Sebastian Kanovich

Board Member, dLocal · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

executivefounderoperatorLinkedIn ↗dlocal.com ↗

Sebastian Kanovich co-founded and served as CEO of cross-border payment platform dLocal through its 2021 Nasdaq IPO. He previously served as the CEO of emerging markets payments provider AstroPay.

22statements → 4claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 4.14/5average certainty → 1.91/5average debate potential → 4.3/5argument clarity · the sources → 7said about them ↓

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 3 assertions · 2 opinions · 10 insights · 4 disclosures · 2 what ifs · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Sebastian argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Kanovich: dLocal was completely bootstrapped from 2016 to 2019

“We have bootstrapped the local from 2016 to 2019.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 11:44 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.3 / 5 directness 4.7 · coherence 4.5 · precision 4 · compression 3.7

answered every one of 43 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

309 words/min while actually speaking · 24.7 um and uh per 1k words · 24 false starts per 1k · 37.1% of pauses land inside a clause

English is their second language (first language: Spanish). These numbers measure fluency in English. They do not measure thought; the argument clarity score above is read from substance alone.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 7,074 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 3/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10

setup questions received 65%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 6:21“Even if I have a compressed timeline to make a decision, has there been a time when speed has caught you up? When was it? And what was your takeaway?” ▶ 9:53“My question to you is one, often the most vocal customers don't speak for the majority of your customer base. They're just the most vocal and they're probably super users. And two,…” ▶ 7:21“What were the hiring mistakes?”

when Sebastian pushed back ▶ 18:36“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.”

What they said22 What others said7 Episodes1

Everything Sebastian Kanovich said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

Kanovich: Western tech leaders are blind to Chinese companies' emerging market ambition

“The level of innovation, the level of hard work, the ambition I saw there was mind blowing, and I was blind to it up until one year before, and I think many of us are blind, so the level of ambition that Chinese companies have in emerging markets, it's undenia…”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 22:52 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: Running formal fundraising processes is a very bad idea for startups

“First of all, you don't run processes. Very bad idea. That's something I learned.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 11:47 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: Building in high-friction emerging markets creates a huge competitive moat

“If it was so hard on us, it would be hard on everyone. That's a huge barrier to entry.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 20:45 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Kanovich: dLocal prefers small teams and will not significantly expand headcount

“We don't want many more people. We like small teams. I'm a big, big, big believer in small teams.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 23:42 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Opinion

Kanovich: The investment banking business model for IPOs is ripe for disruption

“And it's a business that I think it's, it has some sort of potential for disruption.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 32:49 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: Managing at scale requires the right attitude, not prior experience

“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.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 37:00 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: High performance means taking ownership and executing, not presenting PowerPoints

“Not only that they sign up PowerPoint or a presentation of how the solution should look, that's not high performance. And 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 goin…”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 2:56 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: Underperformers are immediately obvious to everyone on high-performing teams

“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. You can ask anyone on the team and they can tell you right away, someone it's not carrying …”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 3:11 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: Doubling down on bad decisions due to ego is fatal

“It's not typically the first mistake. It's when you fall in love with that decision and you want to keep doubling down on it because either ego or you get too emotional, emotionally, Embedded in that decision.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 6:39 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Kanovich: Requests from Airbnb and Uber drove dLocal's expansion into payouts

“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.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 9:31 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

What-if

Kanovich: dLocal would have raised VC earlier if he knew investor value

“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.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 15:36 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Kanovich: Disagreements with investors centered on maintaining dLocal's frugal culture

“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.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 17:12 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: Geographic expansion requires balancing core company culture with local hires

“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.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 21:57 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

What-if

Kanovich: A higher CEO profile would have made dLocal's journey easier

“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.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 27:32 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: Truly great companies are ultimately built in the public markets

“Whether you like it or not, you can delay it, but over time, great, great, great companies are built in the public markets.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 30:38 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: Scaled organizational systems only last one to two years before breaking

“Once you fix it, it's going to be good for one or two years, but it's going to break again and you're going to need a new iteration and you're going to need to think of that system again.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 36:09 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Insight

Kanovich: The payments industry is an onion with endless layers of complexity

“The good things about payments is that it's like a, it's like an onion. You keep peeling it and you're thinking, now we understand it. And then you realize that there are more and more layers.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 1:03 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Kanovich: dLocal went public primarily to build credibility with enterprise clients

“We went public. We went public. We was, we felt that we wanted to be better perceived by our customers. We wanted to give them an additional level of comfort.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 10:58 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Supported

Kanovich: dLocal was completely bootstrapped from 2016 to 2019

“We have bootstrapped the local from 2016 to 2019.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 11:44 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Supported

Kanovich: dLocal was already profitable when it raised from General Atlantic

“We were profitable, so we didn't need the money. And it was our first ever outside investor.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 13:18 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Assertion Supported

Kanovich: dLocal is one of the few tech companies trading above IPO price

“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.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 30:15 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Disclosure

Kanovich: dLocal closed its funding independently after abandoning a formal process

“We ended up closing around three months after the process independently on our own.”

Sebastian Kanovich Sep 16, 2022 ▶ 14:15 dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The other half of the tape: Sebastian Kanovich's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 5 Martin Escobari 2