The Fintech Playbook for Latin America

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a16z

Science, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Business, Innovation, Technology, Disruption, Software Eating The World

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2026

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Angela Strange and Gabriel Vásquez speak with Addi founder and CEO Santiago Suárez about building one of Latin America's largest financial platforms. What began as a buy now, pay later product has evolved into a broader ecosystem spanning payments, commerce, logistics, and now banking. Serving millions of consumers and tens of thousands of merchants, Addi sits at the intersection of financial services and commerce in Colombia. The conversation covers building in Latin America, lessons from scaling through multiple market cycles, the importance of technology infrastructure, and why Suárez believes financial inclusion and economic growth are deeply connected. They also discuss AI, organizational design, product strategy, and what it takes to build enduring companies outside Silicon Valley.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Don't let your ambition fall prey of commercial wisdom.
0:02.9	If you're a consensus play, there's just no alpha. We serve over 3 million consumers, over 50,000 merchant partners. We have incredible cost to serve economics. Over 200-8-inch in production. We built a company on a mono-repo as opposed to microservices. Mono repos today are all the rage, Anthropics built on a mono-repo. Google, obviously, famously, is a mono-repo company. we started the company microservices was whatever was that.
0:23.6	So why did you make the decision? What gave you the forethought to make it? I hired the best CTO in the business. How did you get your organization culturally, moving as quickly as you have? It's basically a combination of two things. We have a very clear view of where we are and where we want to be.
0:40.3	We have been extremely explicit with folks about standards and expectations.
0:44.3	It's not going to be easy. It hasn't been easy, but...
0:47.3	Building a technology company in Latin America
0:50.3	often means solving problems that don't exist elsewhere. Fragmented financial infrastructure, limited access to credit, and underdeveloped software systems create challenges,
1:01.0	but also opportunities to rethink how commerce and financial services work.
1:07.0	Over the last several years, Adi has grown from a buy-now pay-later product into a broader platform spinning payments, commerce, logistics, and banking.
1:16.6	Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez speak with Adi founder and CEO Santiago Suarez about financial inclusion, technology infrastructure, AI, and building one of Latin America's
1:29.4	most ambitious fintech companies.
1:33.4	We're here today with Santiago Spares, the founder and CEO of Adi.
1:38.1	Adi is a buy-now payleader, marketplace and payments platform in Colombia, and now, just recently,
1:43.9	a bank. And Adi has served
1:46.3	over 25% of the population. Welcome to the show.
1:50.0	Thrill to be here.
1:51.2	Amazing.
1:52.4	All right. So for those in our audience who may be less familiar with Adi, can you give us a sense
1:58.5	of what does the company do now and what scale are you at?
2:01.6	Absolutely. So we provide consumers and merchants with financial solutions such as credit
2:06.3	at the point of sale, instantaneous payments, logistics. We just got our banking license.
2:11.7	So you should think of it as the kind of elemental fabric of commerce and financial services
	...

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