20VC: Why Greed is the #1 Enemy of Venture Returns, Why Not Enough VCs Play to Win and Lessons from Scaling to $100M and 1,200 Employees and Then Cratering with Julio Vasconcellos, Founder @ Atlantico

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Julio Vasconcellos is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Atlantico, one of the leading early-stage funds in Latin America. Prior to the world of venture, Julio got his break in the world of startups as Facebook’s first country lead for Brazil. Julio then went on to co-found Peixe Urbano, a company he scaled to over 1,200 employees and $100M+ in revenue. Post the sale of Peixe Urbano, Julio became an EiR @ Benchmark Capital where he met Scott Belsky. Scott and Julio went on to co-found Prefer, a Benchmark backed company transforming the future of work. If that was not enough, Julio has a stellar angel track record with prior investments in the likes of Ipsy and Quinto Andar.

In Today's Episode with Julio Vasconcellos We Discuss:

1.) Entry into Startups:

What are 1-2 of Julio's biggest takeaways from being Facebook's first hire in Brazil?
What does Julio know now that he wishes he had known at the start of his career in startups?

2.) Lessons from Scaling Peixe Urbano to $100M in Revenue:

How does Julio advise founders on when is the right time to launch a second product or market?
How does Julio advise founders on the right balance between growth and unit economics?
When times are tougher, should founders cut fast or cut slower? What is irreversible?
What are the single biggest and worst things to break in hyper-scaling?

3.) Investing: Why Not Enough Play To Win:

What is more important, a great market or a great founder?
Why do not enough VCs today play to win? If they do not play to win, what do they play to do?
Why is greed the number one enemy of venture returns?
What are the single biggest investing lessons Julio has learned from Benchmark Founder, Andy Rachleff? How have they impacted his investing mindset?
Why does Julio believe you can have a close relationship with founders as an angel and not a VC?
How did Julio's approach to investing change with the transition from angel to VC?
Does Julio believe that boards really add any value? If so, how?
What is Julio's biggest investing hit? How did it change his approach?
What is his biggest miss? How did that impact his mindset?

4.) The Future for LATAM:

Is Julio as concerned as I am by the removal of growth stage capital from the LATAM ecosytem?
Does this mean a higher mortality rate for LATAM companies? How does Julio advise founders?
How did COVID adoption of technology in LATAM fundamentally differ to the US?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings. And last week we had an amazing episode with
0:04.4	Seba, CEO at DeLocal, the $8 billion company from Uruguay that you might not have heard of. And today
0:10.2	we're back in Latam as our guest today does an amazing annual report, the Latam Digital Trends
0:15.6	Report, released on Wednesday this week. And so you can check it out now on the website 20vc.com. And so with that,
0:21.4	I'm very, very excited to welcome Giulio Vasconcelos, founder and managing partner at Atlantico,
0:26.3	one of the leading early stage funds in Latin America. And prior to the world of venture,
0:30.4	Giulio got his break in the world of startups as Facebook's first country lead for Brazil.
0:34.7	Giulio then went on to co-found Peshiabano, a company he scaled to over
0:38.3	1,200 employees and $100 million in revenue. Post the sale of Peshiabano, Julio became an EIR
0:44.2	at Benchmark Capital, where he met the wonderful Scott Belski. Scott and Julia went on to co-found
0:49.0	Prefer, a benchmark-backed company transforming the future of work. And if that wasn't enough, Julia also has a
0:54.6	stellar angel track record with prior investments in the likes of Ipsi and Quinto and Dar. And this
0:59.8	schedule was a team effort by some of the best in the business. Check this out. Mickey Malka,
1:04.5	Scott Belski, Hugo Bauer, Andy Rackliff, Henrique at Brex, all helped with some amazing questions, and I so appreciated that.
1:11.5	But before we dive into the show today, I want to talk about an incredible tool that I use every
1:15.3	single day, Notion. Now, I am the worst for having 50 tabs open and constantly hopping between
1:20.9	an endless array of tools. Do you feel me? Are you with me? Well, then Notion came into my life,
1:25.5	providing one tool to do it all with everything from
1:28.2	seamless project management to easily organizing 20VCs company information. A fascinating
1:33.2	stand on Notion usage, more than 70% of companies who start using Notion, stop using two plus
1:39.2	other tools. And so Notion can even save you money, given how many other tools it can displace.
1:44.0	Notion has a worldwide network of millions of users, creating templates, tutorials, and new
	...

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