Hernan Kazah
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Kaszek. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Hernan Kazah co-founded Latin American e-commerce company Mercado Libre in 1999, serving as COO and CFO through its 2007 IPO. In 2011, he co-founded Kaszek Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm investing across Latin America.
1shows
1appearances
24statements
12resolved
9supported
1contradicted
75%fully supported
Everything Hernan Kazah said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
AI's Lack of New Distribution Channels May Favor Incumbents Over Startups
“So I think it's transformational, but that, the fact that there's no
A new distribution might give an edge to incumbents versus, versus the new folk.”
Goldman Sachs Attempted to Pull Mercado Libre's March 2000 Term Sheet
“Goldman Sachs, that was the one that was leading that round, said, you know what, I'm not investing in, in you guys, and, you know, well, we didn't know what was going to happen, but luckily Susan Seager, who was leading Chase Capital Barn at the time, put lot…”
Mercado Libre Still Grows 70% to 80% Annually 25 Years After Founding
“The company is still today, 25 years after its beginning, the company is growing at 80%, 70% year a year.”
Mercado Libre's Local Market Share Likely Exceeds Amazon's US Market Share
“The market share that Mercolibre has probably is larger than the market share of Amazon in the US.”
Mercado Libre Cut Marketing 90% Post-Crash While Competitors Trimmed 20% and Died
“They did not reduce marketing 90% as we did. They reduced 80%, sorry, 20% marketing, so from a hundred to 80. So they were doing marginal adjustments and they all ended up dead.”
Kazah: Latin American Tech Funding Disappeared for Nearly a Decade After 2000
“And then in March, 2000, as you were saying, Nasdaq started to go down, down, down, down, and the market disappeared in the world for a few years in Latin America for almost a decade.”
eBay Was Once the Only Profitable Internet Company Over Amazon and Yahoo
“Because in a period of time, it was the only profitable internet company, even more profitable than the Amazons and the Yahoo's of the world.”
Kazah: eBay stalled from innovator's dilemma while Amazon kept innovating
“Then probably they faced the typical innovator's dilemma, and because of the initial success that they had, They didn't kind of innovate in the business and Amazon did innovate a lot and ended up creating a much larger company.”
Mercado Libre Reached 2007 IPO With 25% of Its 2000 Funding Remaining
“That round was like, forty six million dollars. Into the bank and we ended up getting probably less than 40 because of the debt we had. But with that capital, that, that capital came into our bank account in May, 2000, and we went public in August, 2007. We're…”
Mercado Libre Was Google's Only Latin American Customer for a Year
“We became the first and only customer of Google in Latin America for a year, because they didn't pay attention to Latin America, so we went to one company and told them, hey guys, we want to buy all your traffic in Latin America.”
Kazah: Mercado Pago is probably Argentina's top payment method by far
“In Argentina, it's probably the number one means of payment by far.”
Kazah: Mercado Libre could have scaled by focusing only on Brazil
“Maybe we could have gone just to Brazil. Which was the largest country, and if we remained focused on Brazil and the business grew relatively well in that market, maybe we could have gotten to a decent scale, decent critical mass just with Brazil.”
Mercado Libre Raised Over $50 Million Before Generating Any Revenue
“We had raised first seven and a half million dollars, then 46, forty seven million dollars, and our revenues were zero.”
Mercado Libre Avoided Amazon's E-Commerce Model Due to Heavy Capex Constraints
“The second one was Amazon, but at the time it required significant capital because you needed inventory and warehouses and all that. So in Latin America, given what we were just discussing about the ups and downs in the market, it was hard to assume that you c…”
Mercado Libre Chose eBay's Asset-Light Model for Latin America's Trading Culture
“And the third one was eBay. That was at the time a very light model in terms of just connecting with a software platform, buyers and sellers, and somehow we realized that the trading thing was something quite natural for Latin Americans, and that that would wo…”
Mercado Libre Launched When Latin American Internet Penetration Was Under 3%
“The main challenge we had was that internet penetration at the time in Latin America was really, really tiny. Two percent, three percent,”
Mercado Libre Acquired Early Users by Putting Posters in Cyber Cafes
“One of the things we did was to go to the cyber cafes and somehow try to put posters of MercadoLibre and try to somehow engage the owner or the manager of those internet cafes so they would somehow tell people about MercadoLibre and all that.”
Kazah: Mercado Libre cut headcount from 200 to 100 employees post-crash
“First of those 200 employees that we had, we reduced to a hundred.”
Kazah: Mercado Libre achieved profitability in late 2006 before 2007 IPO
“And we ended up being profitable in end of 2006, and we went public in 2000 and seven as a profitable company.”
Kazah: Mercado Libre had $78M revenue when going public in 2007
“The full year of 2007 was seventy eight million dollars. The prior year was something like fifty million dollars.”
Kazah: Mercado Libre operated on cash on delivery for its first three years
“So in the first transactions in Mercuribur, the first, I mean, the first three years of transactions, Were cash on delivery, and slowly but steadily we started doing Mercado Pau.”
Kazah: Dot-com rivals bought TV and stadium ads when internet penetration was under 5%
“People were doing, placing boards during soccer matches, and those kind of things, or TV ads on open TV, when again, only two, three, five percent of people had access to the internet”
Continuous Growth Erased Mercado Libre's Seasonality for Its First Ten Years
“Transactions never, ever stopped growing. We didn't have anything like seasonality for like, I don't know, 10 years. You know, Christmas season is the peak, but then January was higher. You know, because more people were joining the wave of the internet, the w…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Hernan's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 PRODUCT MARKET FITLEDGER | Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Kaszek | 1 | 24 | 75% 9/12 | full record on A Product Market Fit Show → |