Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

This week, I sit down with Federico Vega, founder and CEO of Frete.com—the largest freight matching platform in Latin America.

Federico’s story is anything but conventional: he grew up in a small town in Patagonia, left a career in investment banking at JP Morgan in London, and moved—without speaking the language—to Brazil to reinvent an entire industry. What started as a Facebook group for truck drivers has evolved into a logistics giant, processing nearly $18 billion in freight transactions annually and serving ~900,000 active drivers—roughly 80% of Brazil’s entire trucking fleet.

In this episode, Federico shares how Frete.comsolved the classic chicken-and-egg dilemma, scaled a fragmented industry from the ground up, and transformed Brazilian complexity into a competitive moat. It’s a masterclass in grit, product obsession, and doing things that don’t scale.

Here’s what we cover:

• How to break network effects open in traditional industries
• Why doing unscalable things early creates lasting strategic edge
• What Brazilian truck stops taught Federico about product design
• How to use AI and data to combat fraud and drive operational leverage
• The culture-building playbook behind Frete.com’s growth

For founders building in complex markets—and investors betting on logistics and fintech as the future—this episode is a must-listen.

More from us:

• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where we go beyond the podcast to break down the most exciting investment & tech trends in LATAM. Sharp. Concise. Real business strategies and market insights you won’t find anywhere else. Delivered straight to your inbox.
• Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram

Welcome to this special solo episode of Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

Every few months, I zoom out to reflect on the lessons that stuck with me from the show. Think of this as your quarterly operator’s memo—especially if you’re building, raising, or investing in Latin America.

Q2 was full of sharp insights and real operator depth. But in this edition of The J Curve Insider, I won’t recap every episode.

I’ll go deep into three.

João Del Valle (EBANX), Mike Packer (QED), and Gustavo Mapeli (Kanastra).

We’ll unpack EBANX’s global growth playbook, explore how QED built conviction around LATAM as an outsider VC—and what they’re betting on next—and break down how Kanastra scaled by defying startup orthodoxy.

Here’s what I’ll get into:

→ In LATAM, complexity isn’t a bug—it’s the moat.

→ Revenue is the best anti-dilution strategy.

→ In frontier markets, global expansion is a risk management.

→ Outsiders win in LATAM when they think like founders: test, learn, commit.

→ Multi-product vs. single-product: what founders need to ask before picking a lane.

If you enjoy today’s episode, please rate us on Spotify, subscribe to our newsletter at ⁠blog.thejcurve.com⁠, and follow us on YouTube (@thejcurvepodcast) and Instagram (@olgamaslikhova).

Let’s get into it.

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

This week, I sit down with Caetano Lacerda and Raphael Dyxklay, co-founders of Brazilian fintech Barte, which is transforming the payments and working capital landscape for mid-to-large companies.

Barte’s journey is a masterclass in efficient growth: from zero to $10M ARR in less than two years on just $1.5M of burn—and then growing sustainably to $20M ARR. Along the way, they’ve pioneered a build-in-public strategy that attracts customers, builds trust, and fosters engagement. They’ve also developed sharp insights into segmenting by use case rather than industry, prioritizing speed and first-principles thinking, and leveraging customer feedback to scale efficiently—insights that have become part of their DNA and that they generously share in this conversation.

Here’s what we cover:

• What founders need to know about horizontal vs. vertical strategies in B2B

• Why building in public is more than a marketing tactic—it’s a B2B growth engine

• How to find product-market fit in fragmented, high-friction industries

• What Brazilian complexity taught Barte about opportunity and execution

• Lessons in prioritizing product bets when everything feels urgent

This episode is the second in a special three-part series brought to you by AWS.

AWS has become a key growth partner for Latin America’s startup ecosystem—helping founders scale from idea to IPO with world-class cloud infrastructure, local expertise, and a global support network. We’re incredibly happy to partner with them.

For founders and investors who see Latin America’s friction as an opportunity—and fintech as the future—this conversation is a must-listen.

More from us:

• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where we go beyond the podcast to break down the most exciting investment & tech trends in LATAM. Sharp. Concise. Real business strategies and market insights you won’t find anywhere else. Delivered straight to your inbox.
• Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

This week, I sit down with João Del Valle, co-founder and CEO of EBANX—one of Latin America’s most iconic fintech stories and a company that built one of the most expansive cross-border payment platforms in the world.

Founded in Curitiba—well outside Brazil’s traditional tech hub of São Paulo—EBANX was built for scale from day one. Its global-by-design approach quickly became a powerful competitive moat, allowing the company to expand into 29 countries, process billions in cross-border payments, and power transactions for global giants like Spotify and AliExpress.

In this episode, we talk about what it really takes to scale global infrastructure from Latin America, why complexity is a competitive advantage, and how João evolved from founder and CTO to CEO of a company backed by Advent International in one of their largest-ever tech deals.

Here’s what we cover:

• How embracing regulatory and payment complexity became core to EBANX’s GTM playbook

• What 2022–2023 taught João about discipline, cold-blooded decision-making, and founder-mode leadership

• How João leads distributed teams across the U.S., China, and Latin America

• What it means to scale sustainably without blitzscaling—and still attract a firm like Advent International

• How João thinks about long-term planning, investor alignment, and the path to liquidity

• Tactical insight on navigating cross-border regulation, local payment rails, and real-time systems like Pix and UPI

For global operators, fintech builders, and investors looking for real lessons in execution—this episode is packed with insight.

More from us:

• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where we go beyond the podcast to break down the most exciting investment & tech trends in LATAM. Sharp. Concise. Real business strategies and market insights you won’t find anywhere else. Delivered straight to your inbox.
• Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

Last week I got to spend a few days in cidade maravilhosa—Rio de Janeiro—for Web Summit, which this year attracted over 37,000 people. The event was action-packed—both inside the venue and across the city, with an incredible lineup of side events.

It was a milestone week for The J Curve. We recorded our very first live episode on stage—a conversation I’ve been wanting to have for a long time, and the one we’re releasing today: a live interview with Mike Packer, partner at QED Investors.

QED is the legendary firm founded by Frank Rotman and Nigel Morris—the creators of Capital One and pioneers of data-driven credit long before it became mainstream. They’ve been betting on Latin America for over a decade. Their first investment in the region was Nubank, now the most valuable digital bank in the world.

Here’s what we cover:

— Why growth capital is the new frontier in LatAm

— What makes a founder truly fundable in 2025+

— AI’s real impact across QED’s portfolio

— What it really takes to IPO from LatAm

— The vertical SaaS trap—and the case for vertical AI

More from us:

• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, where we go beyond the podcast to break down the most exciting investment & tech trends in LATAM. Sharp. Concise. Real business strategies and market insights you won’t find anywhere else. Delivered straight to your inbox.
• Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve 🎙️

This week, I sit down with Marcelo Lutz and Roberto Biselli, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Capim—a vertical SaaS + fintech company that started as an MBA class project and is now doing $10M+ in ARR, serving thousands of dental clinics across Brazil.

Their story breaks every rule—and proves that in Latin America’s most fragmented industries, the right wedge isn’t software. It’s credit.

Instead of trying to “disrupt” dentistry with a standard SaaS tool, Marcelo and Roberto built a credit product tailor-made for the quirks of Brazilian clinics—and used it to build their way into a much bigger platform play.

Here’s what we cover:

• How Capim reached $10M+ ARR in 3 years without a traditional SaaS GTM

• Supply-side fragmentation as a feature—not a bug—for B2B marketplaces

• Understanding distribution in offline markets—without relying on paid ads

• What 70,000+ dental procedures taught Capim about underwriting and risk

• How to think about product sequencing in complex industries

More from us:

• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠⁠, where we go beyond the podcast to break down the most exciting investment & tech trends in LATAM. Sharp. Concise. Real business strategies and market insights you won’t find anywhere else. Delivered straight to your inbox.
• Follow us on⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram

Welcome to this special solo episode of Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

Every few months, I take a step back from the interviews to zoom out, connect the dots, and reflect on the themes that emerged from our conversations with Latin America’s most driven founders and sharpest investors.

This quarter, the learnings hit hard.

From Paulo Passoni’s breakdown of growth-stage capital and the M&A trap, to Roberto Oliveira’s slow-and-steady playbook at Blip, to Guilherme Horn’s vision for conversational commerce and fintech infrastructure on WhatsApp, to André Penha’s disciplined expansion strategy at QuintoAndar—one truth kept resurfacing:

In Latin America, the founders who win don’t just ride momentum. They build leverage.

Here’s what I cover:

• Why M&A caps in LatAm create a hidden trap for venture-backed startups

• The SoftBank boom, and what it got right—and wrong—about the region

• How control, not capital, gave Blip the upper hand in choosing investors

• Why the next wave of winners will scale productivity—not headcount

• The difference between surviving a downturn and compounding through it

• How conversational commerce + AI is reshaping the frontend and backend of business

• What Andre Penha’s expansion philosophy can teach us about product sequencing

• Why the real fintech opportunity isn’t credit—it’s infrastructure and insight

• And why sometimes the boldest thing a founder can do… is walk away and start again

This is your quarterly operator’s memo—full of tactical insight, strategic frameworks, and hard-won lessons from the frontlines of building in Latin America.

If you enjoy today’s episode, please rate us on Spotify, subscribe to our newsletter at blog.thejcurve.com, and follow us on YouTube (@thejcurvepodcast) and Instagram (@olgamaslikhova).

Let’s get into it.

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve 🎙️

This week, I sit down with Gustavo Mapeli, co-founder and CEO of Kanastra — one of the fastest-growing fintech infrastructure companies in Latin America. Gustavo started out building a traditional asset manager focused on private credit and wealth outside of Brazil’s core markets. But after feeling the pain of operating in a fragmented, manual, and outdated system, he made the bold decision to build the infrastructure he wished existed — and Kanastra was born.

Today, Kanastra powers over R$13B in assets across 150+ credit and securitization facilities — and has raised capital from top investors like Kaszek and QED.

Here’s what we cover:

♢ How Brazil became fertile ground for fintech infra – Why regulation, wealth decentralization, and embedded finance created the perfect storm.

♢ The contrarian decision to go multi-product from day one – And why Gustavo believes they had no other choice.

♢ How Kanastra is winning in a concentrated, low-tech market – Tactics for building trust, reputation, and distribution in a system built on inertia.

♢ Hiring and culture in high-performance teams – Why Gustavo believes the best cultures are the most exclusive.

♢ Founding with conviction – The story of Gustavo and his co-founder’s 15-year friendship, and how they’ve built what he calls an “unbreakable” partnership.

More from us:

• Subscribe to our weekly newsletter ⁠⁠⁠The J Curve Insider⁠⁠⁠, where we go beyond the podcast to break down the most exciting investment & tech trends in LATAM. Sharp. Concise. Real business strategies and market insights you won’t find anywhere else. Delivered straight to your inbox.
• Follow us on⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠Instagram