Sebastian Kanovich
Board Member, dLocal. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
1shows
1appearances
22statements
3resolved
3supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
7said about them ↓ Everything Sebastian Kanovich said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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…”
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.”
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: 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: 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.”
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.”
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…”
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: 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.”
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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.”
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: 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 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 was completely bootstrapped from 2016 to 2019
“We have bootstrapped the local from 2016 to 2019.”
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.”
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.”
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 across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 5Martin Escobari 2
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20VC 7
2023 3 mentions in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Sebastian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Board Member, dLocal | 1 | 22 | 100% 3/3 | full record on 20VC → |