Martin Escobari: How to Invest During a Recession; Negotiation Tips; Developing Markets | 20VC #948

Martin, I'm so excited for this. Thank you so much for joining me today. I was sitting with Seba the other day from dLocal, and he was telling me how wonderful you've been as a partner to him. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Harry, I love your podcast and I'm honored to be here.

That is very, very kind of you. I, I also love the artwork behind you. It's much cooler than what I've (laughs) got in my background. But I wanna start with a little bit on you. So now, co-president of GA, where did it start and how did you make your way into the world of venture?

I, I come from a tiny town, population 10,000 in the middle of the Bolivian jungle, and I was born in an oil camp to two doctors, parents who were communists. So the first lucky break in this journey that got me from there to here is against their best thinking, they decided to send me to the American school and I learned English. And that was amazing. Uh, when it came to college, I couldn't afford university, so I was limited to only people who offered scholarships, and that happened to be the good universities in the United States. And so I got into Harvard, and Harvard was life-changing to me. And I came as, as a young freshman and I was the first Bolivian in 354 years to come to Harvard College.

Wow.

And it was, uh, revolutionary, life-changing, and, uh, it's an institution that I'm eternally grateful for. Uh, but that was sort of lucky break number two in my life. Lucky break number two, I, I did college and business school at Harvard. Uh, after business school, I decided to go live in Brazil because I found Brazil fabulous. It's exotic, it's tropical, it's beautiful, the music, and I had fallen in love with my Portuguese instructor-

(laughs)

... who is to this day very grateful. So then 20 years in Brazil, uh, and my first tour of duty in Brazil was an entrepreneur. I was co-founder of the, uh, number one e-commerce company in Brazil in the '90s, the late '90s, company called submarino.com, uh, which became the first Brazilian company to go, tech Brazilian company to go public. It's the first, the first big home run IPO in, in, in, in, uh, post-bubble. Um, and in the context of building Submarino, I met General Atlantic, and we had met about 200 investors. And General Atlantic was different for ways that I hope we, we get to explore during the podcast, and I fell in love. Unfortunately, they didn't fall in love with me and they didn't (laughs) invest in Submarino. Uh, they should have, but they didn't. Uh, and so be it. We built Submarino, we took it public, we sold it. Uh, but after that, I got a call back from, from General Atlantic, and the second time around they did love me and they hired me to run their Brazil office, we expanded that to Latin America. Latin America is now about 15% of what we do. We've done very well over the last 10 years thanks to people like Seba and Cesar at Gympass and some of the people that you've int- you, you, you've interviewed. And about five years ago, they invited me to be chair of our global investment committee in New York. Uh, and for some reason they thought I was qualified, and that's what I've been doing for the last five years, helping global entrepreneurs. Glo- and so GA is massive, right? We manage $80 billion, 15 offices globally. We've been around for 41 years. A fabulous firm, and I'm proud to be a partner in the firm.