The Twenty Minute VC

dLocal CEO Sebastian Kanovich: The $8BN Company You Might Not Know | 20VC #926

Seba Kanovich is the CEO @ dlocal, the #1 payments leader with a single solution focused on Latin America and other emerging markets. In June 2021, dlocal raised $617M in their NASDAQ IPO listing valuing the company at nearly $9BN. Before their IPO, dlocal raised from some of the best including General Atlantic, Bond Capital, and Oren Zeev to name a few. Prior to dlocal, Seba was CEO @ AstroPay, a leading payment solution provider in Emerging Markets. -------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Seba's Background 1:09 Luck vs. Skill 2:13 What is "high performance"? 3:16 How to give people space to fail 4:30 Speed of Execution 7:11 Biggest Hiring Mistakes 8:12 Seba's Ability to Focus 9:45 How to know when to listen to customers 11:16 Sebastian’s most painful but worthwhile lesson at dLocal 13:31 Why running a process is a bad idea 14:30 Pros and Cons of Bootstrapping 15:45 What do good investors bring to the table 17:56 Breadth vs. Depth of Coverage 19:57 Why dLocal prefers the hard countries 20:52 How to make geographic expansion work from the team side 23:16 The Benefits of a Having a Lean Team 26:20 Sebastian’s Biggest Insecurity 27:55 The Secret to a Happy Marriage 28:34 What to tell yourself when you’re unsure you can do something 29:35 dLocal’s IPO 33:35 Biggest Difference Between Being Public and Private Company 34:31 What gets easier and what gets harder over time? 35:35 The First Things to Break in Scaling Teams 38:11 Did you ever get high on your own supply? 39:01 What does “Winning” mean? 39:55 Sebastian’s Favourite Book 40:59 Sebastian’s Biggest Strength/Weakness 41:17 Sebastian’s Favourite Interview Question 42:08 Hardest Part of Sebastian’s Role at dLocal 42:19 If you could be CEO of any other company, which would it be? 43:25 Advice for founders from Uruguay (clip for youtube) 44:04 What do the next five years hold for dLocal? -------------------------------------- In Today's Episode with Seba Kanovich We Discuss: 1.) The Journey to CEO of an $8BN Company: How Seba made his way to the role of CEO of an $8BN company through dinner at his mother-in-law’s house? What does Seba know now that he wishes he had known when he first became CEO? 2.) Leadership 101: What does “high performance” in business and leadership mean? How important are velocity and speed of execution in startups? When should one trade speed for quality? Where is the nuance? How does Seba approach prioritization? What framework does he use to determine what to focus on? How does Seba think through effective delegation? How can leaders determine what only they can do? 3.) Leadership: The Challenges and Lessons: What are Seba’s biggest insecurities in leadership today? How does he manage them? How have they changed over time? What is the single most painful leadership lesson Seba has learned that he is also pleased to have learned? What gets easier with scale as a leader? What gets harder? In a scaling organization, what is the first thing to break? What can be done to mitigate this? 4.) The Funding and The IPO: Why did dlocal bootstrap for 4 years instead of raise funding? How did that process change their mindset toward capital efficiency? What was good about it? What was bad? What are the single biggest advantages great investors can bring to the table? Why did Seba decide 2021 was the right time to go public? What was the biggest surprise about going public? What is better and what is worse about being a public company? -------------------------------------- #SebastianKanovich #dLocal #HarryStebbings #20VC #startups #uruguay #fintech #venturecapital #founderadvice #startupadvice

Sebastián KanovichguestHarry Stebbingshost

Sep 15, 202244mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

dLocal’s CEO on Luck, Frugality, Hard Markets and Relentless Execution

dLocal CEO Sebastián Kanovich recounts how he became CEO by chance, bootstrapped a payments company from Uruguay, and grew it into a global public business focused on emerging markets. He emphasizes a culture of high performance built on speed, ownership, frugality, and a deep obsession with customer needs rather than internal roadmaps. The conversation covers tough lessons from hiring and fundraising, the strategic rationale for entering “hard” markets like Nigeria, India, and China, and the complexities of going public. Kanovich also reflects on his personal insecurities, leadership evolution, and the challenge of maintaining culture while scaling and operating as a public company.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat luck as an entry ticket, but rely on relentless effort.

Kanovich attributes his role partly to luck (a chance conversation at a family party) but stresses that 10 years of intense work, obsession with not losing, and constant learning are what actually sustain success.

Define high performance as ownership plus energy, not presentations.

He looks for people who bring energy, focus on solutions, say “it’s on me,” and actually fix problems, rather than producing decks and delegating responsibility.

Optimize for fast, reversible decisions—but don’t fall in love with mistakes.

Speed is non‑negotiable for learning in new markets, yet the real danger is ego-driven doubling down on bad calls (especially hires), instead of owning the error and adjusting quickly.

Let customers write the roadmap and use converging signals to prioritize.

dLocal systematically asks large enterprise clients what to build and where to expand (e.g., payouts, Africa, India), acting only when multiple smart customers point in the same direction.

Bootstrapping builds powerful frugality, but the right investors expand your horizon.

Growing without VC forced discipline and customer-funded growth, but General Atlantic later unlocked ambition, access, and validation—showing them they’d been thinking too small about what was possible from Uruguay.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

You need to go to your mother‑in‑law’s dinner party. That’s one lesson.

— Sebastián Kanovich

High performance is people that say, ‘It’s on me. I’m gonna fix it.’

— Sebastián Kanovich

The issue is not the first mistake; it’s when you fall in love with that decision and keep doubling down on it.

— Sebastián Kanovich

We weren’t dreaming big enough. We thought companies from Uruguay don’t go to the next level.

— Sebastián Kanovich

You never win. You win for a few minutes, and then you’re again back in the grind.

— Sebastián Kanovich

Founding story of dLocal and the role of luck vs. skillHigh-performance culture, speed of execution, and decision-makingHiring, prioritization, and learning from costly mistakesBootstrapping vs. raising capital and partnering with investorsGeographic expansion strategy in hard emerging marketsRemote, lean team structure and evolving company cultureIPO process, life as a public company, and leadership insecurities

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