New York - Itaú BBA brought together founders of Latin American companies at different stages of internationalization to discuss how to transform local traction into global scale - without losing focus on the product, execution, and the customer.
The discussions touched upon recurring themes within the ecosystem, such as the right time to expand, the role of investors, operational playbooks , talent, and the competitive advantage of those born in complex markets.
There was a consensus: going international is a product and maturity decision, not an automatic goal. “When we decided to go international, we were already number one in Brazil. Only then did we start exploring Mexico, Colombia, and Chile,” said Alejandro Vazquez, co-founder of Nuvemshop (Tiendanube for the rest of Latin America).
Another important point was the demonstration that investors are leverage, not substitutes for execution. And that operating in complex environments (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina) creates "muscle" and the capacity to solve logistics, taxation, and payment issues in adverse scenarios.
Read on for some highlights from the event.
The unicorn for "five minutes"
A few days ago, Enter became the first artificial intelligence unicorn in Latin America. The Brazilian legaltech company, founded in 2023, raised US$100 million in a Series B funding round and is now valued at US$1.2 billion.
Founders Fund led the operation, which also included participation from Sequoia Capital, Kaszek, ONEVC, and other venture capital firms.
Mateus Costa-Ribeiro, CEO and founder of Enter, said that the celebration lasted only five minutes because the goal was not to have the "status".
“There are many unicorns that haven’t achieved anything. The companies we truly admire are long-established, publicly traded companies that deliver results,” he said.
“Becoming a unicorn was one step, but the goal is to deliver real value. We believe that Brazil could produce the third most valuable legal AI company in the world,” he added.
Breach of protocol and donation
In the panel “Social Investment: From Donation to Return,” Diego Barreto, CEO of iFood, who was alongside Tatiana Alonso, international CEO of Gerando Falcões, broke protocol and called on Felipe Whitaker, leader of wealth management focused on digital assets at Mercado Bitcoin.
The idea was to explain how the tokenization solution enabled the transfer of resources to the Favela 3D project, a social technology program created by Gerando Falcões that stands for dignified, digital, and developed favela.
But that wasn't Barreto's only "surprise." At the end, he turned to the audience and said that "if everyone at the café dislikes both Lula and Bolsonaro," it's clear that politics won't change their minds either. And it's not just about donating your entire fortune. You need to make a difference with those who make a difference, he said.
Live broadcasting
LiveMode is behind a transformation in live sports broadcasting – they created CazéTV in partnership with Casimiro Miguel. With engaged communities, the challenge was to replicate this model internationally.
In Brazil, this proves that the concept has value and can be monetized. There are between 40 and 50 million unique users per month and coverage of high-profile events such as the World Cup, the Olympics – the channel was one of the highlights of the Winter Games – and national championships in various sports.
This reach served as leverage for entering foreign markets. The first step was Portugal, where the company tested the cultural and operational replicability of the format.
“Given the success in Brazil, we had support from entities, brands, and YouTube to replicate the business in global markets; we launched in Portugal and are beginning a global expansion,” said Edgard Diniz, CEO and founder of LiveMode.
The goal is to maintain the passion and "Latin" tone of sports engagement, even in more formal markets, without losing product consistency.
The founder's sweat
There was a difference in emphasis among the participants of the panel “Building and Scaling Internationally.” While Diniz, from LiveMode, and Alejandro Vásquez, co-founder of Nuvemshop, highlighted the practical value of the investor network for expansion abroad, Sebastian Mejia, founder of Tako, valued the founder's hard work.
“When you’re building a company, having good partners is important, but in the end, the work of the founder and the team is what builds the company. Investors are marginally useful,” said Mejia.
In the passenger seat
Alongside Gabriel Braga, CEO of Quinto Andar, Nicolas Szekasy, partner and co-founder of Kaszek, explained what matters for scaling a Latin American business globally.
Szekasy said there is no "big secret" and that everything comes down to execution, timing, and a relationship of trust that allows for risky bets.
“We want to ensure that we are 100% aligned. We invest for the long term. Since we transitioned from entrepreneurs and operators to investors, it has become clear that we will position ourselves in the passenger seat. The steering wheel remains in the hands of the founder or CEO,” stated the partner and co-founder of Kaszek.
Model as the decision-making brain
The competitive advantage of AI is no longer just the language model, but the use of proprietary data as primary input for business decisions. Instead of textual prompts, the input becomes customer transactions, events, and behaviors.
For Bruno Pierobon, CEO and founder of NeoSpace, this transforms the problem of "predicting" into a problem of "prescribing" actions: price, limit, supply, retention.
The strategic consequence is that companies that master this data "brain" will have a sustainable advantage because they convert operational data into automated and explainable business decisions.
“It’s not about LLM. It’s about data. The focus of this model is transactions, customer interaction,” said Pierobon.
