Altitud | Gaston Irigoyen from Pomelo and the $9M seed round

<p><b>Pomelo</b> is the fintech as a service (FAAS) platform for Latin America, founded by former Mastercard, Mercado Pago and Naranja X executives. The startup took some of its first steps during the Latitud Fellowship program, where <b>Gaston Irigoyen, Hernan Corral and Juan Fantoni</b> joined the second cohort.</p><p>Latitud had the privilege of being Pomelo&apos;s first check, later introducing the founders to over 25 funds globally. Now, they&apos;re raising <b>$9M to build Latin America&apos;s fintech infrastructure</b>, in one of the <b>largest seed rounds in the history of LATAM’s tech ecosystem</b>.</p><p>&quot;We were looking for local flavor, global access, and lots of hustle&quot;, says Gaston – and they got it.</p><p>Led by monashees and Index Ventures, the round also includes funds like QED and Scifi, as well as some of the most prominent angels and entrepreneurs in the region – Max Levchin (Paypal &amp; Affirm), Biz Stone (Twitter), Angela Strange (a16z), Harry Stebbings (20VC), Martin Varsavski and the founders of Marqeta, Rappi, Auth0, Kavak, Loft and RecargaPay.</p><p>Pomelo allows fintechs and embedded finance players to build digital accounts with compliant onboarding processes, as well as issue prepaid and credit cards throughout Latin America.</p><p>In this chat:</p><ul><li>Pomelo&apos;s solution to a huge problem</li><li>How they put their team together</li><li>How the seed round played out</li><li>Next steps after the funding</li><li>Their experience at Latitud</li><li>Gaston&apos;s unconventional advice for founders</li></ul><p>This is the first episode of <b>Altitud</b>, a segment of Latitud Podcast where we talk to the founders of the future high-flying companies in Latin America, hosted by Brian Requarth and Tomas Roggio.</p><p>#VamosLatam</p>