The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 19 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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 …”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
Zeev: I made over a 100x return on my personal dLocal investment
“Now it's five, but actually, ah, but I actually make, made more than a hundred X on my, ah, more than a hundred X on my, ah, personal investment.”
Nubank, Rappi, and dLocal Mafias Will Build Next LATAM Startups
“Like you've got NewBank, Rappi, Dlocal, right? And so like the kind of mafias from those companies are going to spin out and join the next generation of companies or grow the next generation of companies.”
Kaszek Missed dLocal's IPO After Passing on Its Early Business Model
“If I had to name one company, it would be the local. They just IPO'd. We met the team many years ago. We really liked the team, so not only we referenced them, but we got to know them, and we thought they were of the highest caliber, but their initial approach…”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Kanovich: dLocal was completely bootstrapped from 2016 to 2019
“We have bootstrapped the local from 2016 to 2019.”