Brian Requarth is the Co-Founder of Latitud and former CEO of Viva Real. Through Latitud, he now dedicates his time to providing mentorship and advice for entrepreneurs in Latin America (LATAM).

Brian’s new book, Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling, and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America shares the hard lessons he learned while building and scaling his company. It covers best practices for communicating with your co-founder, finding great investors, and building a good board. Brian joins me this week to share how he’s investing his resources back to LATAM, and lessons for marketplace businesses.

 

Social Capital

Brian’s work is part of a greater initiative to connect founders in LATAM with high level founders, advisors, and investors. His goal is to elevate the Latin American startup community by providing access to global mentors.

Investors are beginning to realize the massive potential for fast growing companies. Companies from emerging markets have the advantage of having large markets with fewer competition.

Latitud helps founders in Latin America leverage the collective knowledge and wisdom from global mentors. The rigorous program is a month packed with insightful talks and one-on-one sessions. This social capital model provides value and inspires founders to execute their vision.

Focus on owning one market

When building a marketplace, you should focus on being a big fish in a medium-sized pond. Founders often make the mistake of scaling globally too early and wasting resources.

“Matching supply and demand is critical.”

Chasing the international market is a distraction. Marketplaces should focus on dominating localities first, then branching outward. Start in one specific area then expand to neighbouring ones, which allows companies to focus on rapidly improving their service/product as feedback is implemented quicker.

Build a strong inner circle

Being a founder can often feel lonely. This is especially true for first-time founders who have not yet seen success. Brian highlights the importance of creating a trusted network and emphasizes two key takeaways to keep you on the right track:

1. Find other founders who are ahead of you in their journey. Fellow founders are better able to empathize with the struggles of raising capital, leading a team, and hiring/firing.

2. Have a good executive team. They will rise above challenges during crisis moments, carry your vision, and come up with unique solutions to problems. 

“Find a trusted network.”

Persistence

Brian reminds us that during challenging times, a founder must focus on the things they can control and resist distractions beyond their control. When driven by a mission rather than money, they are more persistent in the face of adversity.

“It’s about persistence and focus.”

Viva Entrepreneur is full of insights and lessons from someone who has walked the talk. Brian is honest and transparent. I recommend this book to anyone looking to learn what it takes to build a great company.

You can also invest in Brian’s rolling fund at: http://fund.latitud.com/

If you prefer, you can listen to the episode in the embedded podcast player.

In addition to the above Youtube video and embedded podcast player, you can also listen to the podcast on:

• iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reinvesting-in-latam-tech-ecosystem-brian-requarth/id1532336635?i=1000510369241
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1SvCd1xYWm9iU5mwfcbYd0

Tim Jackson is a fellow entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author. He has lived an interesting life from a career in journalism for the Financial Times, to VC seed funding for technology startups. It was no accident that he would eventually find himself in this world – he recalls speaking on the phone and writing a column about some guy called Jeff, who had just started a company called Amazon in 1995.

Tim fell in love with VC as a managing director running a $700m fund for The Carlyle Group in Europe:

“I realized that actually my heart is with the struggling entrepreneur, who’s got a fantastic business that isn’t yet quite right.”

His new book, Startup: Thirty-Six Lessons from Company Founders & CEOs, will teach you how to make better decisions and become a more competent CEO. Tim knows firsthand how frustrating it is to navigate the seas of heading a company with no guidance. He joined me this week to share some of his knowledge and insights with us.

Walk

There are two driving philosophies behind Tim’s emphasis on ‘walking’ when it comes to startups.

1. Taking walks around Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park with potential entrepreneurs led to having conversations that were much more agreeable, personal, and revealing. Knowing the type of person a founder is goes a long way.

“I had underweighted founder skills and temperament as a factor in our investment decision making. I thought it would be a good idea to move the process of due diligence to the top of the funnel stage and actually meet entrepreneurs and learn about their life stories (instead) of hearing their pitches.”

2. Building a startup is not a sprint. In fact, it is not even a marathon – it’s more like walking. Think about the totality of the slow yet consistent steps taken over the course of one’s life. Tim warns against the common trap VCs fall into: being overly hasty and setting unrealistic timescales.

“It’s a bit like that line of Peter Thiel: people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade. If you just walk for a couple of hours every morning, you can cover an awful lot of ground.”

Leading and Managing

From years of observing and working with CEOs, Tim has developed five basic things you should keep in mind when approaching a discussion with somebody who is reporting to you. These ideas are encompassed in the acronym: SCRIM.

• Suitability

There is definitely a limit to the resources (time and capital) you can spend on trying to improve or train someone that just will not fit. The sooner you can recognize that you probably hired the wrong person, or you gave them a role they are not suited for, the better.

• Coaching your reports

Founders and CEOs often fall into the trap of hiring people who have accomplished everything before the job they need to do. Not only can this be expensive, but it may be unfulfilling for them. It’s great to hire people for potential and skills, but then it’s your responsibility to coach them so they acquire the specific knowledge needed in your business. I often see founders get the hiring for potential right, but then ignore the fact that the person needs some help and support to perform best.

• Regularity

It is all well and good for someone to know what to do but having the required frequency of contact is important to execute and function reliably.

• Involvement/Incentivization

It is crucial to ensure that everyone reporting to you feels excited about what they’re doing and what you’re all trying to achieve together. Aim to give others a shared sense of destiny with the success of the company.

• Metrics

There is no getting around the hard quantitative data that shows you whether a person is doing a good job and how well things are going week to week.

“My sense is that the CEO who touches all those bases is unlikely to go too far wrong in managing a team”

Getting along with your co-founder

“In terms of failings…a second big slice will be falling out with co-founders. Very often things tend to get ignored until the point where there’s actually a problem that can’t be fixed.”

Having honest conversations with your co-founder can be difficult, but it is one of the most crucial things you can do. Sugar coating things often leads to misunderstandings that can fester like an untreated wound. Be transparent with feedback, expectations of each other and roles.

Tim also talks about the importance of responsibility and involvement. A failing CEO is often either neglecting others or micromanaging them. He advocates for striving to find the delicate balance between the two:

“If I am the outside person, and my job is to reach out to 30 VC funds, then you as my co-founder and co-CEO are allowed to say, so how’s it going? How many have you reached out to, and where are they?”

Delegate responsibility but maintain some degree of involvement and presence for others.

The 3 things a founder can do to run a successful business:

1. Find the right market

There is an awful lot of founders who are building products which either aren’t going to serve enough people, or they’re serving people that don’t have enough money at their disposal to build a real business.

2. Get the product right

This is a very early-stage consideration, but it is surprising how many companies go much further than they ought to in scaling before they have the product right. Build the foundation first.

3. Scalability

Recognizing that ultimately your ability to scale a business is all about the people. Specifically, hiring people who can run the business at 100x the size it is today.

To run a company at scale effectively, you are going to need skills which you may not have today. The reality is that you may have to acquire the skills “while the airplane is still in mid-flight.”  Having the courage to admit and recognize your limitations is often the most effective way to lead – trust and learn from others.

Startup: Thirty-Six Lessons from Company Founders & CEOs, Tim’s new book, is available from Amazon. It is an invaluable tool at all stages of leadership: whether you are a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned CEO. Strive to learn and growth will follow.

If you prefer, you can listen to the episode in the embedded podcast player.

In addition to the above Youtube video and embedded podcast player, you can also listen to the podcast on:

• iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thirty-six-lessons-from-company-founders-ceos-tim-jackson/id1532336635?i=1000508815456
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ykawaL3dsCXQ4sOO9cJ90

This week Kerim Baran shares where we stand in the world of solar. He covers:

• The history of solar
• The impressive decline of the cost of panel over the last 40 years
• The decline in the cost of batteries
• Why ultimately batteries plus panels will cost less than maintaining the grid leading most electricity to be made locally in a distributed fashion even if fusion comes to pass and creates energy at 0 marginal cost
• Why we will have a hybrid setup of grid plus local production for the foreseeable future
• What to do if you are interested in solar

If you prefer, you can listen to the episode in the embedded podcast player.

In addition to the above Youtube video and embedded podcast player, you can also listen to the podcast on:

• iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-state-of-solar/id1532336635?i=1000507756274
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6ECaOyrqV6c1PZ92DE9l5Q