Anderson Thees

Liquidity for founders should not be the end of the journey. It’s the beginning of a new one: when founders become funders, LPs, board members, and (often) start their journey again. When Endeavor Brasil launched 25 years ago, “liquidity” wasn’t even part of the conversation. Talking about it often sounded like giving up. Generational companies have been built, public and private, and liquidity is no longer a distant dream for founders in Latin America. Endeavor's new study, Founder Liquidity in Brazil, reveals how founders are achieving liquidity through M&As, secondaries and preparing for IPOs in the coming years. The data tells us something powerful: by Series B, capital starts flowing into new ventures, angel and VC investments, philanthropy, and mentorship. That’s when the Multiplier Effect™ comes into force. Link for the study in the comments!

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Brazil’s fintech infrastructure is having a moment. Just yesterday, Kanastra announced a $30M Series B led by F-Prime (closely tied to Fidelity and an early backer of Toast & Plaid), with participation from IFC, Kaszek, Valor Capital, Quona Capital, and Itaú. I couldn’t think of a better time to revisit my conversation with Gustavo Mapeli, co-founder & CEO of Kanastra. In the episode, we unpacked: • Why regulation and wealth decentralization created the perfect storm for fintech infra in Brazil • The contrarian decision to go multi-product from day one • How to build trust and distribution in a concentrated, low-tech market • Why the best cultures are intentionally exclusive • And what makes a 15-year co-founder partnership truly “unbreakable” The highlight reel is below — but if you’d rather go deeper, the full episode and The Insider newsletter version are both linked in the comments.

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The Brex / Capital One $5.15Bn acquisition is a huge deal and should be celebrated. How did they do it? I've studied their culture by interviewing Henrique Dubugras (Co-founder), Michael B. Tannenbaum (ex-CFO, Employee #1), and Art L. (CBO, Employee #50). These are 10 important lessons I learned from them. Henrique and Pedro built Brex as teenagers from a house in SF to a generational fintech in 9 years. From a startup card to $100B+ in TPV. Along the way, they created a culture that has already spun out dozens of founders who have raised over $800M+. Here's what I learned on our Fintech Leaders episodes: 1. Your first 10 leadership hires matter more than your first 10 employees. Those leaders create processes and structures that outlast them. Some of Brex's first 10 employees didn't become managers, but the leaders they hired early shaped the culture. 2. Great founders get lucky with great mentors. Henrique's first investor was a payments founder who taught him the entire industry before he really understood it. The right early backer can accelerate your learning curve dramatically. 3. Build everything in-house. A major competitive advantage came from building all their software from scratch. Brex built their own issuer processor because Marqeta and Stripe Issuing were not mature when they launched. That proprietary infrastructure enabled deeper integrations than competitors could ever achieve. 4. Your best culture exists in the edges, not the nodes. Henrique used to think companies were 100% about the people. Now he believes the real value is in the processes, systems, and structures people create. Great companies can survive personnel changes because excellence lives in the connections between people. 5. If you have five priorities, you have zero. Every employee and team has a single OKR. The discipline of extreme focus brought them back to hyper growth after a period of growing pains. 6. Move at an unnaturally fast rate. When someone says they will revert next week, ask why not tomorrow. Analysis paralysis kills momentum. Brex leaders operate with urgency that feels uncomfortable to most people. 7. Listen to your customers. Brex built partnerships with Navan and Zip because 87 customers asked about Navan integration in six months. The biggest strategic moves came directly from customer requests. 8. Land and expand is crucial in enterprise. Large customers do not deploy new vendors to everyone at once. They want to try you in one use-case first. Brex restructured sales comp with longer hold periods so reps would land small and expand later. 9. Promoting from within creates loyalty. Behind every internal promotion, a manager is taking a risk on you. The easiest path is always hiring someone who has done the job before. Backing internal talent is harder but builds something lasting. 10. Dream big is not a cliche. Their audacious goal-setting culture produced a generational company in 9 years. Bravo! Link in comments ⤵️

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Today Comp announced its Series A led by Keith Rabois at Khosla Ventures — their first ever investment in Brazil. This milestone is well-earned for a company at a pivotal moment: achieving 400% year-over-year growth and earning the trust of some of Brazil's largest companies, including iFood, Nubank, PicPay, Creditas, Gerdau, Totvs, Stone, and 100+ innovative companies. Comp is entrusted to manage critical HR work (from strategy to implementation) for these blue chip organizations, and their trust is reflected in their impressive 97% customer retention rate. It’s been a privilege to support Christophe Gerlach and Pedro Bobrow as they’ve built this remarkable business. What began as a tech salary database has evolved into an AI-native HR function, positioning Comp as a pioneer of the "sell work" model in the region. And this is just the beginning: with this new round, the company is expanding into all strategic HR areas, including performance management, workforce planning, recruiting, and reskilling. Comp's ambition knows no limits: "Nascemos no Brasil, mas estamos construindo para o mundo" 🇧🇷 and we’re confident you’ll be hearing much more about them soon! We’re thrilled to have played a meaningful role in this fundraise through our new fund. Thank you Santiago Fossatti and the team at KASZEK as well as Gustavo Ahrends and the team at Norte Ventures for having been excellent partners to Comp so far. (Check out the launch video, along with the Brazil Journal article, in the comments)

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Brex was founded in 2017. In under a decade, two Brazilian founders built a global financial institution and exited for $5.15B. Obsessing over whether this clears a 2021 private valuation misses the more interesting fact: building something of that scale, that fast, in fintech, is rare. From Brazil, to the world.

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1- Weaver Advisory is a firm focused on bringing investments from Wall Street to República Federativa do Brasil and other countries in Latin America. 2- Right now we are involved in advising large international development banks to invest in the region. But as one can see, we travel all over the World to be with our clients!! 3- But other deals do attract our interest as well. So, we want to bring to your attention something that we thought could be interesting. 4- Invest in Guatemala’s Energy Future: International Tender PET-3-2025 Now Open 5- The government of Guatemala invites global transmission companies and qualified investors to participate in the Open Public Tender PET-3-2025, led by Guatemala’s Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM), with the National Electric Energy Commission (CNEE) serving as process facilitator. 6- This tender is part of Invest in Guatemala  Expansion Plan of the Energy Transmission System, aimed at strengthening energy infrastructure through the development of new high-voltage transmission projects under a regulated and transparent framework. 7- Key Objectives: Award contracts to one or more companies to design, build, operate, and maintain transmission infrastructure at their own cost. Awardees will earn an Annual Transmission Fee (Canon) for 15 years, followed by regulated tolls based on a replacement value calculated over 30 years, for up to 50 years. #ppp #latam #energy #transmission #lines #power #concession #guatemala 💪💪#latinamerica #internationaldevelopment

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MercadoLibre just did what every overachiever in school used to do: found a loophole, aced the assignment, and smiled innocently. 💊 They literally bought a pharmacy in São Paulo. A real one. With shelves, pills, and everything. Why? Because Brazil still doesn’t allow marketplaces to sell medication unless they’re licensed as a pharmacy. So instead of waiting for regulators to modernize, MELI simply became one. The plan: 🏪 Use the store as a live lab to test how prescriptions, storage, and delivery work. 📜 Work with ANVISA (the health regulator) to open up marketplace sales legally. 🚚 Plug medicine delivery into MELI’s same-day logistics network. This isn’t about one pharmacy. It’s about building the blueprint for a billion-euro category. Smart, slightly cheeky, and very on-brand for MercadoLibre. If this takes off, you’ll see: 🧴 Beauty and wellness brands running more retail media around health. 💡 Pharmacies lining up to become verified 3P sellers. 📦 Logistics partners sweating over how to ship vitamins and cold-chain meds in the same van. One tiny Brazilian drugstore might be the pill that cures slow innovation. #MercadoLibre #Ecommerce #Marketplace #RetailInnovation #LatinAmerica

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