Growing Organically: Sebastian Kanovich, CEO of dLocal (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In the 1M/1M program, bootstrapping is a huge part of our philosophy. We know this from statistics that over 99% of the business that try to raise venture capital actually get rejected because they don’t fit into the venture capital model necessarily. We are huge supporters of the bootstrapping model. What you’re saying is completely in line with our philosophy. We are huge believers in the laser sharp focus of bootstrapping.

Why are you in Israel? You said your market is largely in Latin America. Did I get that right?

Sebastian Kanovich: Yes, I’m in Israel. There is a slight confusion. Our end users are in Latin America and emerging markets as a whole, but our merchants are either in Europe or US. I spend half of my time in San Francisco and half my time in Tel Aviv. I love living here. Another piece of advice that I have is that building a company is long-term commitment. For me, living here is home.

Sramana Mitra: Where to from here? You have 350 customers. What is the available market size in terms of how many customers fall within the sweet spot? You said that the customers who come to you is usually not as strong as the outbound. It’s clear that you have identified a target style of customers where you do really well. How do you define that target customers that you go after as a segment? What is the size of that segment?

Sebastian Kanovich: I don’t have any calculation of how big the market is. I can tell you it’s huge. Every merchant who is relevant in emerging market is a customer of ours. That goes from advertisement to travel and hosting. More and more people from emerging markets are starting to buy and get paid from companies that are global.

Sramana Mitra: One question here. You said you’re focused on American and European merchants who sell into the emerging markets. Will you also be selling to emerging market merchants who will be selling into the emerging markets?

Sebastian Kanovich: I would like them to exist but the truth is that they’re not relevant. Keep in mind that we only do cross-border transactions. There are Argentinian companies that are selling into Argentina and there are Brazilian companies that are selling into Brazil. But when you start looking for Brazilian companies selling into Latin America, there are not that many. We would like to have that type of commerce. On the ground, they do not exist. The only exception is the Chinese market selling to the world if you consider China to still be an emerging market.

Sramana Mitra: Great. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Growing Organically: Sebastian Kanovich, CEO of dLocal
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