At the height of the 2020 and 2021 euphoria, the venture capital market seemed to live in a parallel universe: stratospheric valuations and gigantic funding rounds, the result of the excess liquidity of the time. It was a time when, as Rodrigo Baer , then head of early-stage strategy at Softbank, said , "a lot of people were making mistakes."

Today, the scenario is different. Capital has become scarcer, investors more discerning, and entrepreneurs more seasoned. Asked about the topic, Baer didn't hesitate. "There are still people making mistakes, but it's much less frequent," said Baer, now a partner at 14B, on Café com Investidor , a program that is a partnership between NeoFeed and CNN Brasil , broadcast bi-weekly on CNN Money (watch from 6:09 to 35:15) .

In Baer's view, there are currently what he called "blocks of excess" linked to large artificial intelligence labs . The 14B partner doesn't call this moment a bubble, but rather a "hyper-excitement of the market." "There are a lot of companies that only function and only grow at the speed they do because the lab people are spending without any restrictions or reasonable spending limits," says Baer.

The nonsense also decreased, in Baer's view, because money became more expensive. The easy check spree ended, forcing entrepreneurs to return to basics: product, customer, traction. Artificial intelligence accelerated this process, allowing smaller teams to deliver more, prototypes to be tested in days—not months—and capital to be used more sparingly and efficiently.

And this, paradoxically, raised the bar. So much so that today the ambition of Brazilian startups has become global. This is the thesis behind 14B, the venture capital firm founded by Baer after the split of Upload Ventures into three other firms (Upstream and UPV Ventures).

With a focus on early stage , the thesis is simple and direct: experienced founders , original products, and global ambition. The target is startups that develop technology capable of competing in the United States, Europe, and wherever else there is room for growth.

This turnaround didn't happen by chance. Brazil has spent the last 15 years developing talent en masse within iFood, Nubank, Stone, PagSeguro, Wildlife, and many other startups. These are entrepreneurs who have learned to build, scale, and operate technology companies at a global pace.

Now, this contingent is returning to the market as founders – and hungry to conquer the world. Baer sees this movement as inevitable.

In this interview, which you can watch in the video above, Baer talks in detail about the 14B thesis and shares his thoughts on tech megaIPOs, such as SpaceX (which has already happened), OpenAI, and Anthropic.