#157 - Diego Saez Gil

**Craig Cannon** (0:00)
Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinator's podcast. Today's episode is with Diego Saez Gil and Gustaf Alströmer. Diego is the co-founder of Pachama. Pachama helps companies offset their carbon emissions through verified reforestation. Gustaf is a partner at YC.
You can find Diego on Twitter at dsaezgil, and Gustaf is at Gustaf.
All right, here we go. All right, guys, welcome to the podcast. How's it going? Thank you.

**Gustaf Alströmer** (0:31)
It's going great.

**Craig Cannon** (0:33)
So today we have Diego Saez Gil of Pachama from the Winter 19 batch and Gustaf Alströmer, who is a partner at YC. So today we're here to talk about Diego's company.
Gustaf, why don't you start it out?

**Gustaf Alströmer** (0:44)
Sure. So I met Diego probably about a year and a half ago now, and our paths crossed in sort of like the interest for carbon removal, I don't know if you call it fringe, science anymore, fringe sort of like area, but it certainly crossed in the area of trying to solve climate change and how you can use technology to solve climate change.
And it's something that we at YC have spent quite a bit of time on. Back in about a year ago, we released a carbon removal request for startup, which is a way for us to inspire people that work on new companies, what to work on. And we presented a bunch of ideas there of things that people can work on.
Diego has a very interesting approach to his company and love to hear more. But this is not his first company. So maybe before we get into Pachama, tell us about your background. Like you've funded a couple of different companies in the past. Maybe what's the journey, how you got here today?

**Diego Saez Gil** (1:46)
Sure, thank you. And thank you for having me.
Let's see. I grew up in Argentina, in the north of Argentina, always surrounded by nature, where I'm from. It's the Yungas, which is the last tip of the Amazon type rainforest in the north of Argentina. And then I had this big curiosity to travel the world. I went to see what was out there. Argentina is so far away from everything that I want to travel and see. So after finishing school, I got a scholarship to do a master's in Barcelona, moved from Argentina to Barcelona, took advantage to travel as a backpacker all across Europe. And then that journey led me to New York City to do an internship. And there I decided to start a company, which was kind of insane because at the time I was broke, I didn't speak good English, I didn't know anybody in the US, and I had no idea how to start a startup.
But I did it and the first startup was trying to solve the problem that I had at the time as a backpacker. So we built a mobile app to book hostels and bed and breakfast. And at the beginning it was really hard because I had no idea, but eventually we raised some capital and eventually we sold the company to a company called Student Universe that sold discounted flights for students. Right after that, I went to Argentina to visit my family and I lost a suitcase on the trip. And that led to the next idea, which was how come there is no suitcase that you can track?
And with a friend in New York, we decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign and started Blue Smart, which is a company with which we applied to Y Combinator and got selected in winter 15

**Gustaf Alströmer** (3:25)
Oh wow.

**Diego Saez Gil** (3:26)
That led me to California. And building a hardware company was a completely new adventure for me, really difficult.

**Gustaf Alströmer** (3:34)
Did you have any background building hardware before?

**Diego Saez Gil** (3:36)
Not at all. My co-founder told me he had been to China sourcing, merchandising, but I had never been to China.
And we moved right after YC, we moved to Hong Kong. We opened an office there and we started going to Shenzhen every week. This company flew quite high. We raised a lot of capital thanks to YC and thanks to the attraction that we were having. We're selling a lot of our products.
And grew the team to over 60 people and everything was going great, although always with a lot of challenges, like every hardware company, up until the airlines decided to ban lithium ion batteries because the Samsung phones were getting on fire on airplanes, which is something you cannot expect as a startup to have your products banned by airlines.