Not All Capital Is Created Equal: Alejandro Diez Barroso on Choosing Investors Wisely

Speaker A: All businesses come down to people. We can talk about technology and now we can talk about AI, but at the end of the day, you are a person selling a product or service to another person and that other person is going to make a decision.

Speaker B: Hello everyone and welcome to Built Not Born, the Startup Go to Market podcast by Venture Guides. I'm Sage Nye, and around here we believe that great companies are built not born, one smart decision at a time. Each week we take you through real conversations with founders, investors and go to market experts on what it really takes to land customers and scale your startup. Now let's get to work. Hello and welcome to Built Not Born, the podcast where we dive into the real stories behind startup execution, venture capital, and go to market strategy. I'm Sage Nye, Partner, Adventure Guides. Today we are joined by Alejandro Diaz Barroso, founder and Managing partner at Dela Capital. And this episode is a different perspective on founders journeys because Alejandro has been both a founder in an operating business as well as a founder of a VC firm. Like all of the best, Ale saw, uh, a gap in the market, had a vision for what the future should look like, and has been maniacally focused on executing his vision. As a founder in the early 2000s, he experienced firsthand what it meant to grow a company in a region where venture capital barely existed. After launching WAU Spot and later leading Villebracan in Mexico and struggling to find capital providers in the region, let alone raising capital for either, he saw the funding gap in the ecosystem and decided to help close it himself. That journey led him to found Deela Capital, now one of the region's leading early stage venture capital firms. And today he invests with an operator's mindset, focuses on teams execution and building long term value. Alejandro, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Thank you so much. Sage, thank you so much for the invitation. And I'd like to start by really thanking you for the opportunity of speaking about the spac, Spanish speaking world to a, uh, broader US audience that you guys have. So really appreciate the time.

Speaker B: We're so happy to have you here. I'd love to start with letting you share some of your background and giving the audience some context about yourself.

Speaker A: I think you introduced myself better than I did, so thank you for that as well. But when I speak about myself, I think it's important to say that I'm very Mexican, born and raised in Mexico City. I've lived here most of my life. I, uh, lived a couple of years in the US and then I did my MBA in Kellogg in Chicago as Well, but other than that, very Mexican. I married my wife, who's also Mexican. We have three Mexican boys. And I come from a very strong knit family of which most have been involved in the financial and business world for many, many years. My great grandfather, for example, was Mexico's first public accountant. So very involved in the business and financial world for many decades. My father also started one of Mexico's first cell phone companies back in the early 90s. So a, ah, big family history of entrepreneurship and business in general. And I started my career very much in line with my family as a founder operator in the early 2000s as you mentioned, when there was absolutely no venture capital in Mexico and most of Latin America, a venture just didn't exist. And if you wanted to build something, you had to do it with very limited capital, very little institutional support and almost no access to experienced mentors or global networks. And so I built and operated my first companies in this context and it was really, really tough to do. And although it was tough to do and although there was limited capital, I was able to grow and sell both of the ventures that I started. And while they were successful in their scale, my big takeaway or my big frustration after selling those companies and going through that process was I can't believe that there's no venture capital. Why isn't anybody supporting Mexican entrepreneurs with capital and with support and with mentorship? And so that's when we decided to start Dila Dila. We really saw a gap in the market and we realized that the region was full of incredibly talented entrepreneurs. But they were playing with the worst tools and founders in more developed ecosystems. They lacked patient capital, they lacked structured mentorship, they lacked long term partners. And so that realization eventually led me to build Dilla Capital not just as a fund, but as a broader ecosystem in the entrepreneurial world, in the Spanish speaking world. So today I still think of myself as an operator who happens to invest. Dila to me is still my third startup and today my job is to help founders execute, build durable companies and hopefully create long term value.

Speaker B: That's amazing. Talk about always having that operator and founder mindset of just driving towards this better future that you see and being absolutely relentless about it. I'd be curious. You know, I imagine as a founder, particularly with all the challenges you faced, you probably learned a lot of lessons or strategies and ways to do things that you've taken with you. As you've thought about Dela and helping work with the founders that you're investing in. Do you have any learnings that's shaped how you think about Dela.

Speaker A: Definitely. The way that we operate Deela today comes from the fact that when we run or, uh, when I run my businesses, we didn't have external capital and we had to be very frugal and we had to be very nimble and there was no excess capital to spend. So we're very careful with the money that we have, both for investments as well as for operations. I think that's very much in our DNA. And then the relationships that we have with founders, the fact that we were operators makes us very different investors. I'm not sure if it makes us better or worse investors, but it does make us different. We've gone through the struggle. We know the struggle is real. We know what it's like to be in the shoes of that CEO. We know what it's like to try to raise capital. We know what it's like to have people say no to you thousands and thousands of times. So it does make us a, uh, different type of investor, maybe more empathetic. Then again, it's not a better or worse type of investor. We're just simply more empathetic. And we can really be in the shoes of the founders that we're investing in. And so I do believe that our backgrounds as operators and I speak of we, because my partners and I were all former operators, I do believe it has a, uh, huge impact on how we invest, how we operate our businesses today, but also how we support our portfolio companies.

Speaker B: Well, I've heard from Daniel and others that you have spent a lot of time supporting the companies and how appreciative they are of it. So I can say from the outside looking in that it definitely sounds like it works. Well, I'd be curious, you know, you've invested in dozens of startups across Latin America. Are there specific differentiators that you look for in what makes a good team versus a great team?

Speaker A: So I'd like to start by saying that there's always two types of investors. Those that think that they invest in the horse and others that they invest in the jockey. So you always have that business model and product versus team. And we are definitely on the team side. We believe that especially in the stages that we're investing in, 99% of the investment is on the team. And so when looking at great teams, I would say that great teams have four things. The first is diversity. And when I speak of diversity, I'm talking about diversity in qualifications or skill sets. But it's basically, we love to see teams that complement each other, especially each other's weaknesses. We know that nobody's perfect, and we all have flaws. And the best founders are the ones that know what they don't know. They identify their weaknesses and their flaws quickly, and then they partner with other founders that have strengths where they have weaknesses, and vice versa. I think many times in life we tend to partner with people that look like us, and you have that bias. This leads to teams that are not complementary at all. And we believe that those that aren't complementary will definitely underperform. So the first thing that we'd like to see in teams, again is diversity. The second one is clarity. And when I talk about clarity, it means founders that know exactly what matters right now. It's not 10 things, it's one, two or three priorities. They have a clear, uh, path ahead of what the business needs, what their use of funds is going to be for, how they're going to manage the capital that they raise. They don't raise unlimited capital that they don't know what they're going to do with. They raise enough capital where they take care of their dilution, and they have a very clear path to what they're going to accomplish with this particular round. They have clarity of who their customer is, clarity of what pain they're solving. And very importantly, if you know who your customer is and you know how to make your customer a hero and you have that clarity, I think that is what makes exceptional teams. Then the third one is speed. And speed means that they can act quickly, they test, they learn, they adjust. You know this better than I do. Entrepreneurship is about navigating through the unknown and making decisions with unclear or limited information or sometimes no information at all. And so you don't have certainty in entrepreneurship and in startups. So being agile, being quick, being nimble is very, very important. And we believe that that ability to be nimble and to be quick is extremely important. And then the last one that I would say, Sejan, it's probably the most important one for us is integrity. And when we talk about integrity, I think we talk about honesty. You have to be very transparent. You have to be very. And you have to be that with yourself, with your team, with your co founders, but with your investors as well. And so we love founders that don't hide problems. We love founders and teams that surface those problems early. So I would say talent is definitely important, but character is more important. And I've spent more time with the portfolio founders and with my kids. And so it's important that we share these ways of operating and that we see eye to eye and that there's again transparency and integrity. And so those are the four things that we like to see in teams. And we spend a lot of time in our due diligence and underwriting processes, really underwriting the teams more than the business models.

Speaker B: Something that stands out to me as you're talking through this is you're very focused on the person behind all these organizations. Even as you described the customer and do you know your customer? You didn't talk about it at the level of the type of business or the type of enterprise. You talked about the individual person and making them successful. And that level of understanding which is so important, does it come from patterns, recognition and seeing companies try to figure out who they're selling to over time, or is it from your experience as a founder or some combination of both?

Speaker A: I think it's a combination of both. Sage and what I've come to realize is that all businesses come down to people. We can talk about technology and now we can talk about AI, but at the end of the day you are a person selling a product or service to another person and that other person is going to make a decision. And it's a people business. I remember the best class I took in my MBA was a class that was called the human element in private equity. And it talked about the decisions that we make as people and our biases and our decision making skills and everything that is constantly affecting and the decisions that we make and how we make those decisions. But at the end of the day, it's people making decisions because they believe that's the best decision for them. And so it comes down to people and to us. Today the biggest asset that we have in dealer is the network of people that surround us. The founders that we invest in, the investors that invest in us, the partnerships that we've created over time. And that replicating 15 years of this network is really, really tough. But if somebody wants a local know who and know how in Mexico, I think that's where we add a lot of value. And it's not because of us. It's not because of the partners or the team. It's because of the whole network that we built. And the network, again, it's not logos, it's people. And again, I do believe that we are in a, uh, people business and all businesses are very human related. But especially entrepreneurship and especially venture capital in the early stages, the human element is just so important. I've lived it both as an operator and As a, ah, investor, I completely agree with you.

Speaker B: And I would also say to your point about that PE class, in the days when we're all thinking about spreadsheets and interacting through computers and virtual systems as opposed to face to face, it's so easy to forget the human element. So it makes a lot of sense to focus on it. And I hope that everyone hears this and focuses on it as well. You actually mentioned something else which is your network and all of the people that are around Dela, uh, helping you and your team understand more about the market that you're operating in. What are the unique opportunities and challenges that you see investing in early markets?

Speaker A: So I mean, investing in early markets, there's obviously huge opportunities, but I think it's more regarding the geography. So I can speak a lot more about what's unique about Latin America and the opportunities and challenges in Mexico and the Latin American emerging markets, because I believe that emerging markets offer incredible opportunities. You have very, very large and underserved populations. So think about Mexico for a second. We're over 130 million people. We are maybe the 12th or 13th largest economy in the world. We have a very young population. You have a lot of ambitious talents. And one opportunity that exists, Sage, is that we have the ability to leapfrog old infrastructure with new technology. So we're always a little bit behind the US a little bit behind Europe, a little bit behind developed countries in Asia. But we have the ability to say, okay, what happened there? And we can leapfrog, uh, maybe five, ten years. And that, as venture capitalists is a huge opportunity. And then at the same time, there are amazing challenges, real challenges, regulatory complexity, capital cycles, currency volatility, weak institutions. And so that is a challenge. But you have huge problems that have already been solved in other economies that are more developed, that have not yet been solved in developing countries, such as Mexico, Colombia, Argentina. And so most people see these structural problems and these problems that we have as a society that still haven't been developed as problems. We see them as opportunities because what we know is that you can solve all of these issues with businesses. And I've always been very passionate about the idea of how businesses can solve certain issues or problems in the market. Problem solving through business opportunities and solutions is something that has just attracted me as a founder and as uh, an investor since a very, very young age. And that's exactly what we're seeing today. We're seeing that, to give you an example, there's only 30% of banking penetration in Mexico. There's A bunch of fintechs coming into the market that are going to offer financial products and services through technology to that 70% of the population that doesn't have access to credit or doesn't have access to banking services and so forth. So we've been investing a lot in fintech software. For example, we invested in a company for example that is offering the digitalization of dental offices in the U.S. 96% I believe, uh, of dentists have a oral scanner that is digital. In Mexico it's only 7%. So there's an opportunity to offer software and hardware to dentists in order to, for them to digitize their practices. And there's a complete blue ocean out there because there's 93% of dentists that don't have access to that technology yet. Restaurants, Around 30% of restaurants in Mexico are still without a SaaS to operate their day to day. That's a huge opportunity. And so you have all of these structural problems that again, we're going to leapfrog and they're going to be solved and hopefully they will be solved by startups that have been started in the Mexican market.

Speaker B: I'm hearing some patterns or thinking about it a little bit more as well. If we come back to this idea of the people that are building these companies in markets where there's more capital than there are deals, people can become complacent because there's so many people that want to give you money and invest. And it may create a different dynamic as opposed to some of what you're describing where there's tons of opportunity, but also because teams don't have as much capital flowing in or they have to be a bit scrappier, you also end up with more resilient and stronger and grittier founding teams. Do you see that at all or not?

Speaker A: 100%. There's a huge lack of capital in our markets at every stage. At some stages it's very difficult because there's certain businesses that you can't start without capital in the very early stages. The fact that there isn't more dealers out there, I would say is dangerous because it does affect the founders a lot. But as you start to grow your companies, you're absolutely right. It makes you a lot more nimble, it makes you scrappier. You're not overspending, you're not over investing, you're not over diluting yourself either because you're not raising that much capital. And so I do believe it's an advantage to a point. There is a lack of capital we need more Series B and series C investors. We need more outside capital. And during 2021 we did have a huge inflow of capital from the US and Europe coming in. We call them, um, tourist capital because they came in during the boom and then they left. But they're slowly coming back and I believe that they're looking at the great opportunities. And more and more you're seeing big rounds funded by venture capital firms from the US and Europe coming into the Mexican market or to the Latin American market. And I think that a, uh, good thing that is occurring today is that we've become a non written partner of these firms. A lot of these firms came in in 2021 and they invested in the seed stages and the early stages and that wasn't really their game. What they realized is that they needed to co invest with somebody local so that we can do the local underwriting, we can help them out in the early stages and then they can invest in the series A and beyond. And so that's what we're seeing now more and more is local funds like Bila funding very early stages and then co investing in follow on rounds with large funds from the U.S. and so the good companies are receiving capital in the Series B and beyond. It's still scarce as you mentioned. That does make you a little bit more responsible I would say. But capital is definitely needed. I think that we have to find a good sweet spot in between where we're at and having an abundance of capital.

Speaker B: One thing that you frequently talk about is building long term value versus short term gain. This is sort of a two part question. The first part is how does that manifest in Deela's investment strategy? And then the second part is what sort of advice do you provide to startups as they think about that as well?

Speaker A: Great question. The way that we've implemented our investment strategy is the following. We do small tickets into a, I would say medium sized portfolio. So we think about 20 companies in our portfolios where we're investing in the early stages, let's call it one to $2 million ticket sizes. So on the higher end, $2 million into 20 companies, that's $40 million. Our last fund was 115. We still have 60 or 70% of the fund to invest in. Follow on rounds, we see who are the winners of the portfolio, which ones are outperforming the market, which ones are outperforming our initial underwriting. And we keep investing in those businesses where we want to fully fund their business plans and we increase the amount of money we're putting into the businesses while we're increasing the amount of equity we have in the businesses. And hopefully following the power law, when one of those businesses is our huge success, it's just going to give us that much more capital. But we're in it for the long term. We're investing during a four year period into your business and then we can stay in your business up to 10 or 12 years. So we really are thinking long term. And so when we talk to businesses about this, we always say that we are optimizing for durability and not for headlines. We really prefer founders who want to build institutions and not exits. We believe that exits are going to come if you're a good company. Exits are always a possibility. We invest today thinking about an exit in eight to 10 years. And so we invest in very early stages. But again our follow on strategy is created so that we can support the companies with more capital in two, three years and hopefully fully fund their business plans to the next chapter. And so we think about that very long term. And when we structure boards, for example, we think about governance and how we advise on growth. We're always talking about, uh, long term. You know, we discourage reckless expansion. We encourage sustainable unit economics from the very beginning. And I'm not sure my LPs would love for me to say this, but I really prefer a 5x build with integrity than a 10x build with too much chaos. And I know that people love to say, you know, move things around and break things or hurry up and break things. I don't remember what Zuckerberg said.

Speaker B: Move fast, break things.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, that's fine. But I think you have to do it with integrity and you have to really be careful about reputation. I truly believe that reputation compounds faster than money, but it takes just one second to destroy it. So it can take a lifetime to create and just one second to destroy. And so we always have to be thinking about playing long term gains with long term people.

Speaker B: That makes a lot of sense. And one of the fun areas of alignment between Dela and Venture Guides is we're both trying to focus on helping companies build, go to market teams and typically take their product to a market that they haven't entered or really been able to scale in before. Deela, you've helped European and other South American startups enter the Mexican market. What are some of the challenges that you frequently see companies run into when they try to enter the market and where do they typically need the most help?

Speaker A: So I think you probably see This a lot. And I know that Venture Guides is great at helping founders from outside of the US Come into the US And I think that again, it's very similar to what we do. Around half of our portfolio are companies that were not Mexican born, so they're from another country. They nailed their business model there. And then when they want to go into a bigger economy in the Spanish speaking world, they look at Mexico and they land here in Mexico. And I think that the biggest mistake that founders make is underestimating, let's call it localization. So it's the importance of the local know how. And especially again, coming back to people, people, people, the local know who. Mexico is not Latin America. Latin America is not a country. And so if you start a company in Colombia and want to come to Mexico, you have to understand the Mexican market. It's complex, it's a sophisticated market. It has its own regulations, it has its own culture, it has its own consumer behavior. And so you underestimate, you know, oh, this business worked perfectly in Chile, let's bring it to Mexico. Sure. But I think it's very important how you bring it to Mexico and with who you bring it to Mexico. And so common mistakes I think include not hiring a strong local leadership early, for example. And we do the same thing when it's the other way around, when our companies want to open in Colombia, fine, let's go look for a Colombian country head, have her be trained in Mexico in the company for a couple of months and then she can go and open the Colombian office. But I think you need strong local leadership and the earlier you do that, the better. The second probably would be with regulation purposes. So ignoring regulatory realities I think is huge. Sure, in Latin America we share sometimes culture, we obviously share language. Many things are very similar, but regulation is very different. And ignoring those regulation realities, especially in fintech companies, is a huge mistake. And so I would say that those are probably the two biggest mistakes. Just assuming you can do things on your own in a, uh, new country, not having local knowledge and a local team is probably the biggest mistakes that we've seen. And I would say that the winners build local teams, they listen carefully, they partner with great local funds or local capital, and they adapt quickly. That would be my mindset there.

Speaker B: And I think we see the same thing, all of our companies as they're trying to enter the US market, we help them find a local leader who can help them do that. So, so I see tons of overlap. And I imagine, similarly to us, the value of your network in Mexico and of Deela's network in Mexico to find those local leaders is also very helpful

Speaker A: and a differentiator a hundred percent. Again our biggest asset is our network and replicating that I think is very, very tough. So it's become our moat in Dila and it's become the biggest value add uh, that we give to our portfolio companies.

Speaker B: Without a doubt, very exciting. So you've been investing in startups since 2013, if I saw it correctly. I can imagine that the ecosystem has evolved dramatically over that period of time. If we look ahead five to 10 years, what do you think the Latin American market will look like? And are there any sort of major risks that you're trying to keep an eye on between now and then?

Speaker A: So I truly believe that in the past Latin America has been copying models from the US or European and adapting them and tropicalizing them into our local markets. And that's fine and we've been successful investing in businesses like that. But for the past five or six years we've started to see real businesses being built in latam, um, without necessarily copying anyone. Obviously every innovation is built on top of the last innovation and so everybody's copying somebody. But it's not a copycat model where I'm the ex of whatever in Mexico or in Latap today they're really building businesses that are not only competing in Latin America, they're competing worldwide. And so for that I am very, very bullish. Again, I know we've talked about demographics, M we've talked about talent. But near shoring is extremely important. Digital adoption is pointing in the right direction. We're seeing stronger founders, we're seeing better capital, we're seeing a uh, global integration. And so for that I believe that Latin America is very, very, very well positioned. Now the biggest risks to me are still institutional. There's a lack of capital. The lack of depth in the capital markets is something in Latin America, something that is a little bit scary. So if you think about IPOs, the last five or six Mexican companies that have IPO, they've done it in the Nasdaq, they haven't IPO'd locally. There is no local markets. And so that shallowness in the capital markets locally is something that we have to fix and it's something that we worry about. If you look at Brazil for example, obviously Brazil is Latin America, but it's a different animal. And that's why we always speak about Spanish speaking Latin America, because it's ex Brazil. But Brazil has ah, a very strong local market and so if you look at where they are versus where we are from an innovation and from a venture capital perspective, they're three or four years ahead of us, and their success has been 3 or 4x what our success has been, and it's because of institutions. And so that is something that we have to fix. Again, the closeness that we have with the United States, both geographically as well as commercially and institutionally, is very positive for us. But I do believe we have to do something about the local shallowness of the capital markets. So that would be the biggest risk I see in our market, for sure.

Speaker B: I wish we could keep going all day, but I unfortunately can't take up all of your time. So before we wrap up, we get a lot of questions from founders and customers. So we love to be able to hear your perspective on some of them. And the first one is, if you could give one piece of advice to every founder that you've met, what would it be?

Speaker A: I've been going deep into stoic philosophy for some time now, and so my piece of advice would be to focus on what you can control. We tend to focus and spend way too much time on things that we can't control. So you can control your product quality, for example. You can control your customer obsession, you can control your cash discipline, you can control your work ethic. You can't control what the market is doing. You can't control macro, you can't control exchange rates. You can't control political. You can't control what your competitor is going to do. All of that is noise. And we spend way too much time thinking about other things instead of focusing on our business and what we can control. So that would be my advice that

Speaker B: makes a lot of sense. And one other thing that you can control is the investors that you bring on to help you build your business. So another question that we hear a lot is, as you're advising portfolio founders and they're thinking about different term sheets and different partners that they can work with, is the best term sheet always the one with the highest price, or is there something else that you advise m them to look for?

Speaker A: I actually wrote a blog post on this, and I called it. It's a, uh, date, not an interview. And so a lot of people think that when you're raising capital and you go to venture guides, all you have to do is convince Sage to give you a check or a term sheet. And it has to be the other way around. It has to be no Sage, what can you give me? Talk to me about your fund Talk to me about your strategy, Talk to me about what stage you are in the fund, how much money can you deploy? What are you looking for? What are your exit strategies going to be? So I think that everybody focuses on valuation. Everybody focuses on the highest price. It's nowhere near that. I think the best term sheet is the one with the best partner. Alignment, uh, governance, support, trust. All of that matters more than valuation. And then the other terms and conditions. No, nobody looks at what the pref is going to be like, what the tag along, drag along. I don't know. There's so many terms and conditions that we can talk about. But at the end of the day, not all capital is created equal. Sometimes Venture Guides is going to be a better investor than Deela. Sometimes Deela is going to be better than Venture Guides. Sometimes you can have both. But not all capital is created equal. You really have to see who you're partnering with. And again, it has to be a date where you're going to have to date for a while before deciding who you're going to marry.

Speaker B: And I'm excited for the day that it's both because I would love to get a chance to work with you guys.

Speaker A: Yeah, likewise.

Speaker B: Awesome. Well, so before we wrap up and let you get back to the rest of your day, I have a couple of reflective questions for you. The first one is maybe going to be the hardest one I've asked you all day, but what is one of your favorite memories from creating Delay Capital?

Speaker A: I'm not sure if it's one of my favorite memories, but it definitely is one that I go back to a lot. And it was when I was creating Dila in my head, I was still in my mba and all of my Latin American friends from my MBA class were telling me I was crazy that venture capital is never going to exist in Mexico. If it were to exist, somebody would have already tried it. How can you think that you are going to be the first venture capitalist in Mexico? It's insane. There's no startups, there's no capital, and it's taken 15 years. But I think that where we are today is definitely something to say I told you so to these guys. And having very close friends of mine telling me it wouldn't work and having no, no, no, no, no. Say to my face so many times, I think it's a, uh, good memory. Not in the sense that they were saying, no, it's actually good. But just having that reflection and going back to how hard it's been and the roller coaster that it's been. And that contrarian thinking sometimes pays off is important. So that would be one of my favorite memories, for sure.

Speaker B: Amazing. And kind of along those lines, what's one leadership lesson that you've had to learn that you wish more founders understood as they're trying to build and grow their businesses?

Speaker A: So I would say that when you're talking about leadership, you have to lead. And in order to lead, you have to build a team, unless you're leading yourself. So I would say that a lot of people like for things to depend on them. They like to micromanage. And I think that if everything depends on you, you failed as a leader. I think the biggest lesson is that leadership is about building systems and building teams and not being the hero and not being in the spotlight all the time. I think your job as a leader is to create businesses or organizations or teams that work without you. And that's a lesson that I learned. I recently went to an OPM program in Harvard Business School and they told me, you have to leave Deela for three weeks and you can't have any contact with the team. You can't for three weeks. You're in school 100% of the time. And I said, sorry, that's impossible for me. I've never been out of the office for more than a, uh, week. I can't make it. And Harvard returned an email saying, alejandro, if you cannot walk away from the office for three weeks without Dela burning on fire, then your problems are a lot larger than one Harvard Business School can do for you. And that was really eye opening. It was like, of course. And I went and I went there for three weeks and I came back and everything was perfect. And it was so fulfilling to understand that I built a team and I built a business that works perfectly well without me. So I came back and I told them, guys, whatever you're doing, keep doing it. I'm not going to work on this anymore. I'm going to find other ways of adding value to the firm. Um, but yeah, I think that's my biggest lesson. And maybe I learned it a little bit late, but still working on it.

Speaker B: That's amazing. I'm sure many people would like to follow up and continue to hear more from you. So my last question is, where can people learn more about you and your work at Dela?

Speaker A: We don't publish too much. I'm on LinkedIn, Alejandro Diasbarroso. And my blog is on Medium. It's called a Mexican vc. Again, I would love to write more but have to find the time.

Speaker B: Well, maybe now you can take the three weeks away and go write some more hopefully. Amazing. Well thank you so much. This has been a wonderful episode and talk about fresh and unique insights in spaces and markets that I would say most of our listeners haven't thought about or don't know a lot about before. So thank you very much.

Speaker A: Thank you so much Sage and hopefully we can co invest in Latin America and obviously invite all of your audience to come and look at the Mexican market, look at the Latin American market. There is amazing opportunities, there's a lack of capital and when you mix those two I think that the financial opportunities are tremendous. So hopefully we can have a lot of co investments coming out of this conversation. And really thank you so much for the invitation.

Speaker B: Thank you again and thank you listeners for joining us on Built Not Born, the podcast where we break down the real stories of startup execution. If you enjoyed this conversation with Alejandro Barroso, please be sure to subscribe and leave a review. And if you're a founder looking for guidance on scaling your startup in North America, check out ventureguides.com, and if you're looking in Mexico, check out dealer.com thank you so much. Now let's get to work. Build Not Born, the Startup Go to Market Podcast is brought to you by Venture Guides. To find out more about Venture Guides and how our venture capital plus guiding model helps early stage startups build scalable go to market strategies and grow faster, visit ventureguides.com and then make sure to search for Built Not Born in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Podcasts, or anywhere else that you listen. Hit subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes and we look forward to building with you. On behalf of the team here at Venture Guides, thanks for listening. Until next time, keep building.