Jorge Combe, DD360 | Why Growing Slowly Is Better, Digitising a Traditional Business, and Growing Without Capital

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

At the peak of his investment banking career, Jorge Combe left his post as Director at Goldman Sachs to become a founder and transform the real estate industry in Mexico.

Jorge is cofounder and CEO of DD360, a fintech platform for real estate developers that, in just 4 years, has financed more than 130 projects, with a credit portfolio of more than 250 million dollars.

In this episode, we talk about:

What Jorge learned in investment banking that served him as a founder, and what he had to unlearn
How DD360 had to evolve from being a traditional finance company to becoming a company where 80% of the team is technology
And why growing more slowly can be the best thing for your business

We also talked about how to be a better communicator, how to delegate, and the future of fintechs in Mexico.

The DD360 story is a great example of how to adopt technology in a traditional industry. Now, I’ll leave you with my conversation with Jorge Combe.

Youtube Timestamps*

[1:08] - Intro and Investment Banking

How did Jorge arrive at the fascinating world of startups, and why did he leave the world of investment banking at the peak of his career at Goldman Sachs?
What did Jorge learn during his time at Goldman Sachs that has helped him as a founder?
What qualities does Jorge look for when hiring young people?
What has he had to unlearn from his experience at Goldman Sachs?
Where does he advise young people to work? Is investment banking a good start to a professional career?
How does he define his leadership style today, and how does he reflect on his evolution since his time as a banker?
How has his way of choosing which tasks to do versus which tasks to delegate evolved?
What have been the deepest internal changes Jorge has lived through in becoming a founder?
His life went through many changes. Did his friends change too?

[25:16] - Communication

What is Jorge’s goal in becoming public?
How does he think about conveying his thoughts to his family?
Did he always have his ability to communicate, or did he learn it over time?
What does Jorge recommend for someone who does not know how to communicate by speaking?

[38:12] - Evolution from No Tech to Tech

What was the hardest thing to learn about working with technology? And how did he learn it?
Is it enough to bring in a technology team to build successful digital products? What has Jorge learned about the interaction between technology and culture?
As DD360 has become a more tech company, focused on the end consumer, have the positions they consider core, and the ones they do not, changed?
What did Jorge lose, or what is he afraid of losing over time, in this transition from no tech to tech?

[59:12] - Bootstrapping

How does Jorge think about the balance between profitability and growth?
How did the company’s behavior change when it raised 91M dollars?
Jorge told us how he altered the typical model of a fintech when raising capital
What investors are interested in a company that raises so much capital that it goes onto the balance sheet?
What operating principles does Jorge attribute to the success they have had being so efficient with the use of capital?
What did Jorge do to instill that spirit in his team?
Jorge says that a predictor in life is how you react to adversity. How does he generate adversity in his company when things are going well?

[1:25:50] Rapid-Fire Round

If Jorge looks 10 years into the future, what is the most extraordinary vision of DD360?
How does he describe the magical experience he wants for his customers?
What would he like to change about the world of startups?