Transcript
Introduction
Patrick
My guests today are Julio Vasconcellos and Mate Pencz, who are partners at Canary and Atlantico, leading early stage investment firms in Latin America. They're also both successful entrepreneurs. Mate is the Co-founder and CEO of Brazilian real estate unicorn Loft. Julio was Facebook's first country lead for Brazil, an entrepreneur in residence at Benchmark and the former founder of Peixe Urbano, which sold to Baidu. This conversation was a great opportunity to dive into the state of investing in business in Latin America today, and what the opportunity set looks like on the ground. Please enjoy my conversation with Julio and Mate.
The Investing Landscape of Latin America
Patrick
So Julio and Mate, great to have you both here to talk about the investing landscape in Latin America. It's one of those funny places that I have somehow never been really. I've never been in South America. I've been in Central America and have just developed a fascination with the whole region, with a number of amazing companies that have been built there, like Loft. Mate, you and Florian and I had a conversation before about what you're building there, but just more writ large, I think it's a great opportunity to talk about the entire part of the world, the interesting opportunities, the interesting challenges that present themselves there. So Julio, maybe I'll begin with you to just frame this whole thing for us, from your perspective. You're now running Atlantico Partners, which is a firm entirely focused in this region, and are one of the leading investors down there. Maybe you can just give your broad perspective on what is interesting about Latin American investing today, and then we'll go into tons of interesting data that you guys have put together on why it's so distinctive.