About this episode

Brian Requarth discusses the rise of Latin American founders going global and the factors driving this shift.

Brian Requarth is Founder and General Partner at Latitud — a Silicon Valley-based venture fund and platform that leads pre-seed checks into the top 1% of Latin American founders building global companies. Brian previously co-founded VivaReal, which merged with ZAP Imóveis in 2017 to form Grupo ZAP — later acquired by OLX Brazil for approximately $640M in 2020. Latitud's fellowship has accepted just 1% of 1,500+ annual applicants — harder than the Ivy League — and its 1,000+ alumni have collectively raised over $1B in venture capital. Portfolio companies include Pomelo, StarkBank, and Hyperplane (acquired by Nubank). In this episode, Brian shares why the share of LatAm founders building globally from day one has jumped from 3% to 46% in five years, and what's actually driving the shift. We cover what Founders Fund, Benchmark, Sequoia, Index, and Green Oaks are now underwriting in LatAm — and why the bet is increasingly on the founder profile, not the market, what Brian calls "minus one to zero" investing (versus Thiel's zero-to-one) and why Latitud writes checks before there's even a deck, the ELO-style algorithmic scoring system Latitud built — inspired by chess and…

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