The Exchanges

Q Can I ask a personal one, and you can tell me if it's too personal. Were you ever tempted to sell, and what was that decision making? Every great company has a chance to sell.

A Certainly, certainly. No, we had several occasions when we entertained that possibility from the very early days. The first one was in 2001. I think we had like six million dollars of revenues, and we declined an offer for two hundred and thirty million dollars, which valuation was probably an incredibly rich offer. But we thought, you know, that we were going to build this amazing company that was going to be the largest in Latin America, and we didn't want to sell at that time. Later on, at a much higher valuation, we did agree To sell. This was with eBay. At the time, eBay was a 20% owner of Mercado Libre, and they wanted to acquire the remaining 80%. And then, after we had agreed, they decided to walk away, which was pretty traumatic for us, because we still needed to build many things for us to become successful, and we thought it was going to be much easier to build those things with eBay slash PayPal support. But that didn't happen, so we went and we did our IPO, and The financial shareholders that had invested in 2000 and wanted initially to sell to eBay exited through the IPO, and we've been independent since then.

AI assessment note: “we had several occasions when we entertained that possibility from the very early days”

Q the region itself, and you know, I've heard you say that in terms of, like, Stereotypes on the region. All the stereotypes are true. If we unpack just the main one, the main one that I get is the volatility inherent within the region, be it political or kind of currency based. How do you think about this? And to what extent do you think it holds back the ecosystem?

A Well, it certainly holds back the ecosystem because so much volatility makes it harder to create long lasting companies. I think it tends to give the entrepreneurs shorter term Horizon in the way that you've gone through so many crises is that if you have an offer to sell, maybe take the offer because who knows what can happen in the coming years. I think it makes it harder to retain top talent in the region. And I think it makes it harder to create all the infrastructure that you need to create an ecosystem like the one you have in Silicon Valley, right? You need great entrepreneurs. You also need great educational institutions. You also need great infrastructure for Wi-Fi or five G or whatever. You also need VCs. You also need angel investors. You also need companies like Y Combinator. So you need all this infrastructure to create this machine of one successful startup after the other. And those things are much harder to build when you have high inflation or political crisis or recessions or various Strong swings in the economic directions that a country takes from one year to the next, so definitely it has an impact. Having said that, I think that the talent that you find in the region, the people that are able to succeed in this environment, tend to be incredibly resilient and very talented.

AI assessment note: “Well, it certainly holds back the ecosystem because so much volatility makes it harder”

Q I ask, with your now ownership of the logistics in the masterful way that you do, my question is, like, how important do you think it is to own the vertical chain of value in every business, rather than the horizontal? I'm sure you invest today. Prominent vertical ownership from the products themselves and the marketplaces, but also the logistics, which traditionally you wouldn't normally do. How important is that?

A That's a great question. It's probably, the answer is very long, but trying to summarize it, I think it depends on the stage of the implementation of the business you are in. For example, in fintech, you know, we started doing payments, and now we are an acquirer. We just got our acquiring license. We also got, in Brazil, the license of To be a financial institution, so we're able to finance ourselves with bank deposits. We are also now issuing our own credit card. So you start integrating vertically one way and the other, basically to try and reduce costs and transfer those savings to your user. So initially you start in one layer of the stack, but once you have become very successful in that layer, it's very likely that you will want to integrate one way or And maybe the other way, as we're doing in fintech, because you need to become more efficient. There's a lot of competition, and you need to pass on those savings to your customers.

AI assessment note: “I think it depends on the stage of the implementation of the business you are in.”

Q go off schedule very quickly. I'd love to dive in on the element there of kind of talent retention. I have a Talent is often destined for a certain stage. People are destined for the early stage, the late stage, and then the public market stage. Do you agree with that? And what lessons do you have in terms of people's ability to move with the growth of the company?

A Yeah, no, I don't agree with that. I think there are different people. Maybe there are people that are only for one stage of the company. And I've been with many entrepreneurs that say, you know, I like to start companies and once they grow after so many employees, I'd rather start a new company or go somewhere else. But there are other people that can grow perfectly well with the companies, as you know, you have very famous founders in the Bay Area that have done that. I have done that. My team, a lot of the people in my team have done that. So I believe that it depends on each person's personality. You can grow and adapt as a company grows and adapts, or you might like to work with very small companies, and that's fine.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, no, I don't agree with that. I think there are different people.”

Q Can I ask, do you have to watch the weight of your words Now, what I mean by that is when you weigh in with your opinion or your thoughts on a topic on an internal discussion or debate, they have a lot of weight and gravitas to them. Do you have to counterbalance that to ensure that people don't just say yes to your words?

A Well, definitely. When you're a founder CEO, there is a lot of weight to the opinions that one has, but I believe that if you work with a great team, I believe founder CEOs are also very prone to Working with teams that are able to contradict and argue against one's opinions. Otherwise, it gets very boring, and otherwise, it's unlikely that you will be successful in the long term. And I have a team that actually, I have a harder time implementing the decisions when they are mine than when they are others, because there's a lot of discussions, open discussions, and everybody understands in Mercado Libre that when we get something right, It's never because of someone had the idea. And similarly, when we get something wrong, it's also not because it was his or hers idea. So at the end of the day, it's a discussion. It's a process of having the discussions that is very rich. And that process is pretty independent from who had the original idea.

AI assessment note: “Well, definitely. When you're a founder CEO, there is a lot of weight”

Q I mean, speaking of that right direction, obviously there's the implicit decision-making required to decide on that direction itself. I'm interested specifically on decision-making and risk. How do you evaluate your relationship to risk today, do you think?

A Well, I think one of the things I love about Mercado Libre and my job is that I still feel like it's day one, so I think that my relationship with risk hasn't changed that much. I still believe, even though we have Built an amazing company that is very large with a lot of resources, both financial resources, but also in terms of, for example, we have a technology team of almost 8000 people, and this year we're going to end up with 30,000 employees. So with many resources, I still think that we are facing huge risks slash huge opportunities, right? Because we are still creating markets that are very, very early stage, both in e-commerce and in fintech. I think we're just Scratching the surface. So I believe that we still have a lot of growth ahead, as much growth as we had 22 years ago when we started. And that growth is obviously tied to risks. Regulatory risks, industry risks, innovation risks, platform risks, all sorts of risks that we faced then, and I think we still face now.

AI assessment note: “my relationship with risk hasn't changed that much. I still believe”

Q Can I ask, do you have to watch the weight of your words Now, what I mean by that is when you weigh in with your opinion or your thoughts on a topic on an internal discussion or debate, they have a lot of weight and gravitas to them. Do you have to counterbalance that to ensure that people don't just say yes to your words?

A Well, definitely. When you're a founder CEO, there is a lot of weight to the opinions that one has, but I believe that if you work with a great team, I believe founder CEOs are also very prone to Working with teams that are able to contradict and argue against one's opinions. Otherwise, it gets very boring, and otherwise, it's unlikely that you will be successful in the long term. And I have a team that actually, I have a harder time implementing the decisions when they are mine than when they are others, because there's a lot of discussions, open discussions, and everybody understands in Mercado Libre that when we get something right, It's never because of someone had the idea. And similarly, when we get something wrong, it's also not because it was his or hers idea. So at the end of the day, it's a discussion. It's a process of having the discussions that is very rich. And that process is pretty independent from who had the original idea.

AI assessment note: “Working with teams that are able to contradict and argue against one's opinions.”

Q How do you maintain your composure when you're seeing exactly as you said that, you know, supranational organizations intervening in liquidity situations on the day when your company is being priced? How do you maintain your composure and just stay on course?

A Well, we've always liked to focus on the real aspects of the business, you know, and the financials Come and go. The markets on a daily, weekly, or sometimes monthly basis, they are very volatile, but we have always stayed focused on our key operating metrics, and we have always seen our new users going up, transactions going up, different products that we launch starting to gain traction, and those are the things that we really focus on. You know, whether it's a stock price or the market indexes, we try to really not focus on those too much. So that helps to keep the composure. When you see that the KPIs continue to evolve well, despite the market fluctuations, it gives you confidence that you're doing the right thing, and that you just have to stay focused and continue executing.

AI assessment note: “we have always stayed focused on our key operating metrics... So that helps to keep the composure.”

Q the region itself, and you know, I've heard you say that in terms of, like, Stereotypes on the region. All the stereotypes are true. If we unpack just the main one, the main one that I get is the volatility inherent within the region, be it political or kind of currency based. How do you think about this? And to what extent do you think it holds back the ecosystem?

A Well, it certainly holds back the ecosystem because so much volatility makes it harder to create long lasting companies. I think it tends to give the entrepreneurs shorter term Horizon in the way that you've gone through so many crises is that if you have an offer to sell, maybe take the offer because who knows what can happen in the coming years. I think it makes it harder to retain top talent in the region. And I think it makes it harder to create all the infrastructure that you need to create an ecosystem like the one you have in Silicon Valley, right? You need great entrepreneurs. You also need great educational institutions. You also need great infrastructure for Wi-Fi or five G or whatever. You also need VCs. You also need angel investors. You also need companies like Y Combinator. So you need all this infrastructure to create this machine of one successful startup after the other. And those things are much harder to build when you have high inflation or political crisis or recessions or various Strong swings in the economic directions that a country takes from one year to the next, so definitely it has an impact. Having said that, I think that the talent that you find in the region, the people that are able to succeed in this environment, tend to be incredibly resilient and very talented.

AI assessment note: “it certainly holds back the ecosystem because so much volatility makes it harder”

Q was running today, Stanford Graduate Business School, and you said about the power of resilience and persistence in particular, and that's my question, which is like, absolutely, you have the vision and the mission and you pursue it, but at what point do you realize that actually that iteration of That idea is no longer worth pursuing. How do you know when's the time to cut and try something else?

A Oh, that's a great idea. Sometimes you're forced to do it because obviously every year you need to allocate resources, and you have a certain number of resources, and fortunately every year we have much more ideas that we think are great ideas than the resources available, even though we are growing the resources every year, and sometimes you look at the ideas that You are not going to be able to allocate resources to, and you say, you know, I've been trying this idea for three, four years, and this is enough. I'm not willing to let these other ideas off the list to continue pursuing this one, and that's typically what happens. There's other ideas that deserve the resources, and that maybe for one year or two years, you have postponed those ideas, and at some point in time, you say, okay, not any longer.

AI assessment note: “I've been trying this idea for three, four years, and this is enough.”

Q early days, you had quite a few competitors in the space, Aramato being probably one of the most significant. My question to you is, like, especially to Today, when there are many companies in exactly the same space, chasing the same opportunity, who are getting heavily funded, how do you advise founders when it comes to taking funding when the rest of their competitors are taking a lot of funding?

A I think that it's a balance. Obviously, you want to be well-funded, but obviously you want to minimize dilution as much as you can, and you want to focus yourself and your company and your team in building the best product. So When everybody else is just spending like crazy, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do the same. You need to spend whatever is necessary to build the best possible product, and therefore you need to raise the money that you require for that. And anything beyond that will increase your dilution, and you will start spending much more, because simply there is more to be spent, which is probably not the right strategy. So obviously, when the money is easy to access, I would go ahead and access, Shut down, and you don't want to be raising money in those periods, but you don't want to overdo it either.

AI assessment note: “When everybody else is just spending like crazy, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need”

Q Which leader do you look up to personally, and why?

A So I would say in our industry and in our era, I obviously look up to Bezos and to Elon Musk a lot, because of how they like to take risks, and how long-term oriented they are, and how much value they have created, and the amazing organizations they have created. Historical leaders, I'm a bit skeptical, because sometimes the way they get portrayed, maybe it's not exactly the way they were. Definitely Churchill is someone I admire a lot, but I'm not sure if had I lived in the days that he was there, I would be that big of an admirer. And then, uh, yeah, today in terms of politics, et cetera, I think we have a deficit in terms of great leaders.

AI assessment note: “I obviously look up to Bezos and to Elon Musk a lot, because of how”

Q early days, you had quite a few competitors in the space, Aramato being probably one of the most significant. My question to you is, like, especially to Today, when there are many companies in exactly the same space, chasing the same opportunity, who are getting heavily funded, how do you advise founders when it comes to taking funding when the rest of their competitors are taking a lot of funding?

A I think that it's a balance. Obviously, you want to be well-funded, but obviously you want to minimize dilution as much as you can, and you want to focus yourself and your company and your team in building the best product. So When everybody else is just spending like crazy, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do the same. You need to spend whatever is necessary to build the best possible product, and therefore you need to raise the money that you require for that. And anything beyond that will increase your dilution, and you will start spending much more, because simply there is more to be spent, which is probably not the right strategy. So obviously, when the money is easy to access, I would go ahead and access, Shut down, and you don't want to be raising money in those periods, but you don't want to overdo it either.

AI assessment note: “You need to spend whatever is necessary to build the best possible product”

Q Can I ask, in determining where you spend your time and resources, Jeff Bezos has often talked about the two-door versus one-way door in terms of decision making. How do you determine and prioritize your decision making when it comes to resources and time for you?

A Yeah, well, I spend a lot of time, as I was saying earlier, trying to understand the industry trends and technology trends, and then trying to interpret how those trends will impact our business. Therefore, I also spend a lot of time trying to understand our business, how we are doing, because we operate in many countries and in two industries that are complementary, but are different. Like e-commerce and financial services. So that's where I spend most of the time. And then I spend in terms of, uh, which type of decisions I get involved. I would say I like to get involved in the decisions that I believe are transcendental for the company, but I also get involved sometimes in decisions that are maybe routine or day to day. So I wouldn't say I only focus in the one way decision making process. I keep my options open, and I participate in both. In some instances, I might believe that in some area of our company, I want to participate in very micro decision makings, and in other areas of the companies, I might not participate in any decisions for a while, because I think that things are going well, and that the team is doing a great job, and that there are no major changes in the industry or in our business that require my attention.

AI assessment note: “So I wouldn't say I only focus in the one way decision making process.”

Q And when you look back at the two crashes now, with the hindsight that you have, what lessons do you think you drew from them in terms of how you lead Mercado Libre?

A Yeah, I think those crises have had a big impact on our culture, but I also believe that we had that Culture that enabled us to succeed in that environment, whereas some of our competitors were more short-term focused, were more inclined to build something to sell, more inclined to hire people that are after the hype than after really building a sustaining and successful organization. We've always wanted to create a company that could prove that you can build an amazing organization from Latin America, And that we could innovate and have a world-class execution and a world-class product. And I think that, as we were saying before, when you're focused on those things, market crashes and financial crisis are not that big of a deal. You try to focus on the real things. So I think that actually those crashes, when you look at it with hindsight, I think they were helpful for us because they, as they say, you know, when the tide goes away, you see who has been swimming naked. And I think that these things, they clear the market of many competitors and of many companies that have a great story, but they are not really delivering, and they actually help the companies that are delivering.

AI assessment note: “those crises have had a big impact on our culture”

Q was running today, Stanford Graduate Business School, and you said about the power of resilience and persistence in particular, and that's my question, which is like, absolutely, you have the vision and the mission and you pursue it, but at what point do you realize that actually that iteration of That idea is no longer worth pursuing. How do you know when's the time to cut and try something else?

A Oh, that's a great idea. Sometimes you're forced to do it because obviously every year you need to allocate resources, and you have a certain number of resources, and fortunately every year we have much more ideas that we think are great ideas than the resources available, even though we are growing the resources every year, and sometimes you look at the ideas that You are not going to be able to allocate resources to, and you say, you know, I've been trying this idea for three, four years, and this is enough. I'm not willing to let these other ideas off the list to continue pursuing this one, and that's typically what happens. There's other ideas that deserve the resources, and that maybe for one year or two years, you have postponed those ideas, and at some point in time, you say, okay, not any longer.

AI assessment note: “I've been trying this idea for three, four years, and this is enough”

Q In terms of, like, how aware you are of your competition, some people say, row your own race, keep your head down, and focus on your company. In other cases, people say, hey, you've got to be very aware of who's doing what around you. How do you think about observing competition, and the right way to do it?

A You know, we like to play our game. We like to play our game. We like to understand what What are our strengths and what are our weaknesses and what are our opportunities? Obviously, we look at our competition as much as we look at our industry and adjacent industries, but more to understand the things that are going on and the features or the products that we like, but we don't play the game based on what our competition is doing, and that's why we have built something that is pretty unique, because if you look at what we have, the combination of different platforms from our own shops, if you want our own version of Shopify, To our own version of PayPal, to our own marketplace. It's something that is pretty unique. There's nobody that has done it like that. Maybe the combination of Alibaba and financial put together, but they are not together. Going back to your question, I think we like to, obviously, we look at our competition closely, but we also look at the industries, technology in general, closely, and mainly we focus on, on ourselves and playing our game and executing our That's what we like to do, and I think that's the best way to be in this industry for many decades. We have been here for 22 years, and we aspire to be here for many more decades ahead, and when you look at the last 22 years, had we focused on the competition, our main competitors have changed so many …

AI assessment note: “we don't play the game based on what our competition is doing”

Q Speaking of that kind of growth and that adaptation from you, the leader, it's an interesting transition to make when you think about the early days. From founder to now CEO of this incredible public company, what were the biggest challenges for you in making that transition from founder doing everything in the early days to now being a real figurehead of a public company and many thousands of employees?

A Yeah, definitely. I have had to adapt probably in the early days and for the first several years, my role was much more operational and really roll my sleeves up and do things myself. Because otherwise things were not getting done. Obviously now my role is much more strategic. It's not operational, and it's not so much on the day-to-day. In terms of understanding the industry trends, the technology trends, and how these trends will impact our company and our business, I think they remain the same, and it has always been trying to understand which is the right direction to take the company, and then to try and build a great team and motivate that team to take us to that direction.

AI assessment note: “in the early days... my role was much more operational... Obviously now my role is much more strategic.”

Q How do you prevent people from feeling fear on the accountability of decisions going wrong? It's often the hardest thing, which is like, especially in larger companies, People don't want to take the risk with a bold idea because of the magnitude of it going wrong. How do you prevent people from feeling that fear and give them an environment of safety?

A Yeah, exactly. We try to create an environment where people are not afraid of making decisions and taking risks. That's why we try to foster entrepreneurship all the time within Mercado Libre. And as I was saying before, when we get it right, we try not to make the person who brought the original idea the hero. And when we get it wrong, Similarly, we don't try to create that person as a villain. I think it's mostly focusing on the process and the discussions, and then we are very, very persevering when an idea, initially, it's very unlikely that we do something and right away we get it right, and it's a home run. It's almost never been like that in Latin America. I always say that's one of the big differences between the stories that you read about the big success cases in Silicon Valley and us. We never had that hockey stick growth moment until maybe now with COVID. But we were always growing at 30 to 40% for 20 years, but we never grew 700% from one year to the next. And that is because, for many reasons, but always we were required to iterate behind every idea. So we are very persevering, but we also like not to be stubborn. So at some point, something that hasn't worked that well for two, three, four iterations, maybe this is not the right idea and let's drop it, but let's make sure that we iterate Several times before we conclude that it is not the right idea, because ofte…

AI assessment note: “when we get it wrong, Similarly, we don't try to create that person as a villain.”

Q another element you talked about in the Stanford Business School talk was how You have this kind of great early days with Mercado Libre in certain respects, and then there was quite a gray patch very quickly, actually, with the crash. How did the crash and operating through that, how did that impact your operating mentality moving forwards, and how did it change how you think about running the company?

A Yeah, I think the crash had a big impact on us. I don't know which crash you're referring to, because we went through two crashes. First, the dot-com bubble crash that came in the middle of our second round of Fundraising, because we had signed the term sheet for our second round, but we hadn't closed the round, and the weeks that went between the signing of the term sheet and the closing of the documents were a nightmare for us, because the crash happened right in the middle, and it created a lot of tension between the investors and us, and we had to renegotiate many terms, and it was very painful. And then, after we did our IPO, but actually in the middle of the roadshow, it was when the financial crisis happened, actually, when Bear Stearns went bankrupt, Actually, the day that we IPO'd in August of 2007, that same day was the first time since nine 11 that the Federal Reserve, the Japanese Central Bank and the European Central Bank had to intervene in the markets in a coordinated fashion to provide liquidity. That was the day we priced our IPO. So it was traumatic. And initially I was priced at 18. Initially, our stock went all the way up to 80. But a few months later, as the financial crisis intensified, it came all the way down to eight dollars, so it was quite painful.

AI assessment note: “I don't know which crash you're referring to, because we went through two crashes.”

Q Before we kind of extrapolate and discuss the region, I do have to ask, you mentioned kind of obviously building the PayPal for the region with Mercado Pago. It's been incredible to see the growth of that over the last It was actually Eric at Monashies who asked, what's your vision for that product, and just how big it could be, both internally, but also externally for the region?

A No, I think Mercado Pago is already very big, but I think the potential for Mercado Pago in the next two, three decades is just beyond my imagination, because what is happening right now, it's like everything is compounding. Mercado Pago is very large, and it's doing really well, but FinTech in generally is gaining traction in the region, and I would say in the Western world, and then you have DeFi coming along. So you have these three things that are exponentially, they work together, and I think they create so many opportunities that is very exciting to think about all the things that are going on, but more importantly, all the things that I think will happen in the next two decades.

AI assessment note: “potential for Mercado Pago in the next two, three decades is just beyond my imagination”

Q Can I ask, in determining where you spend your time and resources, Jeff Bezos has often talked about the two-door versus one-way door in terms of decision making. How do you determine and prioritize your decision making when it comes to resources and time for you?

A Yeah, well, I spend a lot of time, as I was saying earlier, trying to understand the industry trends and technology trends, and then trying to interpret how those trends will impact our business. Therefore, I also spend a lot of time trying to understand our business, how we are doing, because we operate in many countries and in two industries that are complementary, but are different. Like e-commerce and financial services. So that's where I spend most of the time. And then I spend in terms of, uh, which type of decisions I get involved. I would say I like to get involved in the decisions that I believe are transcendental for the company, but I also get involved sometimes in decisions that are maybe routine or day to day. So I wouldn't say I only focus in the one way decision making process. I keep my options open, and I participate in both. In some instances, I might believe that in some area of our company, I want to participate in very micro decision makings, and in other areas of the companies, I might not participate in any decisions for a while, because I think that things are going well, and that the team is doing a great job, and that there are no major changes in the industry or in our business that require my attention.

AI assessment note: “I like to get involved in the decisions that I believe are transcendental for the company”

Q another element you talked about in the Stanford Business School talk was how You have this kind of great early days with Mercado Libre in certain respects, and then there was quite a gray patch very quickly, actually, with the crash. How did the crash and operating through that, how did that impact your operating mentality moving forwards, and how did it change how you think about running the company?

A Yeah, I think the crash had a big impact on us. I don't know which crash you're referring to, because we went through two crashes. First, the dot-com bubble crash that came in the middle of our second round of Fundraising, because we had signed the term sheet for our second round, but we hadn't closed the round, and the weeks that went between the signing of the term sheet and the closing of the documents were a nightmare for us, because the crash happened right in the middle, and it created a lot of tension between the investors and us, and we had to renegotiate many terms, and it was very painful. And then, after we did our IPO, but actually in the middle of the roadshow, it was when the financial crisis happened, actually, when Bear Stearns went bankrupt, Actually, the day that we IPO'd in August of 2007, that same day was the first time since nine 11 that the Federal Reserve, the Japanese Central Bank and the European Central Bank had to intervene in the markets in a coordinated fashion to provide liquidity. That was the day we priced our IPO. So it was traumatic. And initially I was priced at 18. Initially, our stock went all the way up to 80. But a few months later, as the financial crisis intensified, it came all the way down to eight dollars, so it was quite painful.

AI assessment note: “I don't know which crash you're referring to, because we went through two crashes.”

Q And when you look back at the two crashes now, with the hindsight that you have, what lessons do you think you drew from them in terms of how you lead Mercado Libre?

A Yeah, I think those crises have had a big impact on our culture, but I also believe that we had that Culture that enabled us to succeed in that environment, whereas some of our competitors were more short-term focused, were more inclined to build something to sell, more inclined to hire people that are after the hype than after really building a sustaining and successful organization. We've always wanted to create a company that could prove that you can build an amazing organization from Latin America, And that we could innovate and have a world-class execution and a world-class product. And I think that, as we were saying before, when you're focused on those things, market crashes and financial crisis are not that big of a deal. You try to focus on the real things. So I think that actually those crashes, when you look at it with hindsight, I think they were helpful for us because they, as they say, you know, when the tide goes away, you see who has been swimming naked. And I think that these things, they clear the market of many competitors and of many companies that have a great story, but they are not really delivering, and they actually help the companies that are delivering.

AI assessment note: “when you're focused on those things, market crashes and financial crisis are not that big”

Q go off schedule very quickly. I'd love to dive in on the element there of kind of talent retention. I have a Talent is often destined for a certain stage. People are destined for the early stage, the late stage, and then the public market stage. Do you agree with that? And what lessons do you have in terms of people's ability to move with the growth of the company?

A Yeah, no, I don't agree with that. I think there are different people. Maybe there are people that are only for one stage of the company. And I've been with many entrepreneurs that say, you know, I like to start companies and once they grow after so many employees, I'd rather start a new company or go somewhere else. But there are other people that can grow perfectly well with the companies, as you know, you have very famous founders in the Bay Area that have done that. I have done that. My team, a lot of the people in my team have done that. So I believe that it depends on each person's personality. You can grow and adapt as a company grows and adapts, or you might like to work with very small companies, and that's fine.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, no, I don't agree with that. I think there are different people.”

Q Before we kind of extrapolate and discuss the region, I do have to ask, you mentioned kind of obviously building the PayPal for the region with Mercado Pago. It's been incredible to see the growth of that over the last It was actually Eric at Monashies who asked, what's your vision for that product, and just how big it could be, both internally, but also externally for the region?

A No, I think Mercado Pago is already very big, but I think the potential for Mercado Pago in the next two, three decades is just beyond my imagination, because what is happening right now, it's like everything is compounding. Mercado Pago is very large, and it's doing really well, but FinTech in generally is gaining traction in the region, and I would say in the Western world, and then you have DeFi coming along. So you have these three things that are exponentially, they work together, and I think they create so many opportunities that is very exciting to think about all the things that are going on, but more importantly, all the things that I think will happen in the next two decades.

AI assessment note: “the potential for Mercado Pago in the next two, three decades is just beyond”

Q I mean, that's incredible. I was told to actually ask about Lake Como when it came to eBay. Can you tell me about that story?

A Yeah, you know, we were almost like an eBay subsidiary in those years because we provided monthly information to eBay, and there was a best practice sharing agreement, and we had an amazing relationship, and there was a retreat in Lake Como. I think it was I don't know, 2003, 2004. I can't remember. It was still in those days. I think eBay's media category was bigger than Amazon's GMV. So eBay was really in those days like Amazon plus Google. And I think it was the days when they were interested in having a larger share of Mercado Libre, and we were not that interested in becoming a part of eBay. And yeah, since late Como, unfortunately, things for eBay didn't go that well. I think that for us, it was also a lecture as With respect to how fast things change in this industry, and how you need to focus on the long term, and how sometimes you need to develop completely new skills to be successful, and that's one of the reasons why we have, like five years ago, decided to go into logistics, for example, and we had no idea how to do logistics. We were a software firm, you know, a technology firm, and now we are having thousands of people working in warehouses, and managing packages, and We have become experts at doing logistics in Latin America, but we understood that this was a capability that we needed to develop to be successful in the next decades. Otherwise, we were not going t…

AI assessment note: “there was a retreat in Lake Como... they were interested in having a larger share”

Q Speaking of that kind of growth and that adaptation from you, the leader, it's an interesting transition to make when you think about the early days. From founder to now CEO of this incredible public company, what were the biggest challenges for you in making that transition from founder doing everything in the early days to now being a real figurehead of a public company and many thousands of employees?

A Yeah, definitely. I have had to adapt probably in the early days and for the first several years, my role was much more operational and really roll my sleeves up and do things myself. Because otherwise things were not getting done. Obviously now my role is much more strategic. It's not operational, and it's not so much on the day-to-day. In terms of understanding the industry trends, the technology trends, and how these trends will impact our company and our business, I think they remain the same, and it has always been trying to understand which is the right direction to take the company, and then to try and build a great team and motivate that team to take us to that direction.

AI assessment note: “for the first several years, my role was much more operational”