What it takes to build VS to grow a business - DSV10

In 2016 there was a massive shift in the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Latam, as the result of the huge amounts of resources provided by governments and universities, and with the belief that more entrepreneurs automatically will equal more successful startups.

At that time, our footprint in Latam included more than 2,500 startups in the early stages supported by connections, education, or by working directly with them with pilot programs with Google, ITESM, Stripe, and Facebook among others.

But as soon as new players (government and universities) started to focus on early stage, we became irrelevant, since we didn't have significant resources or infrastructure. Because of that I question and challenge my impact on the ecosystem and started looking for a new objective; after some thought, I realize a huge part missing from the startup journey, everyone assumes that early stage is the most significant stage to receive help, but in reality, saving a recently founded company doesn't have a big impact vs helping a late stage startup to thrive, imagine going from 50 to 1,000 employees.

With that belief in mind and the fact that no one was helping those companies in 2016 (with a few exceptions of investors or personal mentors), I decided to create 4Founders Forum as an organization to help late-stage founders succeed, better and faster. The premise was simple, we needed to get top-tier funds to invest in the region, most of them were present but only in Brazil; based on several stories from very successful founders, there is a tipping point before and after a top-tier fund investment, in terms of added value other than money.

In the previous years at 4Founders Forum, we were able to group some of the most amazing groups of startups to represent the ecosystem from some of the top-tier VCs (at that time let me remind you the biggest funding round was Kueski series A, about 10m + 25m debt ).

Among those VCs, we included: Accel , @kleinerperkins , Upfront Ventures Draper Associates among others, with whom we share some incredible startups.

Among the 12 startups we choose just in 2017, we selected the first 3 unicorns from Mexico : Clip Bitso Konfío . The three of them just became unicorns in 2021, 4 years after being picked and presented to those funds as an investment opportunity for Series B, and A series around 10m USD at that time (not including debt or line of credit). If we take the companies we choose at 4Founders, probably will have the most valuable portfolio of startups of Latam from 2017-2018.

The way I identify and rank startups have to do with a simple premise, the interdependency between the product, financials, and identity of the company. With these three elements, I am able to rate the quality of deliverability and the value proposition of the job to be done for the company, creating a score.

Based on that framework, last year, with my team, we start looking deeper into this interdependency and interconnectivity and found that the critical stage was the design over the implementation. Using it as an analogy having an architectural plan have a much bigger impact on the quality of the home, than having a great architect build a house without plans.

The second thing was, it's very different in skills and deliverables an architect that designs the house VS the one building it.

So after those findings, we decide to become startup design architects, focus exactly on that, creating blueprints that facilitate the interdependence and interconnectivity at a new or an existing startup, and with that saving tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, something between 6 and 12 months, and improving efficiency and velocity of grow at any startup.

Most of the top startup founders are amazing at running the business in a much bigger way than designing it (understanding as design, not the original idea, but the way should that idea be built).

I am super excited that this year we will be taking 5 clients (, future founders wanting to start faster and better, startups in need of this optimization of resources, or VCs wanting to optimize their portfolio) to build and rebuild their products, financials, and identity focused on achieving interdependency and interconnectivity.

If you are interested in these services, meeting, or just have questions or comments, please feel free to reach me at [email protected] or visit www.dsv10.com