About this episode

Gastón Irigoyen discusses the growth of Pomelo and the fintech landscape in Latin America compared to India.

Latin America is the third-largest fintech and payments market in the world — bigger than India, behind only the US and China. Gastón Irigoyen is Co-Founder and CEO of Pomelo, the fintech infrastructure company powering card issuing and processing for banks, fintechs, and global enterprises across eight markets including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Panama. Pomelo is backed by Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Kaszek, Monashees, and most recently Adams Street Partners in their first-ever Latin American investment. In this episode of The J Curve, Gastón unpacks the contrarian playbook behind Pomelo: why the team went regional from day zero on a $10M seed round instead of nailing one market first, how they built a "plug and play" hiring engine that's stayed at 90%+ since founding, why they tripled revenue without adding headcount, and what it actually takes to win enterprise customers like BBVA, Santander, Bci, Bancolombia, Binance, and Bybit when nobody trusts an infrastructure startup. He also shares the Series B-to-Series C lessons most founders never document — including the end-of-year memo that turned rejections into investor…

People in this episode

Host: Olga Maslikhova

Guest: Gastón Irigoyen

Topics covered

• fintech
• entrepreneurship
• B2B
• fundraising
• Latin America
• business strategy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Pomelo, Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Kaszek, Monashees, Adams Street Partners, BBVA, Santander, Bci, Bancolombia

Places: Latin America, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Puerto Rico, Panama

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