The J Curve Insider: How to Win Mid-to-Large B2B Customers in Latin America

In Brazil, payments and working capital remain deeply fragmented, even as tech innovation sweeps the region. The legacy infrastructure—manual processes, disjointed systems, and high friction—still dominates, leaving mid-to-large businesses to navigate a patchwork of solutions that slow them down and drain their cash flow.

Barte is changing that.

What started as a payments company—simplifying complex transactions for mid-to-large businesses—is evolving into a generational platform tackling the entire working capital cycle. Along the way, co-founders Raphael Dyxklay and Caetano Lacerda made bold, often contrarian, calls that defied typical venture-backed wisdom:

• Went after mid-to-large enterprises instead of chasing SMEs

• Fired hundreds of small customers to double down on high-value, high-complexity use cases

• Hired a lean team—only 40 people—to hit $20M ARR with just $1.5M in burn

But that focus on efficiency, curiosity, and first-principles thinking paid off. Today, Barte is growing rapidly, serving the largest profit pool in Brazil’s financial services market.

In this Insider, Raphael and Caetano unpack what it really took to build Brazil’s next-generation payments and working capital rails—from identifying the underserved profit pool to deploying AI agents that double approval rates. We get into why complexity is a competitive advantage, how they turned friction into a moat, why generational companies are built on culture, trust, and real product-market fit—and how building in public helped them gain trust and attract top talent along the way.

Let’s get into it.

THE TRILLION-DOLLAR OPPORTUNITY

Olga Maslikhova: Why payments and working capital?
Caetano Lacerda: Brazil’s payments market is massive—$4 trillion moves through it every year, with take rates up to 2%. But the system is messy: banks slow approvals to manage fraud risk, and legitimate transactions get stuck.Installments are everywhere here, but the rails are full of friction—that’s a real pain point for businesses.
Raphael Dyxklay: And working capital is even bigger—it’s the largest profit pool in financial services, yet it’s wildly underserved. The incumbents haven’t touched it at scale. Payments gave us visibility into revenue flows—the heartbeat of a business. Once we controlled that, it opened doors to help with working capital. It’s the natural wedge to become the financial backbone for mid-to-large businesses.

BUILDING IN PUBLIC

OM: You talk a lot about building in public. How did that shape your growth?
RD: It actually started as an experiment—we didn’t know if it would work. But we realized early on that sharing our journey—wins, failures, and decisions—built trust faster than any marketing campaign. We were transparent about which features we were prioritizing and which customer segments we were focusing on. That created a sense of partnership with our customers.

And as our followership grew, I started reaching out and facilitating partnerships from the top down. Talking directly to decision-makers at merchant acquirers, ERPs, and verticalized platforms opened doors we couldn’t have reached otherwise. That level of transparency made people more willing to engage—and trust us with their toughest problems.

PATIENCE, TRUST, AND PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

OM: When did you know you had product-market fit?
RD: About a year and a half ago. Our sales team told us we stopped losing deals for anything other than price. If we didn’t win, it was because someone else dropped their prices, not because our product didn’t deliver.
CL: And our net revenue retention was 260% over two years. That’s the ultimate signal that customers love what we’re building. We also saw that customers were expanding their usage—adopting more modules, bringing us deeper into their financial operations.

OM: Did you make any hard calls to get there?
CL: Absolutely. We actually fired hundreds of small customers because they didn’t fit the high-value, high-complexity use cases we wanted to serve. That was tough but necessary to focus on where we could make the biggest impact.

LEAN, MEAN, AND AI-POWERED

OM: You hit $20M ARR with just 40 people. How did you pull that off?
CL & RD: It came down to ruthless prioritization and building for scale from day one. We focused on horizontal solutions—products that could serve multiple industries—so we didn’t get bogged down in features that only one customer would use. Every decision was guided by a single question: Would this compound value for us and our customers?

We were deliberate about what we didn’t build too. We avoided one-off payment products or credit solutions tied to specific verticals. Instead, we gave customers the tools to build their own workflows on top of our platform, like AWS.

We also leveraged AI from day one to replace manual work. For example, getting a payment slip used to take days—customers would open a support ticket and wait for a reply. We built AI agents that handle that instantly over WhatsApp. Now it takes 30 seconds, no human required.

OM: What role did culture play in Barte’s success so far?
RD: Culture is everything. We hired like founders because we wanted a team that thinks critically and takes ownership. We wanted people who’d challenge us and push ideas forward. That’s how you build a generational company—by making sure the DNA is about learning, curiosity, and solving real problems.
CL: On top of that, we ran on short feedback loops. We’d talk about a problem at 11 a.m. and have a plan by 4 p.m. That speed let us iterate fast and focus on what really moved the needle.

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE J CURVE EPISODE WITH CAETANO ANA RAPHAEL ON SPOTIFY:

RAPID FIRE:

OM: What’s one popular piece of entrepreneurial advice you strongly disagree with?
CL: “Get an HR leader when you have 25 people in the team.” It’s not that HR can’t be strategic—there are very good professionals out there. But it comes much later in the life of a company, when communication really starts to break. If you start outsourcing that too soon, you slow feedback loops and bring more politics into the company.

OM: What’s an underrated but critical founder trait most people overlook?
RD: Triaging—deciding what you’re going to test, diagnosing reality, and adjusting fast. It’s basic but compounds over time and is more valuable than most other skills.

OM: Caetano, what’s one of Raphael’s biggest strengths and weaknesses? And then we’ll flip it for Caetano.
CL on RD: Raphael is incredibly curious—he’s always asking questions that unlock opportunities. But he’s not the most detail-oriented person on earth.
RD on CL: Caetano’s intensity—he’s like a machine, always pushing with energy. But he’s not particularly creative at the start; he’s better at scaling things once they’re defined.

OM: What’s a belief you hold about building or operating a startup that most people would disagree with?
CL & RD: Going after large, competitive markets—red oceans—because that’s where demand is. Most people shy away, but we saw the opportunity and executed.

OM: If you could change one thing about how Latin America works—regulations, bureaucracy, capital access—what would it be?
CL & RD: Capital access. Bureaucracy and friction are challenges we can fix, but the capital just isn’t flowing at the scale we need to match the opportunities.

TAKEAWAY

✓ Don’t default to what’s easy. Barte’s story shows that big, sticky problems—like fragmented payments and working capital—often hide in plain sight. That’s where real impact (and profit) lies.

✓ Culture is your real product. Hiring like founders created a team that took ownership and iterated fast—Barte didn’t scale by accident.

✓ Efficiency compounds. From AI agents to lean teams, Barte’s $20M ARR on $1.5M burn proves that building scalable systems beats headcount every time.

✓ Think like a platform, not a point solution. Barte’s horizontal approach—solving core problems for multiple industries—created resilience and expanded their total addressable market.

This episode is part of a special AWS series spotlighting early-stage startups building foundational infrastructure across Latin America. We’re grateful to AWS for supporting Latin founders from idea to IPO.

 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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