The Ledger
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eBay agreed to acquire all of MercadoLibre before walking away
“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 traumat…”
MercadoLibre grew 30-40% annually for 20 years without a hockey stick
“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.”
MercadoLibre rejected a $230M buyout offer on $6M revenue in 2001
“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.”
In the early 2000s, eBay's media category surpassed Amazon's total GMV
“I think eBay's media category was bigger than Amazon's GMV. So eBay was really in those days like Amazon plus Google.”
Marcos Galperin expects to step down as MercadoLibre CEO within five years
“So I was saying earlier, I think the next five years and the chapter of success for me would entail maybe transitioning out of my role to, I don't know, to a chairman role or something like that, and being able to see Mercado Libre with the same entrepreneuria…”
MercadoLibre will reach 30,000 employees by the end of 2021
“We have a technology team of almost 8000 people, and this year we're going to end up with 30,000 employees.”
Failed concepts usually stem from flawed execution rather than bad ideas
“Make sure that we iterate several times before we conclude that it is not the right idea, because often it's a right idea, but it's a wrong implementation or the wrong execution.”
Central banks coordinated a massive liquidity intervention on MercadoLibre's IPO day
“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.”
Market crashes eliminate narrative-driven startups and strengthen real executors
“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.”
Successful tech companies must vertically integrate to stay competitive on cost
“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. Th…”