How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios

27:47And it's just an interesting thread of just how much power it comes with being the most successful company in a market and just like the cycle of success that comes from that in terms of hiring amazing people. Is there anything else there that you think might be interesting to folks that are, I don't know, that want to try to do something that's other than just build a successful business? I think it applies to many things. And you often also hear like, well, you're not in the Bay Area, you're not in the pinnacle of, and the capital of technology. So how can you build amazing technology? No, and there are advantages as well.

28:21Oh, I think you would find the same with, you mentioned a bunch of companies that have experienced that where, okay, if you can be the top in the region where there's great talent, no, and like statistical definition, there's great talent everywhere. It's probably follows a probabilistic distributions of it's everywhere. A lot of it does flow into the US, and it's absolutely true that there's a very high concentration of talent outside specific companies. I think that's probably the one thing you don't get outside of the big tech hubs where you are the top company, but you are the only top company, and I'm exaggerating a bit, right?

29:04There are great companies throughout the world, and in Latin America, and you have unit corns, and there are outliers, but the truth is you're setting your own path, and you're setting your map, and setting your destination, and you're building things that have not been built before in a different way, and it's very fun. That's for sure. But oh, correct, I said Intercom, I don't think they're technically a US -based company, but I think a lot of the team is an airline, or is it originally an airline, just to be clear there. And then there's other companies like Canva and Atlassia, and I feel like there's a really, like what I'm taking away from this is if you want to build this company outside of the US, you need to be the best in that market to take advantage of this cycle that happens where the best comes to you.

29:51Yeah, maybe you could say you have to be the best eventually. Oh, if you want to have that flywheel running, it's hard to start and be the best and the biggest, no, when we're just getting started. But I think knowing that there's great talent everywhere and that it is possible to attract them without being in a specific tech hub, maybe even empowering, to like, I want to start a company here. I think we can also be honest that it will be harder. It is easier to recruit and build a team where you're in a place where the high density is all over. Another thing that happens to us is that many people try to recruit from us and that's something that we have to deal with.

30:35But if you actually get that flywheel going, it becomes into a clear advantage. I want to come back to something you said that I think might be, there might be something more there, which is around reducing the fear of failure. A lot of companies and leaders say that and they're like, yeah, yeah, we let people fail, totally no problem. But then in reality, they perform interviews, they get a show impact, they have to show success. Is there something you do to actually create that sort of culture we're failing is okay? What can people learn from you to actually create that sort of culture? I think that question is even more on how does culture work at any company, especially at hours, no, it's very clear that it's not what you write on the walls or what you put on your website from F -Learn and what we've seen.

31:25It's something, it's what you do. No, it's what the leadership team is doing is how I get my performance reviews, how I get either praise or not praise and public, no, what are the acceptable errors where they're not acceptable errors? Again, if we have a system outage, no, it's obviously unacceptable. Like that's not the kind of error that we're going for. We're going for, well, if you took a risk in a very bold vision and it turns out it was not the right path, you're not going to get penalized for that. You might even get a promotion and those messages that you send are extremely powerful. No, who has what title, who gets promoted, who doesn't get promoted, who is getting what praise in public, no, what announcements are made on new products.

32:19How do we talk about things that didn't work? No, one very clear one is like, okay, this didn't work and yes, we like risk with the person that let the project was fired. I was like, well, then you're not sort of like living what you are, or you have on your website. Also, I think it is not more complicated than that, you need to live it, you need to show it and you also need to have people that will take in that culture and also propagate it into their teams. That's also the way it scales in the organization, but it definitely starts with the top management of the company and again, what they are focused on, what messages they're sending to the rest of the company.

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34:18Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. You talked about this idea of being directed on us but also maintaining a cordial environment. Talk about just that balance in the culture you've created of being direct kind of this idea of radical candors what I'm hearing. So the book became very, very popular. No. The book radical candor. Yeah, yeah. It's a awesome. We had Kim Scott on the podcast. It's a great book and the concept is also great. I wouldn't even say it's even more important in Latin America in some Asian countries where you have a culture and Latin American so I can talk a little bit about stereotypes without it becoming offensive, especially once that are true.

35:06Where there's a lot of hierarchy and I'm not gonna tell my boss that he's wrong. Well, there's gonna do this because he said so or she said so. This is the way it works and this is the way it's always been done. So that's the way we're gonna do it. I don't wanna stand out. All these are sort of like cultural stereotypes that we are extremely aware of when we operate. People are extremely polite in Latin America as well. I don't know if you've traveled, everyone will smile at you. It will be very hard for someone to say no to something even like meetings or whatnot. Or like, yes, but later, yes, but later and they actually mean no.

35:46I think they're Argentina. Another country's with Argentina where the company was founded is an exception to that where people are very direct. I will tell my boss if he's wrong, it's something that I love about the company and we've been able to sort of like export that and also select for people that will actually behave and that way. But yes, we're extremely direct, extremely candid. We're honest about what's working, what's not working and it's a learning that every manager or leader goes through. Like, well, I don't wanna hurt people's feelings. I wanna be friends with everyone. I think we all start on that path and eventually you realize that people like the honesty that they might not like it in the very short term or in the medium terms sometimes even.

36:39But my experience has been if you're coming from a place of honesty, again, if you're sort of like not insulting anyone or kind of like crossing a line where things feel personal, people appreciate the feedback. People like growing people, if you have your performance review and everything comes back positive, what are you gonna do with that? So I was like, well, he's doing great. Everything's perfect. Thank you for being a part of the company. Oh, what could I be doing better? What's not working? It's also a skill to separate that from your person. No, we do have situations where I've had to have conversations on like, well, you got this strong feedback, but it's on the product.

37:24Maybe on the vision that we are pursuing or on the execution that their work has nothing to do. Like with you, we can go out and have lunch. And we'll still be cordial. And but this idea of well, the companies should be like families. And it's not true because you behave extremely different with your family. There's no expectation of high performance. I mean, in some families, obviously, and in some cases, even in mind, we can talk about that. But it's always from a different perspective, whereas I think the analogy that we use much more often is of a high performance sports team, where it's very clear where the line is between, yes, we can have fun together.

38:08And we should, as we work on uninteresting things. But when you are talking about work and the performance and working, what's not working, the results speak for themselves usually. And we just don't hide that from anyone. Speaking of that, along those same lines, I heard you do this. Do something that is a little controversial these days, but you did this a long time ago, which is you sent a weekly email asking, what did you get done this week? And you share what you got done this week. Talk about just that. Yeah, so it became a meme, what was it like one or two years ago? I used to do it before that.

38:50I should say, and I should also clarify that I don't actually have an expectation that people are gonna send that to me. It's something I do myself. So I'll sort of like go over what I did in the week, what worked, what didn't work, even what interesting things I discovered. And I will share that with the executive team with our CEO, who I report to. I'll share that with my team. It's basically helped me keep track of what's working, what's not working. I usually also get feedback on those emails or help or saying, well, let's talk about this and this and that. So I think that's something super simple that anyone can do, right?

39:31So you can write like a weekly email to your boss or to your team and saying, like, well, this is what happened this week. This is what worked. This is what didn't work. This is maybe something I need help with or something that stuck. I mean, we can unlock it together. I think it's strange that I haven't heard a lot of people doing it. I think actually read it somewhere a couple of years ago and this probably where I got the idea. I'll look it up to see if we can link it on your notes. I don't think credit for it. I wrote a post about this actually. I called it the state of me. OK, maybe with you.

40:06I wonder if it was. Maybe it was you. Either way, a link to this post and the whole idea and there's like a less controversial way of asking this instead of what did you do get done this week, which is I call it the state of me. I call it the state of Lenny email. And basically every week, it was a weekly thing for me and that a daily thing. I emailed my end manager. Here's what I got done. Here's my next set of priorities. And here's blockers. I need you to help. Oh, I probably got it from you. It's sounding extremely familiar. So I send the weekly email. I call it a weekly update. It's also not like whether I got done this week.

40:36It can be what I got done on the week. But like important things are happening, your releases. That also frees up a lot of time, for example, with my C O O. Or like, OK, on the weekly meeting, we don't have to talk about like those specific things where we can pick out from that email, what's relevant, what's working, what's not working. So it's definitely a great tool. And I'm pretty sure I got from your post just hearing you. What a circle of light you got here. OK, so speaking of things that you did before other people, something else that came up a lot in chatting with folks that work with you is they pointed out that you're really good at not falling for hype cycles.

41:15You're good at being really pragmatic about things that everyone's really excited about. Like crypto, gen A .I. these days. How do you approach that? How do you approach new things that everyone's like super excited about and not kind of fall into this trap of just like, oh, we got to pivot and do this thing that everyone else is doing? I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's true. It's true in some sense, because it's not like I just ignore it. So I think I bought or even mine my first Bitcoin in like 2010 or 12 or something like that. We can like leave it on this closed. How many and how many are still working?

41:55No, not enough for that. Now a lot of great lessons on selling and won the right time and whatnot. Yeah, I had both lessons too. So it's not like I ignored what was happening. No, but I'm definitely skeptic of most things, I would say, even I like doing a lot of research. Deep research is a great tool. Like I use it all the time for a lot of things. I do it myself as well. So with crypto, for example, I love the technology. Actually, I think there are some very fun breakthroughs there. The distributed consensus and how you got like a single thing. But then you start to run some of the numbers on like, okay, so what's the throughput and then what can you actually put in there at least with the technology that we had at the time.

42:50All the things are moving quickly and you got layer two and layer three and whatnot. But I think having a good understanding of the fundamentals and also being involved probably in like what I would call chronicle the real world and a business and like understanding the scale of what's necessary for things to work is it's helpful. Keeping a level head, no, on like what are some of the main characteristics. So we can talk about and by the way, like we have crypto and in Miguel Llude, we have our own cryptocurrency. So it's not like we just say like well, crypto is not useful and it's actually very useful in Latin America and countries where access to US dollars are.

43:39It's not as easy as in other places. But I think going from that to saying like every single thing on the planet is going to run on the blockchain. That's where some of my alarms start to go off and it's like well, it can be a great technology and it can be very successful without having to take over the world, which can also turn into AI where again, the claims are that will take over the world and happy to talk about that. But just understanding the fundamentals of the technology that's being potentially hyped and having a good understanding of how it could be applied to something useful for people.

44:22I think it's where it's been helpful. Awesome. Okay, let's pivot to talking about you as a human. There's just like so many stories I heard from people that I went out here about. Okay, so one is that you built an app. You put an app store, Steve Jobs called you and he's like Sebastian, we got to remove your app. Yeah, yeah, talk about that story. Yeah, so we should clarify that the app was a bit strange. So it was an app that literally helped you drain your phone's battery. There were two reasons why I made it. One was because I was like learning about all the different sensors on the phone, like GPS and gyroscope and the screen and whatnot.

45:08So as a dog, we're going to turn them all on at the same time. And that's going to really warm up your phone. On the other end, there was like this trend. I'm not even sure where that ended up, where it was better for your phone to run completely out of battery and then recharge it. I think now the recommendation is actually that it should stay between like 10 % and 80 % at all times to maintain very health. I was like, okay, so when you have like 2 % left and you just want to get it over with and get the battery down, you open this app and like drain it. So I like that there's a reason for this because I could see just doing it for fun, but like there's functionality here.

45:49Yeah, yeah, I always try to make it useful. For me. So I put it on the app store and this was the time where like the app store was starting and the app review process and people were actually getting very math that they're apps were getting rejected for use to like a world where I just put my app out there and anyone can download it. So the vupers were going to the press to say like, well, Apple is not proving my app and then articles we written and it would be like a PR thing. So the executive team at Apple, including Steve, were actually calling developers to inform them that their apps were going to be approved that they were not thinking of the app store, kind of like trying to avoid them going to the press and just like being more personal and explaining what was wrong with with the app.

46:40And so one day I'm walking in the street and I get a phone and blocked number like they can identify it pick up. Well, hi, it's a fashion. This is Steve from Apple. I'm here to well, I need to talk to you about your app. We're not going to be able to have it on the app store. This is training people's batteries and we don't want that for for people actually pushed back a little bit. I told the white bulb, you know, I read all the rules of the app store before making this app and there's no rule against draining the battery. And he told me check again because we just added a new rule that apps cannot overly drain the battery on the phones.

47:23So I'm happy to say there is an app store rule that is supposed to be specifically for me at the time. I actually didn't realize I had spoken to Steve Jobs until like a couple of minutes later because like well, yeah, someone called Steve from Apple. There's probably a lot of Steve's. I was like, well, you know that that voice sounded extremely familiar and I look okay. And then articles started popping up of like Steve and the rest of the executive team calling developers to let them know that this was happening. So I was happy to confirm that I had at least had a short phone conversation with what Steve quite the legend.

48:03That is an incredible story. First of all, I just love that Steve Jobs was calling random app developers and founder. Founder, right? Like how did he have the time? I just love that he took you know that they realize this is important and if people hear from us, that'll actually go for better. Even though people kept posting right like people are like, Steve Jobs called me touched on my app. So a little back very maybe any how did he sat was he just like did he was he this nice radical candor balance of nice and yeah. Yeah, yeah. And it's not what you would against here typically hear from him.

48:38No, he was a lot more mercurial. I think it was a term that people use. But none of that on the call. He was actually pretty nice and chill and feel like well, we're not going to allow your app. Just matter of fact. Yeah. And then you said that they added this rule. Yeah. Before he called you, we have a new rule. I guess they could do that right. It's like our place, our store. Wow. Okay. Amazing story. Did that discourage you from building more apps or you just like holy shit? No, absolutely not. I was very happy to talk to Steve. I sent him a few emails. I never got a reply to be honest, but since I'm emails on on feedback on again, like the app store, the iOS and not super young by the way at the time, I think I was like 16 or 17 or 18 when I developed that app.

49:28I was like, yeah, I didn't know what it meant no to get a call from him and send him emails and expect a reply and whatnot. It was a fun experience and I kept building more apps. I actually started a mobile app development company. A few months after after that, which is another another phone story. Well, maybe this is the story, but I know that at 19 you built an app that became the number one app in 19 countries. Maybe just briefly share that story. That one is super fun. So I had a girlfriend. I really liked at the time. I don't know if that happened in the US, but in many Latin American countries.

50:08And I think they're the world. The phone companies came out with something where you could call five numbers for five minutes for free, like a five for five for five. So I had my girlfriend's number on there and we will talk for five minutes. But what they did is if you went over like one second, they would charge the whole five minutes and and and and phone bills were expensive. Now we're going to sound like old people when we talk about this soon. It was like a big deal, especially for for a teenager. No, I don't have like money to throw around and on on my phone bill. So I made this app that was extremely simple.

50:43It alarmed you or like it sent a notification when you were close to reaching the five minutes. So you could just hang up and call again and have another five free minutes and then call again. I did it for myself. It turned out to be a good investment because I ended up marrying my girlfriend. And she stole my wife and we have a beautiful family together. It also turned out to be a good business decision. So it cost $100. I think it's still us to to upload an app to the app store. I thought, okay, I think to sell like around a hundred copies. I mean, there are fees and what not a bit. Let's say I have to sell a hundred copies for one dollars.

51:19So I'll put on the app store. That was my business plan. And it absolutely exploded. It became the top selling app in Mexico and in a lot of other different countries. It was not a free app. And it was also like completely local. So there was like no back end, no cost, no advertising. So it was a very profitable endeavor that also very quickly turned into a business in itself. Oh, but then and then a separate business where people, this is when the the app store was starting when the iPhone was was getting big. So I actually got contacted by a lot of different companies like multinationals, governments, no thing like well, you have the number one app.

51:59So we want you to build an app for us. There weren't that many people into iPhone OS at the time it was called development. And you objective see and all the ways to build a good app. So I started building apps myself for a bunch of different people and companies. Eventually I couldn't scale that and had to hire people. So I hired my friends from from college and taught them how to do apps. We actually all learned from a free online course from Stanford. It was a great course on how to build apps. I remember going to to my university professors and saying, hey, the iPhone is cool. I want to learn how to like make these apps who can teach me and they're like no one like this new like no one knows how to how to do it.

52:43So I also had to learn on my own, but now I was able to teach people turn that into a mobile app about company that that for about two years. And it turns out to be a very good business, but it's also like boring to have to start over new projects and new projects and projects. I like going deep into things and iterating and actually creating products that the people love. So we decided to sell the consulting side of that. Keep the mainly mobile team. And so I started working on fun products that we could actually scale and scale exponentially. One of those was ordering ordering taxis from your phone.

53:24So at the time Uber was starting in in San Francisco. They started kind of like a private network of drivers and like fancy cars and eventually was open to to a lot of people. I thought well, that would work great for for taxis and Mexico City is the city with the most taxis on the planet at these outside Asia. And the at the time in San Francisco, for example, at least taxis had kind of like a clunky computer and they were like these track by GPS or not, but like in Mexico, they use radios and you had to call a number and you never knew if your taxi was coming or not. So we developed a very simple test.

54:06It's unciilly now that these companies are huge, but I was actually like not sure are people going to trust getting on a car that they got from a phone in Mexico City when your parents have told you like don't trust people on the internet and don't get into strangers cars. So we're like combining two things that the people were taught not to do by their by their parents. We decided to just do the passenger app and test whether people actually like this. So when you requested a car, we would call a taxi company and basically call for you and send the car over and those enough for it to explode.

54:42Like we could not deal with the demand. We actually had to build like an intermediary call center to like call other call centers while we develop the driver side of the marketplace and actually got drivers on on board. And once you got the flywheel and you got all of drivers and a lot of writers and the network effects, then it started to scale and work. Those are a fun experience. Oh man, you're just a well of fascinating stories. I love this kind of journey of sharing of just like at 16 I think you built that app that Steve Jobs called your buzzer. Yeah, I have maybe seven. Okay. Okay, from that to now managing something like 18 ,000 engineers.

55:23I love this journey. Also competing with Uber along the way. Yeah, yeah. Very intense competition. I've always enjoyed competition. That's the pit of me intense competition from what I hear. Okay, another interesting thing about you that I've heard is that you drink. You drink no alcohol, which I think is common these days, but this something you've been doing for a long time. You also drink no tea, no coffee, no juice, no soda, just water. Well, what's going on there? Why is that? I just love water. Water is amazing. I think it's not the same reason for everything. It has turned now into like, well, happy with water.

56:04Why do I have to alter my brain with chemicals? I like my brain. We have a good relationship. I sleep well and I don't feel like I need stimulants of any kind. I already have a lot of fun. It did start in different ways. The legal drinking age in Mexico is 18. A lot younger than in the US. So people actually start drinking when they're 16. Very early, I got to see the effects of at least drinking a lot can have on your body. I just never wanted to be in that situation where I didn't have control of my destiny. I don't have control of my destiny. But at least physical control, I want to walk there and can walk there.

56:56I think that really marks you when you see young people or drinking. It's not a fun picture. Then I understand people like adults can drink responsibly and have fun with friends and whatnot. I never got into it. I think it's going to acquire taste. I don't particularly enjoy the flavor of beer and different alcohols. Coffee, it's also similar. I don't like how it tastes. It takes extremely bitter to me. I also think it's an acquired taste where it's like, okay, well, the effect is great because I get a lot of energy. Then you start to appreciate the flavor. I don't think it starts with the flavor.

57:36So again, I never got into it. Tea, I think, is something that I could drink, but I just never think of drinking it. I'll probably race you even one stranger that, I don't know if the friends you interviewed mentioned, but actually also don't listen to a lot of music. Also, when I programmed, I liked a program in silence, which I know seems extremely strange to a lot of programmers and developers. I think the reason for that one and also talking about the interesting background is my dad's an orchestra conductor. I went to maybe hundreds of concerts for big orchestras and backstage. It was actually very fun, but I think I had enough music for a while.

58:27It's all like I don't enjoy music. My wife is really into music and we listen to music together with our kids and everything. But I never have the idea of putting on music myself. That's another strange one to share. That was a good one. Another couple of things I heard is that you basically don't do any social media. You also don't watch the news. You don't watch TV, really. Is that all true? That is true. For a really long time, we didn't even have a TV. Like the device. We bought one when my son was born. We couldn't go to the movies anymore. I do like media. I like movies from time to time.

59:14We do what shows from time to time. But we can watch them on an iPad. I think it's a lot less addictive. The screen is small. Even though we have a TV now, we don't use it very often. I love reading. And the social media thing, I think it's worth qualifying as well. I enjoy X a lot, Twitter and reading what people are thinking, what's happening, what's not happening. That's probably my main source of news. I don't follow any news organizations. Because I feel like I'm going to find out if something extremely important is happening. Like now, the whole political and geopolitical environment is extremely volatile.

1:00:01And I hear about that from people that I follow. And sometimes I'll retweet articles and I'll read them. There was a fun memory of my childhood when we had a TV in the house. And my mom's also a very curious character. She's stuck a sign to it that said, everything you see here is a lie. She's stuck the sign to the TV. I don't think she meant it for news. And she didn't get into the whole misinformation thing and whatnot. It was mostly like, well, you're going to watch cartoons of people flying and be careful, don't jump off the roof of the house. I think it goes more in that sense. But it probably stuck with me of being very independent minded and do your own research and actually understand what you're hoping for and what you want to do.

1:00:56Again, I'm not like closing my ears and eyes to what's happening in the world. And I do follow a lot of tech coverage. And that I enjoy a lot, like new programming languages, new frameworks, new model developments. So when I talk about news, it's probably like the bad news that I think people can sometimes even get addicted to. If I turn on the TV and put the local news channel, it's just going to be bad news. And I know that like statistically is not all bad news. So why am I going to like watch a show that's pointing out very unique things that don't happen very often that are not happy stories.

1:01:35I don't know who said this once, but it's always stuck with me along the these lines of what you just said. That we're just not designed to know all the bad things happening in the world every day. Like we lived in small tribes where if a couple maybe something bad happened that day, we're not evolved to go for comprehend so many calamities globally that we should not even know. Absolutely right. I can't imagine our brains were evolved into well, you know, you open your phone and you get like unleavened information about any single topic that you want. I think you have to be like purposeful of what you're reading, what you're seeing, you can find absolutely anything amazing things horrible things.

1:02:15So why am I going to like focus on the horrible things. I love that and I feel the same way. This is such a cool glimpse into just what it takes to be extremely successful to go from building this app that see drop shot down to running a company and the team the size. Is there anything else that along those lines that we haven't talked about that might be helpful for folks either about how you operate as a human morning routine trick. I don't know anything else that we haven't touched on along those lines. I don't have a stricter routine as you would expect when you talk like to executives and whatnot like well, this is the time that I do this, the time that I do this.

1:02:51I think what's worked great for me is to follow my curiosity. Thankfully, I think I have good intuition, but even like in life and in my work, like it's hard to say like, well, this is a formula for what you should focus on today. I have an intuition of what I'm most curious about and thankfully that usually aligns with what we should be working on and where I can add the most value to my teams, to the company, to my family, to my career, to the things I'm learning. I think that that's probably what's been the guiding principle for me. Follow your curiosity, what excites you. It's also probably what you're going to be good at because it's hard to compete with someone who loves what they're doing if you don't love that thing.

1:03:46But if you go in and say, well, this is my curiosity, this is what I love. I'm probably going to be good at it and it's not going to be like something I have to force myself into. I think that that's something that I've done throughout my whole life and career that's worked very well. I had Toby, let me on the podcast and we were talking about raising kids for a little bit and we chatted about what do you want your kid to learn most? What's the most important trait to develop in his, his inkling is developing curiosity. Developing curiosity? I think I would agree. I think the other one that you need is probably, it's also a trending topic now with agency.

1:04:25It's not probably enough to just be curious, be curious and go get what you want. We were raised in a very intensely independent way. My mother, Mingly, had these fun ideas on how she wanted us to be able to handle, quote unquote, any situation and the analogy that she used is that she wanted to train as like spice. I was thinking Sparta. Yeah, well, I'll share one fun story. One morning, she wakes us up like, hey, we're going camping. Everyone get ready, like no warning. We're really in right now. I remember my little brother to understand how that plant work. His only question was, should I go on my pajamas or should I change?

1:05:20For example, so we go and turns out we're, I think it would be actually hard to call it camping because we were camping with no gear. Also, it was a survival camp training is what we were going to do. There was an instructor and it wasn't like completely irresponsible, but it was like find your own water, build your own shelter, boil it, start your own fire. That was a fun one. Another fun one, and that was to celebrate New Year's. Another fun one was, she would drop us in the middle of the city, as a Mexican city. She says she would then just leave us alone. I don't remember. I think she was just following us, but you have to get back home.

1:06:05And you have to like no public transit or ask someone for help and basically like solve problems. She would send us on international trips also alone. I think there were many things that she did. She called it independence. She wanted us to be independent. I think the term that we could use now is like agency, solve your problems, just go and get things done. I think that was also very formative of the way I am and I approach different problems. Do you feel like she might have actually been training YouTube years by? Maybe. We also did a lot of skiing, biking, trekking, and also the action parts of the spy experience.

1:06:52We used to tease her still that she didn't enjoy activities that didn't have like a liability release before you did them. So yeah, Rapel climbing. We had a very fun childhood. It explains a lot. I feel like you could do another hour just diving into your childhood and it would made you who you are today. But maybe we'll save that for part two. I feel like we've done a great job giving people a sense of just how interesting you are as a person and also just the uniqueness of Mercado Libre and what they built in the business that you help run. Is there anything else that we haven't touched on that you think might be helpful to folks or that you want to leave listeners with before we get to a very exciting lightning round?

1:07:35I think we covered a lot. I was also happy to be able to share. No, Mercado Libre doesn't operate in the US. I think that's the main reason why it's not such a well -known tech company. I think it's changing with the stock growing as well. It helps a lot of people actually know it from investing and being very happy with the performance. So thank you for letting me share some of what we do and some of what I've been doing. Absolutely. And with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? I'm ready. What are two or three books that you recommend most to other people?

1:08:19This is a good one. I think it depends on the person that I'm recommended to. I try to actually make it relevant to what they're doing. If we go statistically, it's usually within the company. So management -related, high output management, I think is a great one. But also, have been recently recommending people read the Odyssey. It's a super, super inspiring story. It's not a coincidence that it's survived for thousands of years. It's a really fun read and something that just resonates with a lot of people. Another book that I really like is called The Dream Machine. It's kind of like the story of computers and computing and the internet.

1:09:10For example, why is Ethernet called Ethernet? There was a low -hannette before. I think that's also a great one to understand some of the things that we rely on. These are like we stand in the shoulders of giants constantly, no, to build the things we do. I think that's another great one. Because the rest are probably more fiction and my love doing and my love science fiction. What you would expect. Okay. This next question, I know you're going to watch TV. Let me just ask, is there a favorite recent movie that you've watched that you really enjoyed? I mean, recent, I don't go to the movies as often as I used to since I had kids.

1:09:53Sometimes we go with them. But I think probably the last one that resonated with me or that I thought was awesome was everything everywhere at once. Just really fun movie, great acting, low budget. I didn't know when I was at the time, I sort of like did research on it later. That one was super fun. I enjoyed a lot because I like the books, it's one of my favorite books. But I do watch children's shows from time to time. There, I'm sure someone has probably mentioned Pledui already, but it's amazing. It's really well made for the kids, for the parents, great messages, great animation. That's just a gem that I really recommend.

1:10:39Yeah, Louis does come up a bunch. I feel like it's one of the more mentioned shows. Do you interview a lot of parents as well? Yes, I do. And I'm an parent, so I think that I'm pulling them in. Okay. Do you have a favorite product that you've recently discovered that you really love? Yeah. This one's going to be fun for you as well as a parent. I'm not sure if you've heard of Maintaba. It's a new way of teaching kids to read. Oh, the company. Yes, say more. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, it's a product and it's great. I did it with my son and I kind of like I quote him, quote, taught him how to read using the program.

1:11:24And now he's probably the top reader in his class. How old is he? So he's five. And it's actually designed for three, four, five years old. So he's probably late to the reading early bandwagon because I haven't really seen strong evidence that it actually changes outcomes in the future. The best argument I've seen for it from Matt Bateman. I'm sure you're familiar with him, but he's great on education and months. Sorry, is that it can lead to a very enjoyable childhood. If you can read early, so if you're like a four year old, a five year old, that can read very well, you'll have a fun childhood with access to to a lot more information.

1:12:10So for us, it wasn't like a reading early. It was just making sure you have a really good fundamental on reading. It was just a base skill that propagates to the rest. And then that being actually a beast academy for math is another great one that I would recommend to to parents. Don'ts great. I mean, the last product I would mention David protein bars. They're very good. I really like weightlifting. It's sort of like one of the things I do to get my my blood flowing. Super high quality ingredients. Very high protein. I think it's actually a venture back company. I haven't talked to the founders, but reach out.

1:12:51I would love to meet you. Here's our doing something fun. I think those are the ones that come to mind. 3D printers are also fun. I made a telescope with my son a couple of months ago. Those were fun. There's a lot of new products now. It's a fun time to be alive. This is your category right here. Cool, fun gadgets and products. Yeah. Feel like this could be another hour podcasting. Probably. Two more questions. One, do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to find useful in worker and life? That life in the world are malleable. Things aren't as set in stone as you would think.

1:13:28There's usually a way to get what you're after. You actually have to be careful, I think, about what you want. Because if you have enough agency, you can probably get, quote, unquote, anything. So make sure you're looking for something good and that you're going to be happy with the result. But that's probably the main one. I've heard it phrase in many different ways. See job said of like, well, you know, the world was built by people like you, like me. Some of them not smarter than you. Some of them maybe smarter than you. So you can just go out and do things as a new meme. No, and the world will probably reconfigure itself to help you.

1:14:06Which is that one's from from Mark and Dresden. Yeah, just understanding that you can actually change the world. It doesn't have to be in a massive way. It's also possible, just in not just getting locked down too well. You know, this is how it's done. Or this is a culture here. Or this is how it's always been done. I think we can change whatever we want. What I'm hearing is your mom's goal of instilling agency new work. I would say so. Yes, I have fun solving problems. Just finding your way home from the center of Mexico City worked. Final question. A colleague of yours, maybe friend Christopher Lazarus wanted me to ask you about something called the Tatami project.

1:14:52Does that ring a bell? Talk about what that was. Yeah, yeah. That's from a long time ago. So you did your very good research. Yeah, talking about agency at some point, I wanted to have what's called a I think it's called the Tami room. Not an expert, but basically a room in your house where you have the Tami's and you can like meditate there or train or practice. My room, like my childhood bedroom was strange and that it had kind of like a basement. So like two floors, you could open a hatch on the floor and go down. I think it was like a thing from how the house would build. I decided that that was the best place for putting the the Tami's.

1:15:35But I didn't want to have like a roof on top of that. So I went and bought like construction gear and like huge diamond cutters and actually caught a big hole in the middle of my of my room. Put a stair and put the Tami's underneath. So I kind of like turned my my room into a two floor loft, which is pretty fun. I hadn't thought about that in a while. I used to do a lot of hacker projects and maker things and I love I love using my hands. I love building products, technology, code, but also physical things had a lot of fun with our Dweenos and building tiny robots. Yeah, that's a fun memory. But I did put a hole in the middle of my room.

1:16:24My parents were always happy with us having projects. I was going to ask how did you want to feel about this. I don't think they were thinking about like the the future sale value of the house or what not. It actually turned out to be I think people were interested. They didn't sell the house, but they used to rent it and I was like, well, this is like strange. Maybe we'll put like something here and turn out to be a good decision. But they were very open to us exploring and making mistakes, then going back even to the start of our conversation on on how to not get stuck as a big company as a big team.

1:16:59You need to make mistakes and and take risks and that's something that was always encouraged by my parents. That is a hilarious story. And just to be clear, it's a Tommy Matt. It's like a thin mattress. So at the time is not something you would sleep on directly, but it's kind of made out of bamboo. Like if you like Google for just a Japanese house, what they have on the floor is at the time, like block. So they'll put two, three, five, ten together. So it's kind of like that green floor that that you see in many like traditional hotels or photos. So I made kind of like a miniature version of that and the newly added second floor of my room.

1:17:45Seb, this was everything I was hoping to be. We covered so much ground you the company things you've learned. I feel like we could do another follow up with just as many insights and lessons and stories. But other than that, two final questions. Working folks finding online if they want to reach out, learn more and how can listeners be useful to you? Perfect. I am not so active on Twitter. I mostly read and find interesting ideas. But happy to see you there. LinkedIn is another one. I know some people who are very into X and Twitter. Actually don't like LinkedIn a lot. But I think both work and they're both.

1:18:27They will have have their place. So yeah, happy to connect and feel free to reach out. I've got something that I love about the tech industry. You can just do things. Reach out to people and they'll probably help be helpful and help you that has certainly been the case with me. And I'm also happy to do that for anyone who has any question or wants to connect. Amazing. Seb, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for hosting me. It was awesome. Happy to be here. It was awesome. It's my pleasure. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.

1:19:08Also, please consider giving us a rating or a leaving review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast .com. See you in the next episode.