The Playbook For Building In Public: Barte’s Caetano Lacerda and Raphael Dyxklay

Brian Requarth (0:05)

Today's guest scaled their fintech from 1 to 40 million dollars in revenue in just 2 years, and they did it all out in the open. Barte is a financial control center that helps medium to large companies manage their cash flow. Co-founders Raphael and Caetano decided to build this in public as soon as they found product market fit. Since then, they have shared their wins, their failures and everything in between. That became one of the biggest competitive advantages. It helped them attract talent, land customers and build credibility in a market where trust is everything. In this episode, Raphael and Caetano shared their playbook for building in public. You'll learn here how to talk about mistakes, how to separate valuable feedback from noise, how to pick the right time, the right channel and the right format. And finally, how building in public can actually strengthen your startup's culture. This is Brian Requarth and this is the Latitud Podcast. Vamos latam.

Brian Requarth (1:01)

Hey guys, welcome. I'm glad we could make this work. Hafa, last time I saw you, we had lunch in San Francisco. So you're back in San Paulo and I'm back up north a little bit here in wine country. Caetano, great to have you guys on.

Raphael Dyxklay (1:16)

Thank you. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Brian. Good to see you again.

Brian Requarth (1:20)

Look, guys, I think we should start just by giving the audience a little bit more clarity on what Barchi is. It's a fintech business in Brazil. Why don't you give me the quick one-liner? And then I want to go into a handful of things that I want to cover today with you guys.

Caetano Lacerda (1:38)

Great. Yeah, maybe I'll give the one-liner. So in very, very simple terms, Barte helps companies manage their cash all in one place. And so this means accepting payments, doing payments, seeing payments go through and what they need to do. And so it's a full stack platform for companies to manage their cash flow or their working capital. Which started on a very strong vertical on payments acceptance and has already evolved from that.

Brian Requarth (2:08)

Great. So it's kind of like this control center for your company's cash flow then.

Caetano Lacerda (2:12)

Exactly.

Brian Requarth (2:13)

I like it. Cool. And things seem to be going well for you guys. I mean, I followed you guys. You guys kind of, in the last couple of years, you've gone from, you know, what, a million. So what are you at revenue-wise now? What's the threshold we've crossed? Forty million.

Caetano Lacerda (2:27)

A million and forty in two years. We take some pride in coming out of nowhere and doing this. So I'm a foreigner. Raphael is not an insider to the ecosystem. And so doing this and then having a very big acceleration curve is the sign that we're getting something right. And so.

Brian Requarth (2:44)

Awesome. Tell me a little bit more about the revenue breakdown. If you could just quick overview how those dollars enter your account, a little bit more clarity on the business model. And then I have some questions about how you're building it because you're building it in a kind of a unique way.

Caetano Lacerda (2:57)

It's interesting because the business model is actually quite simple. So one thing we, it sounds kind of vague is the control center for your cash flow. This is what Barte does. But basically what we defined very early on was we only get paid in the success of our customers, whether this is in accepting payments, in moving money through. And so it's always the transactional model on top of the movements we have on our platform. This is diversified now.

So, for example, if you're accepting a payment, you might have a take rate on that. If you do some sort of advance, you might have a fee on that. But now actually we started diversifying even more and understanding what do companies need to make their business stick and to make their business work. And there's a lot on how we build and also how we see Barte at scale. But one of the things we've been diversifying into is obviously what AI levels we have to pull. And so right now, roughly 10% of those revenues are connected directly to this. And they're more around someone who manages their cash flow. What actually are the bottlenecks you have for your business? When you're selling, what should work and doesn't these days? And this can apply to infrastructure, like we started. But it can also apply to what flows you have around collections, around messaging, around being close to your customer, around upsell, around cross-sell. And so all of these things are things we're exploring because we have the ecosystem and the data around it. And so it's transactional, diversified across industries, across customers. There's no relevant concentration there. And now with a strong input from AI already and from AI initiatives, we've been piloting this year.