LATAM produces Messis. Why not Musks?

“Olga! This is awesome, thanks for having me for a second run.

The episode content is amazing, and the video is at another level!”

Gastón Irigoyen, founder and CEO of Pomelo

 This Week’s Essay

Twenty of the hundred best soccer players in the world are from Latin America. From a region where the best clubs sell their stars before they peak, where economic instability forces talent out early, where a kid from São Gonçalo or Rosario competes for the same Champions League trophies as players developed in Barcelona's La Masia or Manchester City's academy.

And nobody finds this surprising. Nobody questions whether Brazil can produce a player good enough for Real Madrid. It's not even a conversation.

But ask whether Brazil can produce a company good enough for Nasdaq and suddenly there are a hundred reasons why not. The capital isn't here. The exits aren't here. The infrastructure isn't here. The same country that exports the world's best athletes to Europe spent twenty years being told it couldn't export world-class companies.

Same streets. Different ceiling.

Every emerging market produces the same founder.

Hungry. Resourceful. Incredibly good at doing more with less. And convinced, beneath all of it, that the ceiling above them was fixed. That the biggest bets, the biggest checks, the biggest outcomes — those happen in a different zip code. That world-class is a destination you travel to, not a standard you hold yourself to at home.

For years the constraints were real — scarce capital, volatile markets, small exits, a global investor base that backed LATAM when deals got too pricey in their core markets and deployable capital was abundant. Founders who survived built accordingly. The Uber of X, the Airbnb of Y. Copying something that already worked in San Francisco was the fastest path to a check.

Then the environment changed and the playbook didn't.

That's the underdog mentality in its most insidious form. It shows up as modesty. In the size of the round you think you deserve. In the valuation you anchor to. In the market you decide to go after. In whether you get on the Zoom call with a global fund believing you belong there — or believing you're fortunate to have been invited.

LATAM soccer players never had this problem. They showed up and competed. The question now is whether LATAM founders are finally doing the same.

This Week’s Number

$1.6B

Lionel Messi's career earnings as of 2025. One of roughly a dozen athletes in history to reach that number — alongside Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, and Roger Federer.

Community Picks

1. On competing globally from day one

Every Zoom call with a global fund is a global competition. The investor hangs up and immediately talks to the next founder — from anywhere in the world. The only question is whether you show up believing you have to be the best on their list that week.

2. On selling infrastructure when nobody trusts you

When you're selling infrastructure, nobody trusts you at first. You earn the right to the next customer by executing for the one before. Seed-stage fintechs gave you the right to Series B fintechs. Series B fintechs gave you the right to unicorns. Unicorns gave you the right to global banks. You can't skip the rungs.

3. On what a five-year-old fintech and a legacy bank have in common

Any company not born in the last two to three years has to go through an AI transformation. That includes companies founded in 2021. The founders who built "modern" companies five years ago are now the incumbents. The cycle is that fast.

4. On hiring plug and play people

The fastest way to compress learning curves is to hire people who have already paid for them somewhere else. Someone else paid for the ramp-up. Someone else de-risked the hire. You inherit the output. In financial services — where every market has different regulation, different dynamics, different relationships — that's not just efficient. It's the only way to move at regional scale.

5. On perseverance vs passion

Passion is table stakes in LATAM. Everyone who starts a company here has it. The thing that actually separates founders is the unglamorous part — executing the plan, doing what you said you'd do, quarter after quarter, round after round. That's the muscle LATAM needs more of. Not more hunger. More follow-through.

Here's the highlight reel with my favourite moments from the conversation with Gastón Irigoyen:

What I’m Loving 

Read — Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Carol S. Dweck)

The most important thing Carol Dweck discovered after decades of research is that your beliefs about your own abilities shape everything. Not your talent. Not your circumstances. Your beliefs. One of the most cited psychology books of the last twenty years — and still the most practical.

Listen — Jeff Horing: Building Insight Partners (Invest Like the Best, EP.440, September 2025)

Jeff Horing co-founded Insight Partners in 1995 and has barely spoken publicly about it since. This is one of his first interviews ever — on how he built one of the world's most consequential technology investment firms, now with over $100 billion in AUM.

Wildcard — Messi's $150M Inter Miami Deal (Sportico)

The best athletes in the world stopped thinking like employees a long time ago. Messi's Inter Miami deal — $150 million, plus an equity stake in the club — is a masterclass in how the world's top talent structures wealth. Salary is the starting point. Ownership is the strategy.

Thanks for reading,

Olga 

 P.S. If this issue was valuable to you please share it with a founder who needs to hear it. Let’s build LATAM’s next tech leaders—together

🎙 The J Curve  is where LATAM's boldest founders & investors come to talk real strategy, opportunity and leadership.