The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.
Today I spoke with Sebastián Monroy, cofounder and CEO of Zubale, an e-commerce infrastructure company that includes technology tools, software, and services so that traditional retailers can profitably scale their digital channels, their own or third-party ones such as Rappi, Amazon, or Mercado Libre.
Zubale generates close to $100M in revenue, operates in 6 countries in Latin America including Brazil and Mexico, and has raised +$80M in investment.
Youtube Timestamps*
[1:15] - Personal
Sebastián said that in Medellín he lived in a little school bubble, very protected from life’s blows. In the U.S., he met many illegal immigrants with difficult stories. When he returned to Colombia, he arrived much more motivated. He was no longer the same person.
- Could Sebastián tell us more about both experiences and how living that parallel shaped him?
- Does Sebastián think that can be replicated in his company and with his teams?
Sebastián mentioned: “You can have everything you want in life, but not at the same time.”
- What is Sebastián’s definition of balance? What sacrifices has he had to make in order to build a company, things he had to accept he would not be able to have, at least for a while?
Sebastián’s first university internship was also at Procter & Gamble, which is a great school in terms of training, empowerment, etc.
- What culture and organization practices from Procter has Sebastián replicated at Zubale?
Naturally, as a startup grows, more processes and hierarchies get established.
- How does Sebastián keep Zubale, as it grows, from going through the same thing as Procter, and from that driving away new talent with an entrepreneurial mindset like his?
[20:00] - Profitable Growth
In the last 12 months, Zubale cut its losses, the burn, by more than 90% and tripled its net sales.
- What were the decisions Sebastián made that had the most impact in turning the business around so dramatically? What were the principles behind those decisions?
Last year, Zubale let go of 300 employees.
- Could Sebastián tell us how he lived through that experience? How does he make decisions as hard as those, and what has he learned about letting people go in the most human way possible?
- Any lesson or reflection from Sebastián about how to handle that “wound” after such a significant wave of layoffs?
The current market for raising capital is very different from that of 2021 and 2022, especially for highly operational businesses like Zubale’s.
- How has the bar for what Sebastián expects from his team today changed, versus 2021 and 2022?
One of the difficult decisions of this stage was the separation of Sebastián’s cofounder from the company. You were “co-CEOs”, a role that tends to be criticized in the startup ecosystem.
- What has Sebastián reflected on about whether it is better to have a single CEO instead of two?
In 2023, Zubale raised capital in a very unfavorable context, especially for highly operational businesses.
- Could Sebastián tell us what raising his latest round of capital was like, and how he had to change his strategy in the face of the change in context?
[42:06] - Strategy
At the business level, Zubale was born with a giant product that Sebastián called a white-label “Instacart”, but they decided to split that value proposition into 3 independent products.
- Could Sebastián tell us the logic behind this decision and what benefits it translated into at the business level?
It seems that going from running one product to three can drastically increase the complexity of the business.
- How has Sebastián had to reorganize his team around this decision?
Episode Mentions
You can find Sebastián on LinkedIn
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