Brian Requarth, Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America, Ep 133

<p><span style="font-weight: 400; font-size: 24pt;">Brian Requarth, Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America, Ep 133</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Over a decade ago, Brian Requarth bought a one-way ticket to Colombia and never looked back. Since then, he’s become a seasoned entrepreneur and investor, having founded, scaled, merged, and exited VivaReal, a leading proptech startup in Brazil.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Well acquainted with the challenges that are unique to Latin America, Brian is now focusing on helping early-stage founders build the next generation of world-class tech companies through his newest project, Latitud.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In his second time around on the podcast, I sat down with Brian to talk about the growing pains of merging operations with Grupo Zap and why acquihiring is one of the most underutilized strategies of large tech companies in the region. We also discuss how the ecosystem has evolved since 2009 and what inspired him to write his book</span> <em><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America.</span></em></p> <h3><span style="font-weight: 400;">Merging with a competitor</span></h3> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Brian explains that the VivaReal merger was particularly complicated because the DNAs of the companies were very different. While VivaReal was a relatively small company, Grupo Zap was much larger – so much so that telenovelas would organically mention them in their shows. This difference in size resulted in unbalanced power dynamics between the companies which became an obstacle for swift decision making.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Listen to this episode of</span> <em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Crossing Borders</span></em> <span style="font-weight: 400;">to learn more about Brian’s major takeaways from merging with Grupo Zap.</