20VC LATAM: LATAM's Largest Fund, Kaszek Ventures on Scaling from $100M to $1BN, Why Capital is not a Source of Moat & Why LATAM is More Than Copycat Companies with Nicolas Szekasy, Co-Founder @ Kaszek Ventures

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
So, we haven't done a feature week here on 20VC in a while, and when I was thinking what the focus for this feature week should be, it was quite obvious to me. My love and excitement for the Latam ecosystem is very well documented on Twitter, and so the answer was clear. This is Latam week on 20VC, and there's no better person to kick it off today than our guest, Nico Szekasy, co-founder and managing partner at Kaszek Ventures, the largest venture capital firm in Latin America, with a portfolio including the likes of Nubank, Notco, Creditas, Bitso and more. Before Kaszek, Nico was CFO for 10 years at MercadoLibre, Latin America's largest online commerce and payments platform, where he led its $330 million IPO in 2007 Before MercadoLibre, Nico spent seven years as CFO at PepsiCo, and I do also want to say huge thanks to Marcos Galperin at MercadoLibre and Hernán and Nico at Kaszek for some amazing question suggestions today, a real team effort on the schedule. But before we move into the show today, Mercury is building full-stack banking for startups, applying under 10 minutes from anywhere for FDIC-insured bank accounts, physical and virtual debit cards, domestic and international wires, and integrations with Gusto, Stripe, QuickBooks, and Plan, to name a few. They also offer unusual features, like API access, custom team management, and their newly launched Mercury Treasury, a cash management product for high-growth startups. And they'll even help you build your startup with Mercury Raise, a program to connect you to Silicon Valley's top investors.
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**Nicolas Szekasy** (2:52)
You have now arrived at your destination.

**Harry Stebbings** (2:55)
Nico, it is such a joy to do this. I've heard so many great things from Marcos at MercadoLibre, David at Nubank, Fred at Future Positive, and then obviously Hernán and Nico on your team. So thank you so much for joining me today.

**Nicolas Szekasy** (3:05)
Hi, Harry, honored to be here.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:08)
It is so good to have you, but I do want to start today with a little on you, because you had this incredible operational career and then made your way into Venture. So tell me, how did you make your way into Venture and how did you come to co-found Kaszek over 10 years ago?

**Nicolas Szekasy** (3:20)
Yeah, sure. Before Kaszek, I was part of the founding team MercadoLibre, and that was hyper intense experience that led me to Venture. We had the most extraordinary roller coaster journey with something like a hundred competitors in the region doing exactly what we were doing at the peak of the bubble in early 2000 We had a slide in our pitch deck that showed all of the logos of each one of these competitors. And then the bubble burst and a nuclear winter came where there was no funding available at all for the next five years or so. And this sounds really difficult to understand in the current environment, but it became impossible to close around. Zero additional capital was available and all sources of financing had vanished. So I think we recognized faster than others that the times had changed and we focused on building the best technology and the best product experience with a disciplined ROI mentality. At the time we acquired some of our competitors to consolidate the market. We brought eBay as an investor and as a reminder, eBay in 2000, 2001 was the equivalent of Amazon in 2021 And this gave peace of mind to our investors as we had generated a potential source of exit. And then a few more things, in 2003 we incubated our payments platform, Mercado Pago. And today you would say that we launched our fintech strategy.