Pierpaolo Barbieri: belief

Transcript context

…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? In Latin America, it’s a very American idea, which is that in order to spot the best talent, you need to attract people that have to be fully aligned with you. I don’t know any other line of an American company where over 15 percent of the company is owned by the management. That allows me to convince all those people that were in the diaspora to come back to Argentina and change the game with me. When the big banks try to hire my people, they can offer them great salaries, but they’re not going to offer them 1 percent of Santander, and they’re not going to offer them the growth trajectory of what we’re building here. That’s how I’ve gotten people to quit from Goldman, from J.P. Morgan, from McKinsey, from Mercado Libre to join Ualá and share the dream. As a founder, you have to recognize that you don’t have all the answers. When you build a better team, they improve on your idea. I think the worst founders are the ones who obsess with their own centrality to the process. Whereas learning from history, I think that in order to craft the best team, you have to have them fully aligned with you, and give them the power to really execute on what they know about. I can’t tell my head of cards, who ran cards at Citibank for 25 years, how to do a credit card. I cannot tell my head of ops, who used to run ops for a division of J.P. Morgan here, how to do ops. I just have to trust them and have the humility to know that they know how to do things that I just couldn’t learn how to do. Let’s say you’re speaking to some other founders, and they’re interested in learning a bit of history, but obviously, their time is limited. What kind of tips would you give them for how to get started on that project?…

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