The J Curve with Olga Maslikhova

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

This week, I sit down with Federico Vega, founder and CEO of Frete.com—the largest freight matching platform in Latin America.

Federico’s story is anything but conventional: he grew up in a small town in Patagonia, left a career in investment banking at JP Morgan in London, and moved—without speaking the language—to Brazil to reinvent an entire industry. What started as a F...

Welcome to this special solo episode of Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

Every few months, I zoom out to reflect on the lessons that stuck with me from the show. Think of this as your quarterly operator’s memo—especially if you’re building, raising, or investing in Latin America.

Q2 was full of sharp insights and real operator depth. But in this edition of The J Curve Insider, I won’t recap every episode.

I’ll go deep...

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

This week, I sit down with Caetano Lacerda and Raphael Dyxklay, co-founders of Brazilian fintech Barte, which is transforming the payments and working capital landscape for mid-to-large companies.

Barte’s journey is a masterclass in efficient growth: from zero to $10M ARR in less than two years on just $1.5M of burn—and then growing sustainably to $20M ARR. Along the way, t...

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 ...

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

Last week I got to spend a few days in cidade maravilhosa—Rio de Janeiro—for Web Summit, which this year attracted over 37,000 people. The event was action-packed—both inside the venue and across the city, with an incredible lineup of side events.

It was a milestone week for The J Curve. We recorded our very first live episode on stage—a conversation I’ve been wanting to ha...

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve 🎙️

This week, I sit down with Marcelo Lutz and Roberto Biselli, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Capim—a vertical SaaS + fintech company that started as an MBA class project and is now doing $10M+ in ARR, serving thousands of dental clinics across Brazil.

Their story breaks every rule—and proves that in Latin America’s most fragmented industries, the right wedge isn’t software. It’s credit.

Instead of...

Welcome to this special solo episode of Season 4 of The J Curve with me, Olga Maslikhova.

Every few months, I take a step back from the interviews to zoom out, connect the dots, and reflect on the themes that emerged from our conversations with Latin America’s most driven founders and sharpest investors.

This quarter, the learnings hit hard.

From Paulo Passoni’s breakdown of growth-stage capital and the M&A trap, to Roberto Olivei...

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve 🎙️

This week, I sit down with Gustavo Mapeli, co-founder and CEO of Kanastra — one of the fastest-growing fintech infrastructure companies in Latin America. Gustavo started out building a traditional asset manager focused on private credit and wealth outside of Brazil’s core markets. But after feeling the pain of operating in a fragmented, manual, and outdated system, he made the bold decision to ...

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve 🎙️

It’s rare to meet a founder who bootstrapped for two decades—then brought Warburg Pincus, SoftBank, and Microsoft onto his cap table. This week, I sat down with Roberto Oliveira, founder of Blip, the company powering billions of conversations across WhatsApp in Latin America. We covered a 25-year founder journey that began with mobile phone booths and evolved into one of Brazil’s most powerful ...

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve 🎙️

This week, I sit down with Guilherme Horn, one of the most influential figures in LatAm’s fintech and tech landscape. Guilherme has built and exited multiple companies, including Agora (acquired for $500M by Bradesco), which helped transform Brazil’s stock market, and Órama, the country’s first fully cloud-based bank. Now, as WhatsApp’s Head of Strategic Markets, he’s driving a major shift in h...

This week, I sit down with Andre Penha, co-founder of QuintoAndar and CEO of IBBX, for a brutally honest, founder-first conversation on building and scaling in Latin America.Andre built QuintoAndar into a $5B+ real estate giant, raised $750M from top investors, and is now betting on wireless electricity, aiming to make chargers, cables, and batteries obsolete with IBBX.Here’s what we cover:♢ Why product—not storytelling—wins in fun...

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve 🎙️

Kicking off this season with a must-listen episode featuring Paulo Passoni, one of the sharpest investors in Latin America. Paulo played a key role in SoftBank’s multi-billion-dollar investment in Latin America’s tech sector, serving on the boards of Quinto Andar, VTEX, and Creditas. Now at Valor Capital, he’s focused on backing and scaling the region’s next generation of high-growth startups.

T...

🎙️ No Guests, Just You & Me 🌍

Season 3 of The J Curve is officially wrapped, and I’m here to unpack the journey so far. From doubling our Spotify streams to hitting the top 5% of videocasts globally (what?!), this year has been a wild ride.

In this solo ep, I’m breaking down:

🔥 Why podcasting is THE medium of the future.

🌎 LATAM’s tech explosion—blockbuster M&As, IPOs, and a pipeline of unicorns.

💡 The 10 life-changi...

Welcome to Season 3 of The J Curve, a podcast about entrepreneurship in Latin America. Today we sit down with Allen Taylor, Managing Partner at Endeavor Catalyst, to explore his 18-year journey with Endeavor and the rise of emerging markets as thriving hubs for entrepreneurship. We discuss Allen’s personal path from California to becoming a global advocate for high-impact entrepreneurs, the creation of Endeavor Catalyst, and how th...

Welcome to Season 3 of The J Curve, a podcast about entrepreneurship in Latin America. Today we sit down with Marcelo Lombardo, the founder of Omie, to explore the journey from a seven-person startup to a 1,600-strong team transforming Brazil’s SMB ERP market. We discuss his unconventional path to entrepreneurship, pivotal business decisions like the shift to accountant partnerships, and how Omie became a key player in an incredibl...

Welcome to Season 3 of The J Curve, a podcast about entrepreneurship in Latin America with me, Olga Maslikhova. My guest today is Adhemar Milani Neto, founder and CEO of Kovi, an ‘all-inclusive’ car subscription platform for gig workers. Kovi has raised $145M from top investors like Valor Capital, Prosus Ventures, Quona, Monashees, Norte, Maya Capital, Globo Ventures, and Peter Thiel’s family office. In this episode, we talk about ...

Welcome to Season 3 of The J Curve, a podcast about entrepreneurship in Latin America. My guest today is ⁠Sergio Furio⁠, chairman of the board of Endeavor Brazil and founder and CEO of Creditas, Brazil’s leading fintech lender that is transforming Brazil's lending landscape by offering secured loans at significantly lower interest rates, bringing essential financial access to millions across the country.

Creditas has raised $879m d...

Welcome to Season 3 of The J Curve, a podcast about entrepreneurship in Latin America. My guest today is Marcelo Abritta, founder and CEO of Buser, a Brazilian bus transportation platform that connects passengers with underutilized charter buses, offering affordable travel while disrupting the traditional $10 billion intercity bus industry.

Most recently, Buser raised $138m Series C from the likes of Lightrock, Softbank, monashees...