You can now find the full show notes of the Crossing Borders podcast on LatamList.com’s new podcast section. I’ll still post the audio of the podcast on my blog and I’m planning to start writing more again on my blog, like I used to.
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Thanks for listening to Crossing Borders all these years! If you have any feedback or questions, please feel free to reach out here, or contact me on social media.
Outline of this episode:
- [1:54] – Splitting time between Platzi offices in Bogota, San Francisco, and Mexico City
- [2:31] – What does Platzi do?
- [3:46] – Were you always an entrepreneur?
- [4:57] – How did you get started with Maestros del Web?
- [5:56] – Growing up in Guatemala
- [8:40] – How Christian fell in love with the internet at a young age
- [11:26] – Going from Guatemala to Barcelona
- [12:37] – What were some of the biggest challenges you had to overcome going from 0 to 10M page views?
- [15:42] – What was like going from being a solo founder to teaming up with somebody?
- [16:55] – Why Mejorando.la went from live classes to streaming and YouTube
- [18:24] – Why mistakes are good for learning
- [19:39] – Why Latino founders should learn to put themselves out there and stop fearing failure
- [22:53] – Rebranding: Your users care more about product than name
- [24:15] – Why they targeted the Spanish-speaking market
- [25:23] – What was it like to enter YCombinator as the first fully Latin American company?
- [27:30] – Biggest surprises participating in YCombinator
- [29:19] – Why Colombia is leading the way for international investment in LatAm
- [31:17] – When did you know Platzi would grow to be something big?
- [34:25] – Why keep an office in San Francisco?
- [36:24] – What advice would you give to other Latin American founders when they are trying to raise money?
- [38:02] – Why should more US VCs be looking at companies from LatAm?
- [40:26] – Why fintech is so important in LatAm
- [42:53] – What’s your advice for people that want to start learning to code?
- [44:05] – If you could go back to when you were first starting Mejorando.la, what advice would you give yourself?
