The J Curve with Olga Maslikhova

TJC Operators opens its series premiere with one of the architects of Latin America's most consequential technology company.
Stelleo Tolda co-founded MercadoLibre in 1999 — when 80 competitors were chasing the same market, internet penetration was just 2%, and the infrastructure for e-commerce in Latin America barely existed. He ran Brazil for 25 years, orchestrated the logistics operation that scaled from 8% to 95% of packages handled in-house, and then spent three years designing his own succession before stepping back as an independent board member.
Today MercadoLibre is a $100B company, the most valuable publicly traded company in Latin America.
In this TJC Operators Series Premiere, Stelleo unpacks every key decision behind the rise of one of the most remarkable companies ever built in Latin America — and what it actually takes to build something designed to outlast its founders.
We discuss:
• How MercadoLibre outlasted 80 competitors while charging the highest fees in the market
• The dot-com crash survival playbook — and what scarcity forces you to do right
• Why MercadoLibre declared war on Amazon — and what happened in that war room
• The 2010 technology bet: throwing away everything and rebuilding from scratch
• The adjacency principle — how one marketplace became payments, logistics, credit and advertising
• Why MercadoLibre chose to build versus buy at every inflection point
• Investing in logistics CapEx as a public company — and how to bring Wall Street along
• The Champions League analogy — what it means to compete against the world's best
• How MercadoLibre codified its culture at scale without losing what made it win
• The succession playbook: advisor, then board member, then gone — and why three years made it stick • What great board members actually do — and the difference between challenging and operating
• AI in Latin America: why scarcity makes the region's builders better
Stelleo also shares why the worst thing for an entrepreneur is abundance — and why the next generation of iconic Latin American companies is being built right now.
This episode is a masterclass on:
— Building enduring technology companies in emerging markets
— Vertical integration as a competitive moat
— Operating at scale without losing culture
— Succession architecture vs. succession events
— The founder identity transition
— Latin America as a proving ground for world-class operators

Subscribe to The J Curve for conversations with the founders and investors building the future of Latin American tech.
⁠ ⁠⁠Follow the show on Spotify and sign up for The J Curve Insider ⁠newsletter for deeper insights and behind-the-scenes content.

Season 5 opens with one of the architects of Latin America’s tech ecosystem.
Hernán Kazah co-founded MercadoLibre — Latin America’s most valuable technology company with a market cap exceeding $100B — and later built Kaszek Ventures into a multi-billion-dollar venture firm backing companies like Nubank, Kavak, and Gympass (Wellhub).
In this Season 5 premiere of The J Curve, Hernán shares lessons from building MercadoLibre from a garage startup with 80 competitors into a generational technology company — and from investing in the next generation of Latin American founders.  
We discuss:
• The early strategic decisions that allowed MercadoLibre to win
• Why the default outcome for founders is failure  
• How Kaszek evaluates founders and investment opportunities  
• The venture capital power law and why investors must be right only a few times  
• Building a generational venture capital institution in Latin America  
• The impact of AI on software and the future of SaaS  
• How great founders actually get identified
• The evolution of the Latin American tech ecosystem

Hernán also explains why building a startup in Latin America is like “climbing Everest on top of a rollercoaster” — and why the next generation of iconic companies is still ahead.  

This episode is a masterclass on:
– Building enduring technology companies
– Venture capital decision-making
– Founder psychology
– Long-term compounding
– The future of Latin American tech

Subscribe to The J Curve for conversations with the founders and investors building the future of Latin American tech.
 Follow the show on Spotify and sign up for The J Curve Insider newsletter for deeper insights and behind-the-scenes content.

At the start of the 2025 season, we released an episode that broke our Spotify records.
That single conversation was listened to six times more than any other episode we released this year.

That episode was my conversation with Paulo Passoni, Managing Partner at Valor Capital.

For this holiday special, I invited Paulo back for round two.
And this conversation goes in a very different direction.

Here’s what we explore:

– Why speed may be the last real moat left in the era of AI
– Why Anthropic may actually be a safer bet than OpenAI
– The hiring rule at Perplexity that sounds insane — until you understand what it unlocks
– The 10,000-year clock Jeff Bezos is building inside a mountain, and the founder mindset behind it
– **Ramp vs. CloudWalk: similar revenue scale, radically different multiples — what capital markets are actually pricing
– The US vs. China, and why the Mag 7 — Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla — now sit at the center of global power dynamics
– Why LPs and capital allocators remain split on LATAM — who’s long, who’s short, and what each side is really optimizing for
– And finally, what it means to be deliberately more human in the age of AI — and why hobbies and community may matter more than we think

Join The J Curve Community:
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Weekly deep dives into LATAM's hottest deals, emerging trends, and market intelligence
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Daily market insights and exclusive founder updates
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Behind-the-scenes podcast moments and quick industry takes
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hit subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and share this episode with fellow entrepreneurs and investors

If you’ve spent any time with founders or investors in São Paulo this year, you know the questions filling every conversation.
Can Brazil still generate breakout winners? Is AI killing SaaS? Are IPOs even realistic? Is global expansion from LATAM something founders should still aspire to?
This episode answers all of them.
You’ll hear why Brazil went from six $100M ARR companies to more than thirty in just a few years.
Why global products that scale across Mexico and Colombia simply break in Brazil.
Why AI is both the biggest threat and the biggest tailwind for incumbents with real moats.
Why growth investors are underwriting M&A far more seriously than IPOs.
Why “right to win” — not the story — determines whether a Brazilian company should ever go global.
And what founders must understand now about valuation, exits, efficiency, and investor relationships in a world transformed by AI.
And toward the end, you’ll hear me bring in the questions our audience asked live — in the room as we recorded this session.
This is the episode you’ll want to send to your co-founder, your board, and the WhatsApp group where everyone is not fundraising just yet. Comment BRAZIL and I’ll send you the link to the full conversation.
Dileep Thazhmon from Jeeves and Bruno Maimone from Warburg Pincus sit down with me to map the truths behind the narratives the ecosystem has been circling for months. 

Join The J Curve Community:
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Weekly deep dives into LATAM's hottest deals, emerging trends, and market intelligence
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Daily market insights and exclusive founder updates
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Behind-the-scenes podcast moments and quick industry takes
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hit subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and share this episode with fellow entrepreneurs and investors

This conversation will change how you think about money. Recorded live at Digital Assets Conference 2025 in São Paulo, this special edition of The J Curve brings together three influential voices shaping the next era of crypto and traditional finance:Roberto Dagnoni — Executive Chairman, Mercado BitcoinBen Lizana — Principal, SoftBank Latin AmericaGui Gomes — Founder & CEO, OranjeBTCThis is not a technical crypto panel.It’s a wide-ranging debate about the future of money, digital assets, crypto adoption, and the global transformation of financial infrastructure — told by the operators and investors building that future in real time.We discuss:• The real bottleneck to mainstream adoption — the factor slowing growth more than technology, liquidity, or regulation.• The emerging-market advantage — why Latin America’s volatility and innovation pressure are creating a global edge.• The new IPO class — why public markets are suddenly hungry for digital-asset companies and what they’re evaluating.• Lessons from the last crypto cycle — the mindset founders and investors need to navigate hype, downturns, and noise.• The future of digital money — how reserve assets, tokenization, stablecoins, and macro shifts will shape global adoption.• The everyday impact — how new financial primitives are already reducing friction in ordinary transactions.

Join The J Curve Community:
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Weekly deep dives into LATAM's hottest deals, emerging trends, and market intelligence
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Daily market insights and exclusive founder updates
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: Behind-the-scenes podcast moments and quick industry takes
⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Hit subscribe⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and share this episode with fellow entrepreneurs and investors