Helena Polyblank, Mendel | Winning Enterprise Customers by Charging When Your Competitors Don't

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

Today I spoke with Helena Polyblank, cofounder and Chief Product Officer of Mendel, a platform that helps large companies manage and monitor their expenses. To date, Mendel is used by more than 350 corporate customers and has raised more than $70M from investors such as Oak HC/FT, Infinity Ventures, Hi Ventures, and Better Tomorrow Ventures.

Youtube Timestamps*

[2:48] - Personal and Career

Helena started Mendel while pregnant with her first child, and with the small detail that her husband, Franco Forte of Mudafy, is also a founder.

How does an entrepreneurial family get organized? What does it take to balance Helena’s different roles (founder, mom, partner) in an environment where both are under so much pressure?
What is Helena’s definition of balance? What sacrifices has she had to make in order to build a company, things she accepted she would not be able to have, at least for a while?

Helena worked for many years at Mercado Libre and Naranja X, and then became a mother, perhaps at the moment of greatest uncertainty and risk in her professional career.

What has Helena reflected on about this apparent dilemma between being a mother and making risky career decisions such as starting a company?

[17:37] - Product and Business Model for Corporates

Mendel is a fintech for corporate cards and expense control, a category where several well-funded startups have emerged, such as Clara, Jeeves, and Tribal.

Could Helena give us a quick class on the corporate spend market, what problems it has, and how the way Mendel addresses these problems differs from other startups?
Why did they decide to focus on the corporate segment? How did they think about the advantages and disadvantages between that segment and SMEs?
What does the MVP of your product look like when selling to a corporate? What does it take to convince the first customers to bet on a startup?
How do you build a product that meets the standard of the best corporates in Latin America?

Alan, Helena’s partner, mentioned: “from Mercado Pago, through NaranjaX, to Mendel, Helena was always involved in the development of ‘frontier’ products, cutting-edge ones, that break with the usual way of doing things.”

What is Helena’s innovation process, and how does she identify market opportunities before others?

[46:12] - Business Model and GTM for Corporates

Mendel’s business model was an important factor in its success, and Helena mentioned that “the segment determines the pricing and their revenue comes mostly from SaaS”.

Could Helena explain their business model and how it allowed them to differentiate?

30 years ago, being a supplier to a large corporate was almost impossible for a startup, but today corporates invite startups like Mendel to take on their challenges.

What has Helena seen change in recent years about how corporates buy and, therefore, how you have to sell to them?

In 2020 and 2021, there was a frenzy of investment in corporate card fintechs, which used the capital to offer high cashback percentages and spectacular advertising.

How does Helena win sales when the market enters an “irrational” phase?

Helena mentioned that Mercado Libre switched all of its Citi cards to Mendel, something a company of that size does not usually do.

What has Helena learned about how to handle such long sales cycles? What has she learned about moving forward, building processes, and managing the relationship in these cases?