Partners Q2 2022 Quarterly Fintech Insights
*FinTech deal activity continues to weaken as higher interest rates, lower valuations, and economic uncertainty take their toll following a period of record activity.
*Total dollar volume of global FinTech deal activity across private company financings, IPOs, and M&A transactions in Q2 2022 was down 67% from the peak of activity in Q3 2021. Additionally, Q2 2022 activity declined 29% year-over-year from Q2 2021 and declined 24% from Q1 2022.
*Private company financing volume raised in Q2 2022 totaled $27.6 billion, representing the lowest quarterly volume since Q4 2020 ($11.8 billion) and a drop of more than 30% from Q2 2021 ($39.6 billion). Private company financing may actually be benefiting as the IPO market is essentially shut and some companies may be choosing to raise additional capital rather than pursuing an IPO at this time.
The Generalist – The six stories about Mercado Libre
Great piece on the origins and culture of MELI, and how it became the largest online commerce and payments ecosystem in Latin America. The article starts with the beginnings of the company - and yes, it also started in a garage. Galperin had gruaduated from Stanford with the idea that LatAm needed its own “EBay” (granted, today Meli is much more!). John Muse, founder of HM Capital Partners was his first investor. When he pitched the idea, tech stocks were booming - and surely enough, competition in the region started to emerge. However, the bubble did birst in 2000, but Meli remained on track and kept executing - leaving its competitors far behind (eventually acquiring one of them).
From the very beginning, Galperin wanted Meli to be more than just a place to match buyers and sellers. Thus, the launch of Pago in 2003. In 2007, the Company when public - Meli became the first Latin American company to list on the Nasdaq. A true tech company is focused and obsessed with technology and legacy systems. Precisely, in 2009, Galperin moved his desk next to the CTO and decided to renovate their entire tech stack. In 2012, Meli showcased its revamped platform and APIs, encouraging engineers to interface with the company. Again, as a true tech company, the technological shift came with an organizational one. To facilitate a more open-sourced system, Meli moved away from monolithic divisions to self-sufficient “cells,” which interfaced with each other. In 2013, the company focused in logistics and in fact when Coronavirus came, the company was ready to face increased demand.
Good people attract good people: the executive team is exceptional. From the beginning, Galperin said he is always focused on the long term. He’s been vocal that he wants Meli to be a generational business rather than solely a vehicle for his fame or wealth. Competition is again getting more fierce with the rise of Shopee and also Amazon, Alibaba, OLX and others. However Meli has built an important core ecosystem, and the avenues for growth are endless. I am sure this is only the beginning of the story!
CB Insights - State of CVC Q2’22 Report
*Corporate venture capital saw the biggest percentage declines in deals and dollars in over a decade — though investment activity still remained elevated compared to historic levels.
*The quarter’s 76 mega-rounds (deals worth $100M+) accounted for just 7% of all CVC deals — down from 10% in Q4’21 — as CVCs pull back from massive, late-stage deals.
*So far in 2022, 60% of CVC deals are early-stage — a 5-year high if the trend holds. Q2’s top early-stage deals went to renewable energy startup 1Komma5 and biotech firm Upstream Bio.
*Five of the top 9 CVCs are now based in Japan, up from 2 in Q1’22. Mitsubishi UFJ Capital was the country’s most active CVC in Q2’22.
Still Betting Big: Argentine Venture Capitalists Hernán Kazah and Nicolás Szekasy
*Kazah and Szekasy founded Kaszek Ventures in 2011 to invest in LatAm talent, during an era when the venture capital (VC) world was largely ignoring Latin America’s potential.
*Kazah and Szekasy, both from Buenos Aires, credit their success at recognizing startups’ potential to their own experience as entrepreneurs, which they have leaned on to develop their investing strategies.
*As international financial markets suffer, tech stocks fall and fears of recession grow, startups throughout the region are laying off hundreds of employees and what’s left of their teams are bracing for lean years. Yet Kazah and Szekasy remain bullish. Their experience has taught them that Latin America’s outsized macroeconomic and social challenges tend to inspire entrepreneurs focused on equally outsized solutions—and that rewards can accrue to investors who are patient enough to ride out the inevitable storms.
*Beyond the inequities to be bridged, favorable central bank programs and the rise of fintech, Kazah and Szekasy see one more key indicator that Latin America’s tech and startup sectors will far surpass expectations: a profound cultural shift - “90% of a gruaduating engineers class aspire to become entrepreneurs or join a startup”.
Harvard Business Review- Stop Undervaluing Exceptional Women
Despite progress toward gender equality at work, it still takes women longer to get promoted than men, and few make it to the top of the corporate ladder. The authors’ research suggests that the reason why comes down to gender-biased assumptions about how challenging it will be to retain them. Their findings illuminate how standout women employees can be taken for granted by companies because of gendered beliefs about who is and who isn’t a flight risk. Moreover, such gendered dynamics likely contribute to the glass ceiling and gender gaps in earnings. If companies assume women will place loyalty to the firm over advancing in their careers through outside opportunities, they won’t engage in preemptive retention efforts like bonuses, raises, promotions, or increased responsibility like they will for men. To stop taking talented women for granted and to avoid losing them to other firms, companies need to do more to recognize and address these biases.
What did I listen/watch?
Podcast Acquired - Super Pumped
Amazing episode in which Acquired hosts sit down with Brian Koppelman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt to talk about the process of adapting Mike Issac’s story of Uber, “Super Pumped”, into their new Showtime series. In the midst of understaning the backstage of the show, listners get to understand other nuances of this polemic story. Uber was founded just six years ago, but it’s already one of the fastest growing companies in the world. While Uber is often held up as a remarkable case study on the potential of growth hacking, the company has also faced some serious challenges stemming from the short cuts it’s taken. Very good listen (even more show if you saw the show too!)
This episode is the launch of the most recent season of the podcast. If you like business and its key lessons - this one is for you. I am sure you all know something about Sam Walton’s and Walmart’s extraordinary story. But in this podcast you will get all of the details and lessons. Once you study Walmart, you realize just how deep its heritage runs through Amazon and so many iconic modern companies.
Education Journey Podcast Season 2 (PT)
Education Journey Co- Founder Iona Szkurnik kicks start the season with an interview with Rodrigo Terron, CEO of RocketSeat. Terron talks about how he turned his company into a true colloborative community for developers and the importance of continuous learning.
JOB POSTS
Sales – USA
Copywriter – USA
Customer Success – Brazil
Research Engineer – Brazil
Data Engineer – Brazil
Education Journey is hiring: Back-end developer
Here is what other top tech companies are looking for…
Head of Credit & Collection - Clubbi
Tech Content Analyst - Undisclosed firm (reply to this e-mail)
Banking Analyst: Nomad
Head of Sales - Rural
*respond to this newsletter if you want to post a job or if you have interest on the openings above*
News sent by readers:
Brazilian freight marketplace Frete.com has completed its first acquisition, of transportation management software provider InterSite. Focused on managing transportation of agricultural commodities, InterSite has around 10,000 clients.
Finanzero, the São Paulo-based credit marketplace raised $4 million from existing investors VEF, Dunross & Co, Atlant Fonder, and Webrock Ventures. Finanzero offers personal loans, auto and home equity financing in Brazil and has generated loan volumes of $174 million to date.
Neon, the Brazilian digital bank, raised an additional $80 million for its first Credit Rights Investment Fund (FIDC) focused on credit cards. This investment increases the total fund to $170 million. Neon ended 2021 with a $270 billion credit portfolio, over 15 million customers, and recently achieved a valuation of $1.6 billion after its series D.
Mercado Libre and Creditas announced a partnership to offer loans for used cars in Mexico.
Bitso facilitated the transfer of a soccer player to São Paulo FC through cryptocurrencies, this transaction was the second such transaction in Latin America. It also launched a collection of 100 NFTs for the Mexican national soccer (football) team ahead of the World Cup in Qatar and announced it has reached 1 million users in Brazil, just one year after starting operations in the country.
Sustainability-focused agriculture tech solutions provider Arable announced it has raised $40 million to accelerate product development, new service delivery, and footprint expansion, aimed at advancing climate resilience in agriculture.
Quote of the week:
“Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering. When you finally get done and get to appreciate what you have done it is like a part of yourself that you’ve put together. ” Bill Gates
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