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I sit down with an absolute legend from the investing world - Martín Escobari, General Atlantic’s Co-President, Chairman of the firm’s Investment Committee, and Head of Latin America.
Founded back in 1980, General Atlantic has become one of the premier global growth equity funds and grown to $80 billion AUM, with a team of almost 400 employees and 169 active portfolio companies.
Over the past 41 years, the GA team has seen it all and fortunately for all of us, Martín shared an incredible amount of knowledge and lessons, including:
Martín’s transition from entrepreneur to investor.
“Having been a manager and an entrepreneur, it's made me a better investor. I understand that hard things are hard. I understand that a spreadsheet is just a spreadsheet. And what matters is what gets implemented in the real world by real people with real customers and real competitors.”
Importance of collaboration for young rapidly evolving industries, and what GA looks for in their co-investing partners.
“What we look for, when we partner with other investors, is… Are we aligned on a vision of long term value creation? With no shortcuts, with emphasis on quality and customer success? If you are, made the best idea win! And let us work together in that long journey.”
Common traits of the best entrepreneurs. Martín shares the top three traits those founders have in common.
The best entrepreneurs…
Have a mission to change an industry, which speaks very personally to them
They have a track record of success that predates this particular company
They are able to combine opposing attributes in perfect balance
In Partnership with…
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Ingredients for a successful board. Martín has been a board member of dozens of companies and has learned what a great board looks like.
“The best boards are diverse in background and skill. They have short meetings that are fun. Most of the work is done outside the board meeting. If you get those three components right, boards work. it is very rare that those three components exist.”
The incredible performance of Latin America tech, despite its macro challenges.
“[Latin America] is perhaps the toughest neighborhood in terms of the macro challenges. The depreciating currencies, the political instability, the fiscal imbalances, the fog of uncertainty. There's always so much fog and it's always very hard to predict what next year looks like. And that makes a challenging context to make capital decisions.
Now, that same fog and these same barriers have created some really big problems that technology can solve... So, emerging markets have problems, but technology can provide the solution.”
… And a lot more!
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Emerging Fintech Leaders
Three early-stage fintech companies doing amazing things
Portabl is on a mission to build the most inclusive and trusted ID infrastructure for financial services. By using the latest developments in Web3 identity, they’re creating APIs that make establishing and maintaining accounts across traditional and decentralized finance as easy as SSO and maintaining them as easy as a GitHub pull. Portabl is a recent Pear Accelerator alum and currently raising additional pre-seed capital.
*** Fun fact: Founder Nate Soffio is currently following in Miguel’s footsteps as Co-President of Wharton Fintech!
Founder: Nate Soffio
Ostrich provides a mobile app, both direct to consumers and through employers as a benefit, that helps people achieve their financial goals based on their life milestones. Their approach employs gamified financial challenges to provide a pathway to goal achievement and combines the power of social accountability with regular check-ins. Ostrich removes the stress and overwhelm that surrounds personal finance by making it simple to set, plan and progress towards your financial goals. The company is currently raising its pre-seed round and plan to launch their pilot in 2022. To top it off, Ostrich is now hiring!
Co-Founders: William Glass and Andrew Holliday
Encore is the cash flow management platform for creators, empowering the world's best storytellers with the tools to build, run, and scale exceptional businesses. The company is already backed by names such as Tribe Capital and Unknown Ventures, and boasts a founding team with over 30 years of collective experience in the entertainment industry. Having been in the trenches with creators, Encore knows its market inside out. Their product provides top-notch tech to put back office tasks on autopilot for the creator economy.
Co-Founders: Dennis Stevens, Ryan Kravontka, and Oliver Chubb
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-Thank you for reading!
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Miguel Armaza is Co-Founder & Managing General Partner of Gilgamesh Ventures, a seed-stage investment fund focused on fintech in the Americas. He also hosts and writes the Fintech Leaders podcast and newsletter.
General Atlantic’s Martín Escobari – Three Traits of the Best Entrepreneurs, 42 years of Global Investment Lessons & How the Regret Minimization Framework Changed his Life