The Exchanges

Q do, you said the word focus there. It was something that a lot of your investors spoke to me about was bluntly your ability to focus and hone in on what really matters. When you think about prioritization, do you have a prioritization framework mindset for determining what one or two things move the needle? Because when you're in 35 countries, there's so many things you could be focused on.

A Harry, we probably have a cheat sheet for this, which is we listen to our customers. We, we, we deal in enterprise payments. So our customers are big. They have opinions and they know their stuff. So it's very easy. You ask them, where should we go next? What's the next thing we should be doing? Where are we not performing? And then you take that, that as a guiding, uh, as the guiding principle and everything else, which is not going to impact your customers. Uh, you try to not focus on, uh, And impacting your customer might be how good you are in HR, because the people you're putting in front of your customers are not great enough. And therefore I might be focusing for one or two months in an HR front or in finance or in expansion. But for us, that's always been the hack. For instance, we don't do product roadmaps on our own. We ask our customers, what should we do next? We started doing pain. So customers buying from a company, then at some point we say, guys, what else should we do? Airbnb came to us and Uber came to us and say, we want to do the opposite flow. We want to do payouts. Great. That's our product strategy. We are now going to do payouts. We want to do fraud. We want to do issuing. So being able to have something that it's a guiding principle, and for us, it's our customers, makes everything else much easier. If I spend too much, if I spend, sorry, if I spend too…

AI assessment note: “we probably have a cheat sheet for this, which is we listen to our customers.”

Q geographic expansion work on the people side? Because there's two schools of thought. One that says you always need people from the core team to bring the first culture, and then there's the other school of thought that says you need local people who understand the local culture. So how do you make geographic expansion work in India, in Nigeria, in all of these new, very different societies and cultures?

A I think the answer here is that you need both. You need, if, if you only go with people that have been with you on working your headquarters, you have no chance because you don't go deep on their, on the, on the country. Uh, but if you, the best example for us, it's China. When we were starting to sell to Chinese merchants, so we, we said for every Facebook, there's going to be a buy dance or TikTok. We need to be able to serve them both. We have no idea how to do it. Uh, the first thing we did is we hired two Chinese people, uh, out of Shenzhen. No chance. They were a complete solid satellite, like no, no, no connection whatsoever with the company. Then I moved there and I realized that I said, I moved there and we brought two more people with me from Europe. I said, it's absolutely impossible that we're going to be able to do this unless we find great Chinese local people. The reality is somewhere in the middle. You need To bring your culture to the new place, because if not, you don't have a way of cooperating with the rest of the company, but you need local people. Otherwise it's absolutely impossible. We have today people in every country where we operate. And we have a lot of people inside the company moving. So we have people from Mexico living in South Africa. We have Argentinians living in India. We have Uruguayans living in China. And we really encourage that because …

AI assessment note: “I think the answer here is that you need both.”

Q Respectfully, do you like the hard countries because no one else is there because they're hard?

A That's where we come from, Harry. And Brody, I think there's always a matter of fits from the, from the leadership of the company and the problem they're tackling. I was born in Uruguay. We started producing payments in Brazil. Going to, no, no one ever cared about Uruguay, obviously. And Brazil was, it's not the Brazil of today where it's sexy and no one cared about the Brazil back in the day when we started. Now Nigeria looks like that and it's full of friction and people say it's impossible to build a business. We find it tempting. And we also believe that those places, the first time I flew to India, I came back and I called Hako, our president. I told him, Hako, this is a nightmare. We are never going to make it. And then we said, look, it's a nightmare. We need to make it because it's very hard. If it was so hard on us, it would be hard on everyone. That's a huge barrier to entry. Let's solve this thing and we'll be generating value for our customers. And that has been it.

AI assessment note: “If it was so hard on us, it would be hard on everyone.”

Q do, you said the word focus there. It was something that a lot of your investors spoke to me about was bluntly your ability to focus and hone in on what really matters. When you think about prioritization, do you have a prioritization framework mindset for determining what one or two things move the needle? Because when you're in 35 countries, there's so many things you could be focused on.

A Harry, we probably have a cheat sheet for this, which is we listen to our customers. We, we, we deal in enterprise payments. So our customers are big. They have opinions and they know their stuff. So it's very easy. You ask them, where should we go next? What's the next thing we should be doing? Where are we not performing? And then you take that, that as a guiding, uh, as the guiding principle and everything else, which is not going to impact your customers. Uh, you try to not focus on, uh, And impacting your customer might be how good you are in HR, because the people you're putting in front of your customers are not great enough. And therefore I might be focusing for one or two months in an HR front or in finance or in expansion. But for us, that's always been the hack. For instance, we don't do product roadmaps on our own. We ask our customers, what should we do next? We started doing pain. So customers buying from a company, then at some point we say, guys, what else should we do? Airbnb came to us and Uber came to us and say, we want to do the opposite flow. We want to do payouts. Great. That's our product strategy. We are now going to do payouts. We want to do fraud. We want to do issuing. So being able to have something that it's a guiding principle, and for us, it's our customers, makes everything else much easier. If I spend too much, if I spend, sorry, if I spend too…

AI assessment note: “we probably have a cheat sheet for this, which is we listen to our customers.”

Q me, that sounds very weird, what was striking to me is your choice of going broad and not deep in many respects, and I hope that's okay of me to say, but it's like you could have had 10 countries and just gone for deep, deep penetration within them All about usage. Instead, you went wide. What was the strategic thinking around the geographic expansion and that breadth versus depth?

A So it's a very strategic decision for ours, for us, sorry. So first of all, in payments, uh, 35 countries is not, uh, very wide. There are many payment companies that say we do a 190 countries. After, for us, after seven years of work, we still do a 35. So we've gone generally deep There are things that we've chosen very hard countries. We've chosen, we started out of Latin America. Then we moved to India. Then we launched in Africa. Now we do some other countries in APAC. So we've always looked for the places which had the higher friction. And there's always a trend between going a little bit wider. So LATAM, we'd spent three years in LATAM expanding into new geographies and then going really deep into the countries where we were ready. We then went to India and it took us a few years to be ready in India and feel comfortable with what we have. And only then we go to the next level. The reality is that in payments in the industry where we exist, merchants want simplicity. So we need to be able to solve multiple problems for them at the same time. You will become much more valuable. So having the ability of doing for any of, for someone like Google, having the ability of doing Nigeria and then Mexico and then Brazil. And then South Africa, it's really powerful. So that's why we decided to go a little, a little bit deeper, but I don't foresee us going to 60 markets in the next q…

AI assessment note: “merchants want simplicity. So we need to be able to solve multiple problems for them”

Q geographic expansion work on the people side? Because there's two schools of thought. One that says you always need people from the core team to bring the first culture, and then there's the other school of thought that says you need local people who understand the local culture. So how do you make geographic expansion work in India, in Nigeria, in all of these new, very different societies and cultures?

A I think the answer here is that you need both. You need, if, if you only go with people that have been with you on working your headquarters, you have no chance because you don't go deep on their, on the, on the country. Uh, but if you, the best example for us, it's China. When we were starting to sell to Chinese merchants, so we, we said for every Facebook, there's going to be a buy dance or TikTok. We need to be able to serve them both. We have no idea how to do it. Uh, the first thing we did is we hired two Chinese people, uh, out of Shenzhen. No chance. They were a complete solid satellite, like no, no, no connection whatsoever with the company. Then I moved there and I realized that I said, I moved there and we brought two more people with me from Europe. I said, it's absolutely impossible that we're going to be able to do this unless we find great Chinese local people. The reality is somewhere in the middle. You need To bring your culture to the new place, because if not, you don't have a way of cooperating with the rest of the company, but you need local people. Otherwise it's absolutely impossible. We have today people in every country where we operate. And we have a lot of people inside the company moving. So we have people from Mexico living in South Africa. We have Argentinians living in India. We have Uruguayans living in China. And we really encourage that because …

AI assessment note: “I think the answer here is that you need both.”

Q this. I hate it. Not a fan. Not a fan. Um, now my inbox is going to be screwed. So, uh, well done, Harry. Um, I do want to ask that, you know, you mentioned the raise itself there. You boosted up for four years and scaled pretty globally without venture funding. Why? And in hindsight, what were the pros and what were the cons of not raising money early?

A Harry, why? Because we don't have any other options. Uh, we never even thought of the option. We started out of Uruguay and we were, there wasn't venture capital out there. There, there, there was, it's not that we had a Y Combinator and five other VCs waiting to give us money. We said, okay, if we want to build a company, how's the way you build it? You've got customers that pay for it. And those payments are higher than your expenses and therefore you're profitable. And that's how you start scaling. Uh, that's why it wasn't any master plan. It was the way it happened. And I think that has become really deeply ingrained in our DNA. That really defined our culture of who we are. We are very frugal. We really care about every dollar. We spoke a lot about customers. They were not only, they were our investor and our customers at the same time, because they were funding everything we did. So I think that became really deeply ingrained. I spoke about the mistake. If I would have known a little bit earlier, what good investors would have brought to the table, probably I would have done it or would have tried to do it a few years earlier, because you really see a different world out there.

AI assessment note: “Because we don't have any other options. Uh, we never even thought of the option.”

Q But, uh, I do, I do want to ask you mentioned, like, not liking to lose there. In terms of not liking to lose, in terms of high performance, what does that word mean to you when I say it? And how do you define high performance as a leader today?

A It's very hard to define it, Harry, but you feel it when you see it. And it's typically people that bring energy. Like you, you see people that are like constantly not taking energy away, but bringing energy to the workspace. Uh, it's people that are focused on the solution and not so much on the problem. When you're fast, when you are fast growth, you have problems. Things are not working the way they should. Uh, and you want people that are go after it and say, okay, I'm going to solve it. Not only that they sign up PowerPoint or a presentation of how the solution should look, that's not high performance. And I'm, I'm totally against that. It's people that say it's on me. I'm going to fix it. This is how it's going to look. This is the time it's going to take and you'd be delivered to me. That's high performance. And the reality is that the easiest way to spotting high performance is when you have a team of high performance, when someone's not up to par, you can tell right away. Um, you can ask anyone on the team and they can tell you right away, someone it's not carrying their burden. So That's how I define it.

AI assessment note: “It's people that say it's on me. I'm going to fix it.”

Q No, I'm just intrigued. What was the realization that you could do it? You could go further. You could go bigger.

A Then suddenly we did have an investor. We were profitable, but some, an outside investor, General Atlantic in this case, came in and told us, guys, you have an amazing company. It has nothing worse than any of the great companies we see out there. You have the potential. You need to tweak one or two things here and there because you need to see skill. And suddenly we unlocked it. We stopped thinking about the short term. We say, okay, this is how it's going to build it. This is how we're going to build it for the long run. We are building this thing to own for a hundred years. That was a, that was a great unlock. GA played an extremely important role. We, we, we wanted a partner that was going to add value. We were profitable, so we didn't need the money. And it was our first ever outside investor. So we were kind of worried of how this is going to work. And the reality is that it was before and after. There's a before and after in our history, because we were lucky enough to choose the right partner.

AI assessment note: “an outside investor, General Atlantic in this case, came in and told us”

Q for learning. In terms of kind of optimizing for other things, I think the speed of execution is one of the clearest signs that I see in companies that I invest in that work well. When you think about the velocity of execution, how do you think about how important speed of execution is, and how do you determine when you can go fast and when you should go slow?

A Harry, I think when you're starting, speed is everything. There's nothing but speed, because again, you're assuming you're trying to tackle a problem for us. We started producing payments in Brazil. One day we say, we're going to go to Africa. What do you know about that? Nothing. What do you need to do? You need to make sure you iterate fast enough to be able to have enough feedback from the problem to tell you this is not the path to go or this is the path to go. So speed for us, it's of essence and there's nothing more important than it. There are obviously, as you grow, there are barriers. You need to make sure you're making mistakes that you can walk back. You need to make sure you understand the regulatory framework. We are now a public company. So there there's more things to take into account, but when in doubt, I always choose a, I think that's the only way to learn. And, and again, both of us are very young and there's nothing more important than learning and the best way of learning, it's trying stuff. And as you, and as you try, you'll learn more. So you can spend one month trying to guess what's the right answer. You can take one day, make a decision, see how it goes, iterate, and then go to the next one.

AI assessment note: “when you're starting, speed is everything... As you grow, there are barriers.”

Q And we're going to talk about the fundraiser itself. I do just want to ask why you said like running a process, not a good idea. Why is it not a good idea?

A I think you'll end up attracting the rotten type of, uh, investors. Uh, many of the great investors won't participate in processes. Uh, you, I think you sometimes defer too much to the bankers and it's our role as management to explain what we do as a company and, and, and put our voice out there. Uh, and sometimes they don't allow you to trust your guts. So we weren't optimizing for, uh, for evaluation. We wanted to optimize for the right partner. And the process says that you need to have five bits and then three bits and then one bit. And it's, it's, it's not the, for us, it wasn't the right way of doing it. It was a, it was a failure. We didn't get to what we wanted. We ended up closing around three months after the process independently on our own.

AI assessment note: “I think you'll end up attracting the rotten type of, uh, investors.”

Q But, uh, I do, I do want to ask you mentioned, like, not liking to lose there. In terms of not liking to lose, in terms of high performance, what does that word mean to you when I say it? And how do you define high performance as a leader today?

A It's very hard to define it, Harry, but you feel it when you see it. And it's typically people that bring energy. Like you, you see people that are like constantly not taking energy away, but bringing energy to the workspace. Uh, it's people that are focused on the solution and not so much on the problem. When you're fast, when you are fast growth, you have problems. Things are not working the way they should. Uh, and you want people that are go after it and say, okay, I'm going to solve it. Not only that they sign up PowerPoint or a presentation of how the solution should look, that's not high performance. And I'm, I'm totally against that. It's people that say it's on me. I'm going to fix it. This is how it's going to look. This is the time it's going to take and you'd be delivered to me. That's high performance. And the reality is that the easiest way to spotting high performance is when you have a team of high performance, when someone's not up to par, you can tell right away. Um, you can ask anyone on the team and they can tell you right away, someone it's not carrying their burden. So That's how I define it.

AI assessment note: “It's people that say it's on me. I'm going to fix it.”

Q Okay. So whatever it is, but there's like, I don't know, fifty million, a hundred million, whatever it is. That's a lot of cash that drops into your pocket when you've had nothing. How do you retain a mindset of frugality when getting 50 or a hundred million suddenly to play with in your bank?

A Harry, probably the answer is that you fall somewhere in the middle between what you were before and what your average investor wants you to become. Uh, most of my disagreements with our investors were more in the direction of, we want to keep our culture. We want to be frugal. We want to be humble. We want to build it block by block. Uh, so, but then you learn if you, if you, if you have, if you have a new vantage point and you don't incorporate any of it, you're not someone smart enough. And so when we were going public, uh, GA was very instrumental and other investors were very instrumental and saying, this is how your finance team will look. And these are the investments you need to put today in order to be able to scale. So in those areas where you don't know, you generally need to listen because others have seen it. But then how do we serve our customers? We serve them the same way as we did back in 2016. Anyone can call me. I'll pick up the phone and jump on a plane because I think that's DNA and that you should never lose.

AI assessment note: “you fall somewhere in the middle between what you were before and what your average investor wants”

Q for learning. In terms of kind of optimizing for other things, I think the speed of execution is one of the clearest signs that I see in companies that I invest in that work well. When you think about the velocity of execution, how do you think about how important speed of execution is, and how do you determine when you can go fast and when you should go slow?

A Harry, I think when you're starting, speed is everything. There's nothing but speed, because again, you're assuming you're trying to tackle a problem for us. We started producing payments in Brazil. One day we say, we're going to go to Africa. What do you know about that? Nothing. What do you need to do? You need to make sure you iterate fast enough to be able to have enough feedback from the problem to tell you this is not the path to go or this is the path to go. So speed for us, it's of essence and there's nothing more important than it. There are obviously, as you grow, there are barriers. You need to make sure you're making mistakes that you can walk back. You need to make sure you understand the regulatory framework. We are now a public company. So there there's more things to take into account, but when in doubt, I always choose a, I think that's the only way to learn. And, and again, both of us are very young and there's nothing more important than learning and the best way of learning, it's trying stuff. And as you, and as you try, you'll learn more. So you can spend one month trying to guess what's the right answer. You can take one day, make a decision, see how it goes, iterate, and then go to the next one.

AI assessment note: “when you're starting, speed is everything... as you grow, there are barriers.”

Q No, I'm just intrigued. What was the realization that you could do it? You could go further. You could go bigger.

A Then suddenly we did have an investor. We were profitable, but some, an outside investor, General Atlantic in this case, came in and told us, guys, you have an amazing company. It has nothing worse than any of the great companies we see out there. You have the potential. You need to tweak one or two things here and there because you need to see skill. And suddenly we unlocked it. We stopped thinking about the short term. We say, okay, this is how it's going to build it. This is how we're going to build it for the long run. We are building this thing to own for a hundred years. That was a, that was a great unlock. GA played an extremely important role. We, we, we wanted a partner that was going to add value. We were profitable, so we didn't need the money. And it was our first ever outside investor. So we were kind of worried of how this is going to work. And the reality is that it was before and after. There's a before and after in our history, because we were lucky enough to choose the right partner.

AI assessment note: “an outside investor, General Atlantic in this case, came in and told us”

Q And we're going to talk about the fundraiser itself. I do just want to ask why you said like running a process, not a good idea. Why is it not a good idea?

A I think you'll end up attracting the rotten type of, uh, investors. Uh, many of the great investors won't participate in processes. Uh, you, I think you sometimes defer too much to the bankers and it's our role as management to explain what we do as a company and, and, and put our voice out there. Uh, and sometimes they don't allow you to trust your guts. So we weren't optimizing for, uh, for evaluation. We wanted to optimize for the right partner. And the process says that you need to have five bits and then three bits and then one bit. And it's, it's, it's not the, for us, it wasn't the right way of doing it. It was a, it was a failure. We didn't get to what we wanted. We ended up closing around three months after the process independently on our own.

AI assessment note: “I think you'll end up attracting the rotten type of, uh, investors.”

Q which is, I always am terrified of being, do you know Home Alone, the Christmas movies, Macaulay Culkin? Yeah. Where's, where's he now? No one knows. No one's seen him in years. I'm terrified of being Macaulay Culkin of Venture Capital. That's what scares the shit out of me. So, if that's what scares me, and that's my insecurity, age and relevance tied together, um, What is specifically your insecurity?

A Well, it's a good question. Again, public speaking, I suffered. You, you said, you said, you said that, that the local was always, or we are still not, not well known. We are, we were always a company that was much less known. Than the good business we were. And a lot of that it's for me to blame. I don't feel comfortable in the spotlight. I like to live a life that it's very simple. And I think a lot of that is insecurity. I don't want to be the big shot CEO. I don't feel comfortable with that. I want to be doing my job. And I think that has sometimes been a benefit for the local. If I would have a higher profile, probably our life would be a little bit easier, but I don't feel secure enough to do it.

AI assessment note: “I don't feel comfortable in the spotlight. And I think a lot of that is insecurity.”

Q Can I ask, what do you tell yourself? Like, what's your mind talk when you don't know if you can do something? You said earlier, like, oh, I don't know if I can do that. Like, what do you tell yourself when you're not sure if you can do something?

A If I'm speaking too much to myself, that's a problem. I try not to live in my mind. I really believe in efficiency of movements. It's something I, I watch a lot of NBA, and the best NBA players are typically the ones that don't think, they act, and you can, you can see that everything is very natural. So, if I'm If I'm spending too much time in my own mind, there's something wrong. I I'll rather execute in some sort of direction or do something else in my life. Spend some time in a different ecosystem with my friends, with my family, with, in a place where I'm not the CEO of Diloga, but I'm Seba forever. And that typically helps. That typically unlocks a lot, a lot of things because when you are stuck with something, go do something else, come back, you'll find a new perspective.

AI assessment note: “If I'm speaking too much to myself, that's a problem. I try not to live in my mind.”

Q Can I ask, you know, we mentioned marriage, um, in terms of, like, other significant milestones in one's life, I can't believe I'm aligning marriage to this, but going public is pretty fucking cool. Like, that is a highlight of one's business career, for sure. When you think about the going public and the IPO process, why first did you decide 21 was the right time to go public?

A So, Harry, the honest answer is that we didn't know before that IPO was a Possibility for us. I was telling you up until we had bootstraps, so it happened really fast. EGA there played a very important role calling us and said, guys, there's a window for you. Businesses like yours can do IPOs in this current environment. We are very proud today to be one of the very few IPOs that are ahead of its IPO price. We've done very well so far in the public markets. But once we understood, first of all, I had to understand what an IPO meant. So the first thing we did is we jumped on a call and I asked, okay, how does it work? Uh, like what are the things that need to happen? Uh, but once we understood, I, public companies are the big leagues. That's the way I look at it. And you want to be playing in the bigger leagues you can, uh, and whether you like it or not, you can delay it, but over time, great, great, great companies are built in the, in the public markets. And we want to be a great, great, great company. And for that to happen, we, we, we had to go through that process. Uh, we were never very well known. We wanted to have the increased visibility. We wanted to have in, we are in a, we are in a business that requires a lot of trust. Having transparency around our financials would bring trust to our merchants, to our providers. Uh, so it was a no brainer from a strategic standpoi…

AI assessment note: “EGA there played a very important role calling us and said, guys, there's a window”

Q Can I ask, you know, we mentioned marriage, um, in terms of, like, other significant milestones in one's life, I can't believe I'm aligning marriage to this, but going public is pretty fucking cool. Like, that is a highlight of one's business career, for sure. When you think about the going public and the IPO process, why first did you decide 21 was the right time to go public?

A So, Harry, the honest answer is that we didn't know before that IPO was a Possibility for us. I was telling you up until we had bootstraps, so it happened really fast. EGA there played a very important role calling us and said, guys, there's a window for you. Businesses like yours can do IPOs in this current environment. We are very proud today to be one of the very few IPOs that are ahead of its IPO price. We've done very well so far in the public markets. But once we understood, first of all, I had to understand what an IPO meant. So the first thing we did is we jumped on a call and I asked, okay, how does it work? Uh, like what are the things that need to happen? Uh, but once we understood, I, public companies are the big leagues. That's the way I look at it. And you want to be playing in the bigger leagues you can, uh, and whether you like it or not, you can delay it, but over time, great, great, great companies are built in the, in the public markets. And we want to be a great, great, great company. And for that to happen, we, we, we had to go through that process. Uh, we were never very well known. We wanted to have the increased visibility. We wanted to have in, we are in a, we are in a business that requires a lot of trust. Having transparency around our financials would bring trust to our merchants, to our providers. Uh, so it was a no brainer from a strategic standpoi…

AI assessment note: “EGA there played a very important role calling us and said, guys, there's a window”

Q which is, I always am terrified of being, do you know Home Alone, the Christmas movies, Macaulay Culkin? Yeah. Where's, where's he now? No one knows. No one's seen him in years. I'm terrified of being Macaulay Culkin of Venture Capital. That's what scares the shit out of me. So, if that's what scares me, and that's my insecurity, age and relevance tied together, um, What is specifically your insecurity?

A Well, it's a good question. Again, public speaking, I suffered. You, you said, you said, you said that, that the local was always, or we are still not, not well known. We are, we were always a company that was much less known. Than the good business we were. And a lot of that it's for me to blame. I don't feel comfortable in the spotlight. I like to live a life that it's very simple. And I think a lot of that is insecurity. I don't want to be the big shot CEO. I don't feel comfortable with that. I want to be doing my job. And I think that has sometimes been a benefit for the local. If I would have a higher profile, probably our life would be a little bit easier, but I don't feel secure enough to do it.

AI assessment note: “I don't feel comfortable in the spotlight. I like to live a life”

Q You mentioned the team members moving around the world. I think another thing that's very striking to me when I look at D-Local is actually, 650 people. Respectfully, it's not a large team, given the size of the company. How do you think about the benefits of being a small and lean team, despite the size of the company?

A I was, just before this call, I was having a call, and they were asking me how many more people you want for the next quarter. We don't want many more people. We like small teams. I'm, I'm a big, big, big believer in small teams. I think small teams can achieve huge things. I feel we are many now. 640 is already a size number. I know in regards, in comparison with our revenue numbers, we are still small, but I still, I, I believe small teams Drive ownership and ownership. It's extremely important because you have the feeling that you are doing something that has an impact and bigger teams have harder times cooperating. So I'll always choose the smaller team that it's able to deliver what we want to do. Uh, in our case, we are a very remote organization. I have personally lived in Israel for the last six years. So this has been home for me and, um, I've been away from our headquarters forever. And I think that has become a release. Uh, it's, it has become a strength for ours because for us, sorry, because We know that our business is distributed. We have customers in China, in India, in Europe, in the US, and we have operations across 35 emerging markets. So, you know, you're always going to be far away from someone. So what do you need to do? You need to have a team that it's amazing, that it's empowered, that really understands your culture. Smaller teams are easier to keep co…

AI assessment note: “I believe small teams Drive ownership and ownership. It's extremely important”

Q Yeah. That is a very, very rare as well. Can I suppose the biggest difference for you when you compare being private versus being public?

A The quarterly questions are new to us. I never thought of our business in quarters. I never thought if something's better to happen this month or the other, because of the quarters, I always wanted to happen as fast as possible. So that's new. Uh, I think the work you need to do to explain your company, it's something that it's new and it's positive and because it helps you think about it and really have a new stakeholder in mind when, when you're making decisions, uh, Um, I also, I'm still surprised of how much, how much weight it's being put into tones or, or how, or, or, or, or not numbers. Uh, I, I look at our business through its numbers and through its metrics. Uh, and sometimes the tone of the voice will say a lot and that's something I'm still learning.

AI assessment note: “The quarterly questions are new to us. I never thought of our business in quarters.”

Q You mentioned the team members moving around the world. I think another thing that's very striking to me when I look at D-Local is actually, 650 people. Respectfully, it's not a large team, given the size of the company. How do you think about the benefits of being a small and lean team, despite the size of the company?

A I was, just before this call, I was having a call, and they were asking me how many more people you want for the next quarter. We don't want many more people. We like small teams. I'm, I'm a big, big, big believer in small teams. I think small teams can achieve huge things. I feel we are many now. 640 is already a size number. I know in regards, in comparison with our revenue numbers, we are still small, but I still, I, I believe small teams Drive ownership and ownership. It's extremely important because you have the feeling that you are doing something that has an impact and bigger teams have harder times cooperating. So I'll always choose the smaller team that it's able to deliver what we want to do. Uh, in our case, we are a very remote organization. I have personally lived in Israel for the last six years. So this has been home for me and, um, I've been away from our headquarters forever. And I think that has become a release. Uh, it's, it has become a strength for ours because for us, sorry, because We know that our business is distributed. We have customers in China, in India, in Europe, in the US, and we have operations across 35 emerging markets. So, you know, you're always going to be far away from someone. So what do you need to do? You need to have a team that it's amazing, that it's empowered, that really understands your culture. Smaller teams are easier to keep co…

AI assessment note: “I believe small teams Drive ownership and ownership. It's extremely important”

Q Can you walk me through the process, and can you also just help me understand, you mentioned not, like, loving public speaking. You have to tell your story to countless bankers, to countless investment banks. Did you find that challenging, having to constantly be the front man, telling the story, inspiring bankers?

A Harry, not so much, but because I love to have the spotlight on the business, and during the IPO, you are Presenting the local. I could speak all the local for a hundred hours. What I don't enjoy speaking about myself and bankers and investors want to know how will you make money and how you will, will you expand on how, what are the new products that I can speak of forever. That's a passion of mine. So it wasn't very challenging in that sense. And there are things that you're speaking about something that you know a lot about, probably much more than many of your counterparts, because you leave this problem every single day. Uh, so having the ability of explaining something that hopefully you understand really well, uh, it's, uh, I, I really enjoyed it. That, that part of the process was great. It can be exhausting, but great.

AI assessment note: “Harry, not so much, but because I love to have the spotlight on the business”

Q to scale to the next phase. It's just the nature of some people, sadly. Um, the challenge is they think they do. How do you manage out a situation where someone is okay for this stage, but actually for a thousand person D local doing three X, the transactions that you're doing today, they're not ready for that. How do you manage that process? Cause that's what I struggle with.

A Harry, first of all, I don't think people are not ready because of the experience. Uh, that, that part I leave aside. I don't believe you need a certain level of experience to be running a certain size of business, but sometimes people don't have the attitude or they don't, they just don't want to do it. And part of that, something that has worked for us, it's having a very low ego culture where Uh, you are, you're, you're not the owner of a given title or for a given project. You are taking care of it for a given, for a given period of time. Um, you do the best you can for that given period. And then you move to the next thing and it's perfectly okay. And you're not less important to the company if you're not running it, or if you're not the chief something today, you might be a VP or a head of whatever. And that's also okay. And we have many cases like that in the company. Hako, who is our president, I mentioned him before. He was a software developer. Then he became our CTO. Then he moved to COO. Then it tells him, Hako, we need the title. You're now the president. And we have people moving around different places in the organization. You want to keep a low ego. And I'm the first one to, to hopefully to be transmitting that. I'm not the CEO of the local, no matter what, whatever happens. I'm the CEO as long as I'm doing a good job. And if there's someone who is doing a bette…

AI assessment note: “something that has worked for us, it's having a very low ego culture”

Q What do good investors bring to the table then?

A First of all, they, they trust you. And it's, it's hard to, when, when you're alone, when you're bootstrapping, you don't have any signal rather, other than your customers, you don't have any signal that what you're creating is actually generating value. So the first time that someone comes in and says, yes, you now have value. This is your valuation. This is how it looks. It was very important to us. Uh, and then they, we were, I think in bootstrap, when you're bootstrap, you're working on, on, you're, you're playing on very hard mode. You're playing against, you know, you don't have any tools. Uh, you want to get an intro. You don't get an intro. You want to, uh, you want to think how other companies do it. It's much harder to have a network. All those things, uh, a great, a great partner or investor provides you. And it's, it was very helpful to us.

AI assessment note: “All those things, uh, a great, a great partner or investor provides you.”

Q Yeah. That is a very, very rare as well. Can I suppose the biggest difference for you when you compare being private versus being public?

A The quarterly questions are new to us. I never thought of our business in quarters. I never thought if something's better to happen this month or the other, because of the quarters, I always wanted to happen as fast as possible. So that's new. Uh, I think the work you need to do to explain your company, it's something that it's new and it's positive and because it helps you think about it and really have a new stakeholder in mind when, when you're making decisions, uh, Um, I also, I'm still surprised of how much, how much weight it's being put into tones or, or how, or, or, or, or not numbers. Uh, I, I look at our business through its numbers and through its metrics. Uh, and sometimes the tone of the voice will say a lot and that's something I'm still learning.

AI assessment note: “The quarterly questions are new to us. I never thought of our business in quarters.”

Q I think, you know, leadership changes a lot over time. When you think about the changing style of leadership, but just kind of style of the business, what gets easier over time and what gets harder over time in your mind?

A So easier, you have more tools. You, you, you have access to more, to more, to more people, to more investors, to more talent, uh, and, and that, You have more tools and having more tools, if you know how to use them, it should, your life should be easier. And you have a reputation and building a reputation and it's extremely hard. So once you have that, it's life, it's a little bit easier. And the harder part it's to, to, for us, at least it's to retain. I want to maintain a culture that I'm proud of and identified and I can identify with in a context where we are growing extremely fast and we are doing so in the public markets. So Keeping that balance, it's, it's, it's a place where I spend a lot of time. How much should we evolve versus how much should we be in love with who we once were?

AI assessment note: “easier, you have more tools... And the harder part it's to, to, for us”

Q Not at all, but I want to start with a little bit on you. So tell me, D-Local is one of the most fascinating stories. It is a machine of a company, and actually quite under the radar, respectfully. So tell me, how did you come to be CEO of D-Local?

A So it's, it's, it's this year, it's your number 10, and it's, it was absolutely by chance. So I was in Montevideo where I was born and at my mother's in law birthday party, and I met one of my partners and he tells me we're starting a company. I was back then trading stocks and bonds at Santander Bank. I, I've studied economics. So it was supposed to be what, what one, what was meant to do. And he told me, look, we're starting this company. Come join and see how it looks. And that's how I'm here. Uh, 10 years later, absolutely by chance. Obviously I have no idea about payments. Uh, the good things about payments is that it's like a, it's like an onion. You, you keep peeling it and you're thinking, now we understand it. And then you realize that there are more and more layers. Absolutely by chance. I would have had no idea that I would be here 10 years, 10 years later. By no chance.

AI assessment note: “it was absolutely by chance. So I was in Montevideo where I was born”