Gastón Irigoyen, Pomelo | A Thesis for Raising Capital, Fintech Infrastructure, and Personal Brand as a Talent Magnet [Ep. 57]

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

Competing in fintech is very difficult without having millions of dollars of capital, compared with other sectors. The technological and regulatory complexity of financial services makes it costly and slow to start a fintech, and even more so to scale internationally, since the infrastructure in each country is different. However, our guest today, Gastón Irigoyen, set out to found Pomelo, a startup that offers the technological and regulatory infrastructure to launch and scale fintech startups in Latin America.

Gastón explained to us in detail the complexity of the financial infrastructure in the region, and how meticulously building his startup’s thesis before talking to investors made it easier for him to raise capital.

To date, Pomelo has raised around US $45 million from venture capital funds such as Tiger Global Management, QED Investors, Sequoia Capital, and Monashees.

Thanks to Tomás Roggio of Latitud, and to the Pomelo team (Juan Fantoni, Hernán Corral, Diego Burgos, and Tomás Gutiérrez) for the excellent question suggestions.

What You Can Learn Today

How fintech infrastructure works in Latin America
How to prepare a good thesis for raising capital
Creating a personal brand to attract talent

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Youtube Timestamps*

Introduction to Pomelo and Fintech Infrastructure

[1:37] - How did Gastón get into the world of startups?
- He was one of the first 5 employees of Google in Argentina
- He started to become interested in technology and entrepreneurship
- He set out to build a company for the first time in 2010
[2:57] - What is Pomelo?
- It is the AWS of fintech in Latin America
- It offers the technological and regulatory infrastructure needed to scale
- The team is made up of 170 people in 7 countries
[4:46] - What is fintech infrastructure like in the region?
- When a transaction is made, an invisible technological process takes place
- Pomelo focuses on the customer side, the issuer of the money
- Launching a fintech requires a very broad regulatory framework
- Starting to offer financial services in LatAm can take 1-2 years
- The regulatory process must be repeated in each country
- Pomelo takes care of the technological and regulatory aspects
[9:18] - With Pomelo, how accessible will launching a fintech be?
- Pomelo’s thesis is born, in part, from its cofounders’ frustration
- Every company can become a fintech with embedded finance
- Pomelo makes sense for companies looking to offer financial services, even if that is not their main activity
- In the first instance, launching a fintech with Pomelo takes 6 to 7 months
[14:40] - The future of fintech with Pomelo
- Fintechs will be like websites or mobile apps
- Later on, everyone will be able to offer their own financial services
- To stand out as a fintech, you will have to work on the value proposition
- New experiences for the user and new use cases
- The team’s great motivation is to have a structural impact on the region

Pomelo’s Fundraising Thesis

[20:43] - How was Pomelo’s thesis created?
- Preparation instead of improvisation
- Defining the problem took 5 minutes, but structuring it required 3 months
- Identification of the founding team’s past experiences and mistakes
[24:25] - Pomelo’s ideation and execution process
- Asking about the intrinsic weaknesses and strengths of the ideas
- Understand the controllable and uncontrollable factors
- Iteration and continuous improvement on the Pomelo idea
- Learn about the context and the sector
[28:05] - Relationship with Pomelo’s investors
- A founding team with broad experience in fintech and in building startups
- Understanding of the Latin American market
- 100% of Pomelo’s rounds were via Zoom
- It is the founder’s responsibility to generate trust with investors
[31:54] - Strategy for raising Pomelo’s seed round
- 3 months of brainstorming to build a pitch deck of 10-12 slides
- Contact with foreign angel investors focused on LatAm
- Search for intros with other investors and larger funds
- It was a round with a lot of supply and they were able to choose their investors
[34:40] - How do you evaluate how much capital is necessary?
- Analyze the quality of the investors and their potential role in the company
- Long-term planning to manage the capital
- Understanding of demand and the market
- Classification of investors according to the startup’s needs

Personal Brand to Attract Talent

[38:37] - Building a personal brand as a founder
- Gastón started being very active on social networks when he was leading Naranja X
- Having a presence on social media is part of his job
- Pomelo’s communication is a lot of fun and helps it differentiate itself
[45:03] - Role of the founders’ personal brand in attracting talent
- Professional reputation and credibility
- Affinity with the work culture
- Stock options for employees
- Gastón has invested 40-50% of his time in interviewing candidates
- Transparency and objectivity
[48:59] - What should a founder do to attract talent?
- Tell the company’s story and the opportunity
- Inspire the team, make them feel comfortable, and give them decision-making power
- Economic compensation with stock options
- Foster a sense of responsibility

Tweet Round

[50:47] -
- Recommended book: El Gaucho Martín Fierro, by José Hernández
- Changes in the Latin American startup ecosystem: that the region become the cradle of some technology industry, such as crypto
- Founders to interview: Jorge Vargas Neto of BHub, Maximiliano Chab of Elevva, and Santiago Molina of Finkargo

Episode Mentions

You can find Gastón on LinkedIn and Twitter

Founders to interview: Jorge Vargas Neto of BHub, Maximiliano Chab of Elevva, and Santiago Molina of Finkargo

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