The Case for Building Global from Day One — João Del Valle (EBANX)

Описание: Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

This week, I sit down with João Del Valle, co-founder and CEO of EBANX—one of Latin America’s most iconic fintech stories and a company that built one of the most expansive cross-border payment platforms in the world.

Founded in Curitiba—well outside Brazil’s traditional tech hub of São Paulo—EBANX was built for scale from day one. Its global-by-design approach quickly became a powerful competitive moat, allowing the company to expand into 29 countries, process billions in cross-border payments, and power transactions for global giants like Spotify and AliExpress.

In this episode, we talk about what it really takes to scale global infrastructure from Latin America, why complexity is a competitive advantage, and how João evolved from founder and CTO to CEO of a company backed by Advent International in one of their largest-ever tech deals.

Here’s what we cover:

• How embracing regulatory and payment complexity became core to EBANX’s GTM playbook

• What 2022–2023 taught João about discipline, cold-blooded decision-making, and founder-mode leadership

• How João leads distributed teams across the U.S., China, and Latin America

• What it means to scale sustainably without blitzscaling—and still attract a firm like Advent

• How João thinks about long-term planning, investor alignment, and the path to liquidity

• Tactical insight on navigating cross-border regulation, local payment rails, and real-time systems like Pix and UPI

For global operators, fintech builders, and investors looking for real lessons in execution—this episode is packed with insight.

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Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
01:10 Who is João? Founder’s Journey from Curitiba to Global Fintech
01:57 How Many Scalable Startups Came Out of Curitiba?
02:33 The Surprising Number of Tech Jobs Created in Curitiba
03:22 What Shaped Joao’s Entrepreneurial Mindset Early On?
05:26 Joao’s Unexpected Connection to Africa — and What He Learned
07:17 Career Lessons from Building in an Emerging Market
08:28 Joao’s Professional Operating Style as a Tech Founder
09:24 How Ebanx Was Born — From Idea to Execution
13:38 Why Strong Founder Partnerships Matter in SaaS Startups
15:05 Building Great Products: Joao’s Principles of Product Excellence
17:03 How to Design Scalable Product Infrastructure from Day One
19:28 Founding Lessons from One of Brazil’s Biggest SaaS Success Stories
23:03 Transitioning from CTO to CEO: The Mindset Shift
25:48 The Hardest Part About Becoming a Startup CEO
28:13 Paul Graham’s “Founder Mode vs Exec Mode”
30:24 What You Learn by Operating in Different Startup Environments
31:41 Key Decisions Behind Ebanx’s Sustainable Scale
33:54 Favorite Failures: Lessons from Ebanx’s Expansion Mistakes
35:10 How Ebanx Launched Globally — GTM Strategy Breakdown
37:01 Leading Teams Across Cultures: What Works and What Doesn’t
39:29 Playbook for Rolling Out Fintech Products in New Markets
43:08 What Makes Ebanx Truly Different in the Payments Space?
45:32 How UPI and PIX Are Shaping the Future of Fintech
50:31 PIX-Driven Product Launches That Fuel Growth
52:55 Visa & Mastercard’s Strategic Response to Real-Time Payments
54:51 The Future of Payments
57:17 Joao’s Top Leadership Priorities for the Next 5 Years
58:59 The Markets Ebanx Is Watching Closely
1:00:00 Building a Founder-Friendly Cap Table: Lessons from Ebanx
1:00:42 How to Build Long-Term Investor Relationships
1:05:07 Why Operational Discipline Is Key to Scaling a Startup
1:06:06 Rapid Fire

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