Julio Vasconcellos, Atlantico Managing Partner – Rollercoaster Startup Stories, Making Hard Decisions, & Why Brazil is a World-Class Fintech Hub

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My guest today is Julio Vasconcellos, Managing Partner and Founder of Atlantico, one of the largest Venture Capital firms in Latin America that looks to invest in a better future for the region and beyond.

Julio is also a seasoned tech entrepreneur and investor, having been Facebook’s first country lead for Brazil, co-founded Peixe Urbano which scaled to 1,200 people and raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and then joining Benchmark as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) in San Francisco.

In this episode, we discuss:

Scaling his company, Peixe Urbano, to 1,200 people and then having to cut 2/3 of the company's workforce

“Making that choice to radically cut staff and cut costs, to be honest, wasn't so difficult, because we knew that if we didn't make it, the company wasn't going to survive.”

Why Brazil is one of the most attractive Fintech markets, not just in Latin America, but around the world and how the Central Bank played a key role in developing this thriving ecosystem

"I often say that I think the most successful FinTech in Brazil over the last couple of years has been the central bank. You know, and I think Roberto Campos, who's the Central Bank President, I think, is probably the most entrepreneurial, you know, FinTech founder out there."

?Parallels with today’s Latin American tech scene and Silicon Valley 15 years ago, back when Julio was in the middle of Silicon Valley’s heart

“[Silicon Valley] was very small… Everyone was very accessible. You would go to Fresh Yogurt, in Palo Alto, and you would see Steve Jobs having a frozen yogurt, right? … I think it was more of a community before it grew so large. And, actually, today in Latin America it looks very much like Silicon Valley in that 2005 - 2010 period.”

Atlantico’s Latin America Digital Transformation Report. This episode is being published the same day as Atlantico’s annual report on the tech trends of LatAm. What were the highlights of 2022?

“FinTech in Brazil has been hovering around 40 to 50% of venture dollars in deals every year. So it's almost half of everything that's happening in Brazil. Last year, it was 42% of all venture dollars that went to went to fintech.”

?The incredible fintech and tech opportunity to empower SMBs and unlock a lot of value for small enterprises and build massive tech companies in the process… and a lot more!

“In the US, SMBs contribute about 44% of GDP… whereas when you look at Latin America, there's more SMBs, but only 25% of the GDP comes from SMBs… we identified as some of the key themes that have been holding up SMB’s productivity, and a lot of them are related to [lack of] technology.”

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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.