Pierpaolo Barbieri: commitment

Transcript context

…Now, you could have become a historian. You could have become an academic. You didn’t, but that modal possibility — to bring up an idea from Borges — how has that shaped the kind of founder you have ended up being? Because it’s unusual background for a founder, right? It’s certainly unusual. One of my investors said, “I broke two rules with you. I never invest in Argentines, and I never invest in nontechnical founders.” I said, “Great, fantastic.” The problem of contingency and understanding contingency in history allows you to be a great founder. Obviously, learning and knowing financial history is essential to wanting to disrupt a cartelized group of banks. Because I’ve seen it elsewhere and I know what universal banking can do to a society, to its development possibilities, to social mobility, to democratization, as I was saying earlier. I think that understanding possible paths — and here’s a good time to bring up another Borges — the divergent paths of your history and the possibilities of building product are good for bringing together a team. Ultimately, what a founder does is provide a vision and hire people. I can’t claim that I wrote a line of code, and I can’t claim that I run everything in the company, but the key job is to inspire, to set the direction, and to trust people and hire well. When you have the better people, the best people — and I’ve done that in a way that is different from most Latin American founders because over 15 percent of the company is owned by their management team, and that excludes me, but that can only be born out of the humility that comes from the idea that I cannot do it myself. I cannot write the code, but I know where we have to go to disrupt the system because historically, I’ve seen it elsewhere. I know what needs to happen to have universal financial literacy and financial education so that people can be integrated into the system. I want us to take us that way. In that sense, this unusual background is useful. Some of the best backgrounds for founders are people who come from different industries, from different walks of life, that have the gall — for lack of a better word — to try to disrupt an industry, and it remains to be seen if I succeed or not. But if it does, it will have something to do with the fact that we wanted to start from scratch and ask the basic fundamental questions in a different way. Anyone can equitize, and many companies do. What is it you think that you understand about spotting talent — possibly from your background in history — but other founders might not?…

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