The End of Silicon Valley Supremacy Starts in Sao Paulo

There was a time—not that long ago—when tech startups in Brazil were built with interns, pitched to funds doing mezzanine rounds, and expanded to Argentina just because it was next door. Today, founders are negotiating billion-dollar exits, building cross-border infrastructure from day one, and treating Brazil as their cash engine for global scale.

I was reminded of just how far we’ve come during our recent live session in São Paulo. We sat down with three people who have done it at the highest level:

• Daniela Binatti, founder of Pismo, acquired by Visa for $1B in cash

• Romero Rodrigues, founder of Buscapé, acquired by Naspers for $374M and early investor in Pismo and Wellhub. Now Managing Partner at Headline

• Carlos Costa, managing partner at Valor Capital Group, ($2B+ AUM) behind CloudWalk ($2.15B valuation), WellHub ($2.2B valuation), and Pismo ($1B exit)

What emerged was a masterclass in global expansion strategy and the mathematics of compounding returns. One packed with hard-earned lessons, battle-tested strategies, and some uncomfortable truths.

Let’s get into it.

BRAZIL HAS ENTERED A NEW ERA OF CONSISTENT, GLOBAL OUTCOMES

Romero put it plainly: when they launched Buscapé in the early 2000s, the most optimistic projection for internet users in Brazil was 800,000. Today it’s over 180 million. Brazil isn’t an emerging market experiment anymore. It’s the fifth-largest internet population in the world, and nearly every global platform treats Brazil not as an expansion market, but as a core growth engine.

The numbers tell the story:

• WhatsApp reaches 98% of users who have the app installed in Brazil—the highest penetration rate globally. Brazil is also WhatsApp Business’s third-largest market, with 69.5 million downloads, behind India (291.6M) and Indonesia (73.1M)

• Google sees Brazil as its third-largest traffic source globally, with 4.37% of total visits, behind only the U.S. and India

• YouTube has 144 million users in Brazil as of February 2025, making it the platform’s third-largest marketglobally—after India (491M) and the U.S. (253M)

• As of May 2025, BYD held approximately 9.7% retail market share among all vehicle brands in Brazil—ranking 4th overall—and dominated electric vehicle sales, capturing over 90% of all EVs sold that month. That’s roughly 9 out of every 10 EVs sold in the country

And exits aren't rare anymore—they're compounding:

• iFood recently acquired a 20% stake in CRMBonus, structured with an option to acquire full ownership in the future for up to 10 billion reais (~$1.8B)

• Earlier this year, Prosus acquired Despegar for $1.7 billion in cash—one of the largest LATAM-linked tech exits globally

• In 2023, Visa acquired Pismo for $1 billion in cash, marking one of the largest fintech exits out of Latin America that year

• With the market cap of around $60 billion and $11b+ in revenue in 2024, Brazilian Nubank is the world’s most valuable neobank publicly traded on NYSE

Behind these giants is a new cohort of Brazilian infrastructure companies—including Wellhub and CloudWalk—that position themselves as IPO-ready or high-impact acquisition targets.

Brazil is now the proving ground for scalable tech. You build here, you pressure-test against real friction (UX, regulation, fraud), and you come out with a globally deployable product.

DON’T MISTAKE ADJACENCY FOR STRATEGY

There's a persistent myth in Latin America that if you're a startup based in Brazil—or anywhere in the region—your natural next step is to expand across neighboring countries. Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico. That's the default playbook.

But here's the truth: LATAM-to-LATAM expansion often demands the same level of effort as global expansion—but with far less upside.

Romero put it bluntly: when Buscapé expanded into other LATAM countries, they won Chile. They owned the market. But that meant nothing for valuation. The operational drag was real. And in hindsight, they would have been better off going straight to Indonesia or Turkey—markets that could've actually moved the needle.

That's why the most successful LATAM companies today are skipping the regional maze and going straight for global scale. But they're doing it the hard way—the right way.

Real commitment means burning the ships:

• Cesar (Wellhub) moved to New York with his family. Not as a roadshow. As a relocation

• His co-founder João spent years crisscrossing Europe, setting up operations, rebuilding sales teams, winning trust market by market

• Pismo didn't "test" the U.S.—they brought in a former McKinsey partner with deep credibility in U.S. banking, to lead the charge and land a 78-country contract with Citibank

These weren't brand plays. They were full-stack operational commitments that mapped TAM, regulatory complexity, customer readiness, and localized go-to-market strategy—not proximity.

The lesson for LATAM founders here:

• Don't mistake adjacency for strategy

• Don't burn energy on fragmented markets that won't move valuation

• If you're going to do the work anyway, do it where the upside is exponential

• Global doesn't happen on the side—you earn it by burning the ships

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THE BONDS VS. OPTIONS FRAMEWORK

Carlos Costa reframed the global expansion decision through the lens of portfolio theory—a framework I haven't stopped thinking about.

When a startup scales in Brazil, it often starts to resemble a bond—a predictable, cash-generating business that can be forecasted and optimized. But if your ambition is to build a breakout company, the real value comes not from predictability, but from optionality.

That's why companies like CloudWalk, Wellhub, and Pismo used their stable local businesses to fund global growth—not because it was safe, but because it was asymmetric. They bet aggressively on new markets with a hedge: cash flow from Brazil.

But here's the exception: what happens when your business model doesn't need a bond at all? For API-first platforms, dev tools, B2B SaaS, and lightweight infrastructure products, waiting too long to go global is actually a liability. These categories are borderless by nature, and competition moves too fast to wait.

Two different playbooks emerged from our conversation:

The "Local-First" Path: Prove unit economics and product-market fit in Brazil, then expand with leverage (Wellhub, CloudWalk)

The "Global-Day-One" Path: Build for global scale immediately because competitive moats are thin (Pipefy positioned as U.S. startup from Curitiba)

Even Pismo, with deep local roots, built globally scalable infrastructure from day one—before they had the clients to justify it.

The key insight here is timing isn't about traction—it's about terrain. In the most replicable categories, staying local too long might be your riskiest move.

THE REAL VALUE LIES IN THE COMPOUNDING YEARS

This was the most sobering insight. As Romero put it: it took Daniela and the Pismo team 25 years to go from zero to $1 billion, but probably only three or four more years to get to $5 billion.

And this wasn't unique to Pismo. Carlos added that CloudWalk is now entering that same phase—with solid foundation, the real growth is just beginning. As he put it: 'If the market's big enough and they compound only on average at a 20% CAGR, then it's a $40 billion revenue type of company. And then just let it run. Just let it play.’

Here's what compounding actually looks like in practice:

Compounding isn't just a math function—it's a trust function. It takes years to build trust with customers, regulators, and global partners, especially starting from LATAM. But once you have it, everything accelerates:

• Sales cycles shorten

• Margins improve

• Strategic buyers take you seriously

• Expansion becomes execution, not experimentation

The Visa acquisition proves this point perfectly. Dani shared that Pismo wasn't for sale when Visa first approached them. When she told Visa they weren't looking to sell, their response was telling: "If you were for sale, we wouldn't want to buy you."

That's leverage. Visa didn't want just tech—they wanted a globally deployable infrastructure platform that had already proven itself with Itau and Citibank.

The founder takeaway:

• You don't win in years 1–3

• You earn your leverage in years 10–15

• Compounding doesn't kick in until the market—and your product—are finally ready to scale together

• Are you exiting at the end of the curve—or the beginning of exponential return?

WHAT’S NEXT: INFRASTRUCTURE, HEALTH AND AI

Across the board, our panelists agreed: the next $1B exits will come from founders solving hard infrastructure problems, not wrapping simple AI features.

• Healthcare is primed for reinvention. With AI, we can streamline revenue cycle management, reduce manual workflows, and build API-first platforms to replace legacy hospital systems.

• Fintech infrastructure is still ripe, especially as capital markets take over bank-led models.

• AI, yes—but only when paired with proprietary data, distribution, or regulatory insight. As Romero put it: "The best ideas won’t look like AI wrappers. They’ll come from left field."

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FINAL THOUGHT

Brazil went from "no exits" to billion-dollar cash deals in just two decades. But we're still early. The next wave of outliers will be even more ambitious, more infrastructure-heavy, and more global from day one.

And for founders in Brazil, the message is clear: you're not playing for LATAM anymore. You're playing for the world.

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

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