What we learned in San Francisco

We paid $7 for coffee, came back w/ priceless lessons. What LatAm founders should get from its top VCs, founders, and operators:

✨ Welcome to the newsletter for LatAm founders building good sh*t.
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Last week, The Latitud Fellowship entered its season finale with a week in San Francisco. From rooftop brekkies to basement brainstorms, our fellows met VCs, founders, and operators shaping the heart of tech.

How it ended (for now 👀)?

They packed the best of SF (and oat milk PTSD) on their luggage back to LatAm… knowing they graduated from pre-founder to founder in 8 weeks to remember. 🔥

Warm intros and serendipities can’t be shared in a newsletter – but we thought a few takeaways could be bottled up and sent to any early-stage founder adapting the best playbooks to the LatAm reality:

💡 Start with a killer insight

If you’re raising your first check, here’s what first moves the needle:

For Afore Capital’s Derrick Li, it’s not the deck nor the TAM.

👉 It's your founder insight. 

That comes from:
1. What hypotheses you tested.
2. What you learned from it.

(Hurry, add this section to your memo!)

🧩 Combine what + when

Insight’s your ignition.
Timing’s your rocket fuel.

So don’t ignore your segment’s current growth potential, advises NFX’s James Currier. (Venture capital’s a fund-returning game after all.)

👉 Tech windows open and close, so choose your market accordingly. Pick the right idea, aligned with an open tech window.

⚡ Speed = Success

Insight and timing matter. But the #1 success predictors, says James?

Fast decision-making and iteration.

Cause your ability to quickly adapt is key to building a startup that finds product-market fit.

And how to reach the speed of light?

👉 Speed = Clarity + Fearlessness + Culture + Talent.

🔪 Stay lean and lethal

Let’s break down that formula, powered by advice from Gustaf Alströmer (YC), Guillermo Rauch (Vercel), Gabriel Vasquez (a16z), James da Costa (a16z), Grace da Costa (DST Global), Ankur Jain (Pear VC), and Eva Alonso (Ribbit Capital):

👉 Clarity + fearlessness: 

Today demands ruthless focus. Pick one thing (earned through relentless user conversations and observations) and execute it exceptionally well. VCs don’t want 100 slides, just 1 sharp story. 

👉 Culture + talent: 

Small, AI-native teams are shipping faster, raising less, and keeping more equity. Hire slow, but hire killers – with the added benefit of showing VCs you’re a founder who’s able to attract crazy-good talent, and fast. Talent magnetism is a real signal.

🔁 Not reinventing? You're dying

AI rewrites the rulebook for product building and distribution daily.

If you’re early, you’re probably embracing and thriving in that chaos.

Don’t lose that habit.

Take it from Daniel Rabinovich, who’s already spent *25 years* at Mercado Libre. Even as a $100 B+ company, Meli is still reinventing itself (payments, logistics, whatever’s next).

How to keep that paranoid-in-a-good-way spirit going on strong?

👉 Don’t optimize the current stack — reimagine the problem entirely.

👉 Lead with transparency. Share the struggle with your team + crowdsource clarity.

📝 TL;DR? Your cheat sheet:

✔️ Clear, ambitious insight > generic pitch
✔️ Find your tech window
✔️ Decide fast, adapt faster
✔️ Hire killers, move fast with less
✔️ Reinvent before you’re forced to

✨ Every time you share this newsletter, a LatAm pre-founder turns into founder ✨