The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.
1:22 - Starting a Company as a Teenager and the Origin of Yaxi
From a young age, Sebas built electrical circuits and developed apps out of curiosity.
- What was his education like and how did it influence his interest in technology?
- What did he learn from launching his first app with no expectations and seeing it scale to 13 countries?
- Why did he decide to found a ride-hailing company before Uber arrived in Mexico?
He learned to code with free online resources and formed a team with friends.
- How did they create an MVP without drivers and scale the operation with a call center?
- How did they convince traditional drivers to try an app from scratch?
12:02 - From Startup to CTO of Cabify and Then to MELI
Yaxi surpassed Cabify in rides in Mexico with only 6 people in operations.
- What decisions made it possible to operate with extreme efficiency?
- How did they automate penalties, payments, and invoicing from day one?
- What did he learn from being acquired by Cabify and leading its technology for 4 years?
At Mercado Libre, he leads 15,000 developers while maintaining speed and a startup culture.
- What stereotypes about technology corporations were broken when he joined MELI?
- How is the culture of speed, detail, and risk maintained in such a large company?
24:00 - Artificial Intelligence: Philosophy, Practice, and Real Cases
Mercado Libre has used AI for more than 15 years for search, fraud, and logistics.
- What changes did the era of generative models such as LLMs bring?
- Which current use cases are already generating real value?
They created Verdi, their own platform for producing AI solutions.
- Why did they decide to build instead of buying tools such as LangChain?
- Which cases are built on Verdi inside MELI today?
Sebas believes there is still no “killer use case” for GenAI in production at large scale.
- What limitations exist today in accuracy, cost, and reliability?
- How do they define at MELI what to build with AI and what not to?
38:15 - The Future: One-Person Companies and Experiences Without an Interface
Sebas predicts that we will see unicorn companies created by a single person with AI.
- How does he believe AI will change the way digital products are built?
- What role does access to organized data play as a competitive advantage?
For him, the best interface is the one that does not exist: the goal is to reduce friction.
- How does he imagine online shopping in 10 years with augmented reality and intelligent agents?
- How does this relate to the mission of giving people more quality time?
Episode Mentions
You can find Sebastián on LinkedIn Discover More from the Startupeable Podcast
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