Tomás Bercovich, Global66 | Validating Your Idea in a Spreadsheet and Scaling to 500,000 Customers With Referrals [Ep. 73]

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

To validate a business idea, you do not need to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars of capital, much less pay to develop a product. Our guest today, Tomás Bercovich, CEO and cofounder of Global66, took 10 days to build his Minimum Viable Product with a web page connected to a Google Sheets.

Global66 is an international remittance platform whose vision is to become the borderless digital bank for individuals and companies in Latin America. To date, Global66 serves more than 500 thousand customers across Latin America and has raised 20 million dollars from funds such as Quona Capital, Magma Partners, and Clocktower Technology Ventures.

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Youtube Timestamps*

[1:14] - The Foreign Exchange Market

How did Tomás arrive in the fascinating world of startups?
What is Global66?
Why is it so expensive to send money to another country with traditional methods, and why have these alternatives found it so hard to evolve?
How does Global66’s technology generate efficiencies that translate into cost and time savings for its customers?
What competitive advantages does Global66 have, as a Latin American competitor, compared with other companies that operate globally?
What role do cryptocurrencies play in the future of international transfers, and how will they affect the business model of companies like Global66?

[17:31] - Global66’s MVP with Google Sheets

What steps did Global66 take to build an MVP without programming, what tools did it use, and what was that process like?
Why did the Global66 team decide to launch a no-code MVP, and what advantages did the company gain because of this?
What is the right moment for a startup to start developing its product with code?
How did Global66’s MVP differ compared with those of Tomás’s previous companies?
For Tomás, what are the most common mistakes founders make when validating their business ideas?

[29:30] - Global66’s Referral Programs

What was Global66’s Go to Market strategy, and why did its referral programs work so well?
When implementing a referral program, how do you know whether it is a profitable customer acquisition strategy?
What kinds of products or businesses can implement referral programs?
What are the key factors for implementing a referral strategy that is successful?

[38:21] - Tweet Round

Book recommended by Tomás
Changes Tomás would like to see in Latin America’s startup ecosystem
Founder Tomás recommends interviewing

Episode Mentions

You can find Tomás on Twitter and LinkedIn

Recommended book: No Rules Rules, by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer

Founder to interview: Janan Knust, of KLog

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