Building Breakout Companies in Latin America | Hernan Kazah

Season 5 opens with one of the architects of Latin America’s tech ecosystem.

Hernán Kazah co-founded MercadoLibre — Latin America’s most valuable technology company with a market cap exceeding $100B — and later built Kaszek Ventures into a multi-billion-dollar venture firm backing companies like Nubank, Kavak, and Gympass (Wellhub).

In this Season 5 premiere of The J Curve, Hernán shares lessons from building MercadoLibre from a garage startup with 80 competitors into a generational technology company — and from investing in the next generation of Latin American founders.  

We discuss:

• The early strategic decisions that allowed MercadoLibre to win

• Why the default outcome for founders is failure  

• How Kaszek evaluates founders and investment opportunities  

• The venture capital power law and why investors must be right only a few times  

• Building a generational venture capital institution in Latin America  

• The impact of AI on software and the future of SaaS  

• How great founders actually get identified

• The evolution of the Latin American tech ecosystem

Hernán also explains why building a startup in Latin America is like “climbing Everest on top of a rollercoaster” — and why the next generation of iconic companies is still ahead.  

This episode is a masterclass on:

– Building enduring technology companies

– Venture capital decision-making

– Founder psychology

– Long-term compounding

– The future of Latin American tech

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