The J Curve with Olga Maslikhova

Paulo Passoni, Managing Partner at Valor Capital, and Olga Maslikhova unpack how to pick the winners in AI when historical benchmarks stop working, why Paulo would sell his home to buy Higgsfield stock, and whether OpenAI and Anthropic will leave room for anyone else. This is TJC Debrief — a monthly show covering tech, venture, and capital markets for Latin American founders and investors.
We cover why base-rate thinking initially kept Paulo on the sidelines of AI and what ElevenLabs and Perplexity revealed that changed his mind, how conviction builds through repeated founder interactions and conversations with investors who disagree with you, why cybersecurity could overtake coding as AI’s biggest use case, how AI is transforming due diligence—from reconstructing Higgsfield’s revenue using four million transactions to analyzing loan tapes—and why pitch decks could give way to direct access to company data. We discuss how hypergrowth can conceal poor unit economics, why you can pick the right AI company and still make a terrible investment, what remains valuable when AI does the analytical work, and how Latin America gives investors an edge in backing global companies. Plus: the risk of being “short innovation” when investing in AI infrastructure, NVIDIA’s interest in a world with multiple model providers, and why established companies should use AI to build new revenue streams—even if that means competing with their own business.
Partners:

Huge thank you to our partners:
⁠⁠iFood Beneficios ⁠⁠
⁠⁠Jeeves⁠⁠

Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠⁠ newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on ⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Arthur Freitas is CEO of iFood Benefícios, the food benefits business inside Brazil’s leading food delivery platform. When he took over iFood Benefícios, the business was burning millions of dollars and was at real risk of being shut down. Today, it’s growing triple digits annually, serving 1.5 million users and processing roughly $220 million in monthly transactions. Our conversation is a masterclass in what it takes to turn a struggling division into a new growth engine.
In this episode, Arthur shares the decisions behind that turnaround: reducing the team from roughly 750 people to 250, removing unsustainable customer incentives and rebuilding growth around SMBs before expanding into enterprise. We unpack Brazil’s $30–40 billion food benefits market, how four incumbents came to control more than 95% of it, and why the shift from closed arrangements—where providers maintain their own merchant acceptance networks—to cards running on existing payment rails changed the economics of the industry. We discuss how iFood’s consumer DNA shaped its “Ask your HR” campaign, what it takes to earn credibility with enterprise buyers, and why selling to HR alone can cost you a deal. Arthur also explains how AI agents now handle roughly half of SMB sales while salespeople move toward larger accounts, why having those capabilities earlier might have reinforced the wrong strategy, and what he believes competitors will find hardest to replicate about iFood Benefícios.

Partners:
Huge thank you to our partners:
⁠iFood Beneficios ⁠
⁠Jeeves⁠

Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠ newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠.

Dileep Thazhmon, founder and CEO of Jeeves, explains how AI and stablecoins are changing the economics of building a global fintech—and why licenses, compliance and customer trust matter more as technology becomes easier to replicate.
We unpack Jeeves’ $110M raise, the decision to shut down parts of the business before rebuilding, and how the company grew revenue 10X with fewer employees. Dileep also shares his approach to fundraising: control the information you share, run a structured process, and understand the person behind the fund.
Plus: why launching a neobank doesn’t mean building the next Nubank, how Jeeves cut the cost of entering a new country from $1M to around $200K, and why Dileep believes the future belongs to managers who still do the work.

Huge thank you to our partners:
⁠⁠iFood Beneficios ⁠⁠
⁠⁠Jeeves⁠⁠

Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠⁠ newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on ⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Bruno Maimone, Head of Warburg Pincus Brazil, explains how AI is reshaping private equity, growth investing and enterprise software—and why Brazil’s scarcity of capital can make its category leaders stronger.
We unpack Warburg’s playbook for exits and secondaries, the cash-flow discipline that protects investors from FOMO, and why net-new revenue can reveal more than a company’s headline growth rate.
Plus: how Jusbrasil, Blip, Sólides, Contabilizei and Omie are building durable advantages—and Bruno’s bold prediction for Latin America that sounds crazy today but may seem obvious five years from now.
Partners:

Huge thank you to our partners:
⁠iFood Beneficios ⁠
⁠Jeeves⁠

Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠ newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠.

What is Stripe really buying in its $8B+ OpenRouter acquisition—and why could a company that reaches $16 billion in revenue still disappoint investors? Olga and Paulo Passoni unpack AI model routing, durable moats, runaway valuations, the compute bottleneck, and the growth benchmarks that matter now. Then they turn to Latin America: Brazil’s AI opportunity, the Series B funding gap, FIDCs and venture debt, and what Cashea signals about Venezuela’s next chapter.
Partners:

Huge thank you to our partners:
⁠iFood Beneficios ⁠
⁠Jeeves⁠

Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠ newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on ⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠.