Vicente Zavarce has already raised tens of millions of dollars for his LA based startup that is expanding in Latin America, beyond the usual suspects of just Mexico and Brazil. The venture, Yummy, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Softbank Ventures Asia, Sovereign’s Capital, and Ethos VC.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Funding your startup
• Company culture
• Expanding into new markets
• Vincente’s top advice for other entrepreneurs

SUBSCRIBE ON:

This episode is brought to you by Gelt. As a referral from the DealMaker’s podcast you can skip the waitlist and get priority just mention Dealmakers as your referral on the schedule a call form here.

.Tech Domains is sponsoring this episode. To unlock the special offer for the DealMakers audience, which includes 1-year domain for $10, or a 5-year domain for $50, go to go.tech/dealmakers.

For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. 

Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).

Remember to unlock for free the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

About Vicente Zavarce:

Vicente Zavarce is a Co-Founder and serves as Chief Executive Officer, President and Board Member of Yummy. He also serves as a Partner at Epakon Capital.

Vincente was born and raised in Venezuela, which motivated him to adapt and tropicalize a complex last-mile logistics business model back home. Yummy is now doing over 70,000 deliveries monthly through their marketplace, started a B2B & API capability for businesses to connect to the Yummy Driver Fleet, and launched their first dark store in the country.

Vicente started his career in investment banking dedicated to M&A for4 tech companies and then started his path in the startup world with 5+ years of Growth Marketing experience through his time at Wayfair, Getaround and Postmates.

Vicente holds a B.S. in Finance and Entrepreneurship from Northeastern University, where he graduated magna cum laude.

Connect with Vicente Zavarce :

• Crunchbase
• LinkedIn
• Forbes
• PitchBook

Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:

Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty hello everyone and welcome to the dealmakerr show. So today we know we’re gonna have the battle of accents here. We’re gonna have a little bit of spanglish with my accent from Spain and then also with the accent of our incredible founder. You know, originally you know also from Venezuela I think that we’re gonna really enjoy this one because you know he’s bringing really. This incredible experience around the growth scaling. Not only now with what he’s doing but with previous companies do and and we’re gonna really enjoy you know his journey of building scaling financing and what he’s up to with his own company now. So without further ado. Let’s welcome. Our guest today be sent. The. Savara so welcome to the show.

Vicente Zavarce: Thank you so much for the for the intro and and for having me on the show and for the kind words happy to be here.

Alejandro Cremades: So originally born in Caracas in Venezuela you know how was life growing up, give us a little of a walk through memory lane.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah, um I ah, um I was born inrackas like you said and I and I and I ah stayed there until I was seventeen years old so I did all my schooling ah years there until until high school but growing up I I think. Um, the country while I was growing up went through like an increasing probably turmoil in in both political but also most importantly, economical like um probably the last you know before 2018 ah the ten years before that from 2008 to 2018 Venezuela had the worst hyperinflation in the world and I could definitely see that happening before I left in 2012 but growing up there. It was you know it’s a beautiful country 30000000 people. It’s one of the countries in Latin America with the most cities over a million people. And it obviously has as many of you know, the largest oil reserves in the world and ultimately an installed gdp capacity already that makes the country pretty interesting but obviously it went through the stormmill ah production of oil went down and and the economy got pretty bad but I think it’s it’s a really interesting. Geo and obviously really really close to my heart and it is the main country where where I do business today with ah, yummy, which is the the company I created. But yeah after after growing up and in in Caracas I ended up going to school in in Boston.

Alejandro Cremades: I will.

Alejandro Cremades: And we’ll talk about yummy in just a little bit. You know I guess saying growing up in an environment that was so unstable. You know the lack of security the lack of um, you know stability I guess dealing with the uncertainty too. No I guess what? what? How do you think that shaped. Who you are today.

Vicente Zavarce: That’s really interesting I think that um I I learned that whatever whatever I did after living Venezuela I had to do for myself. And I you know I don’t come from a particular particularly super wealthy family and so in a way everything everything I’ve done in my career has has been on on my own and I think it it has definitely been this feeling that I just whatever happens is is on me. Ah you know the the stake is is on me and ah. That probably has an impact and it it has probably led me to to become an entrepreneur and probably a lot of people I actually find that a lot of the people that have left Venezuela many of them that become entrepreneurs I I think they’re really good and it’s mainly it comes from displays of. Um, having to to build from nothing.

Alejandro Cremades: So in your case as you were saying you came eventually to the Us. Ah to do your your degree in finance on entrepreneurship. So I guess when you came here you know to Northeastern University how was that the experience like of coming here to the us you know the incredible land of opportunity everything I mean I’m sure that that was pretty pretty impressive for you to to look around.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah, definitely and and you know it was interesting because I I had gone to the us a bunch like as a tourist before um but going to school there was just so different because um, there were just so many resources around you know, helping you be who you want to be. Um, one of the first things I actually did when I got to school was joined the entrepreneurs club of northeastern and it was this amazing organization that just brought like really good speakers former entrepreneurs and and one of the first speakers I I heard um just what’s really inspiring just to see what. They were able to build from from nothing and how they thought about new opportunities and it was just this really entrepreneurial mindset that probably differently from Venezuela um was willing to fail and saw failure as an acceptable part of their journey. Um, and like yeah you know I this this speaker. I remember vividly the story of yeah, my my first business went terribly. Um, you know I raised $5,000,000 and I went to zero and now I’ve built this this other business that now is profitable and and we might Ipo soon etc that was why I was hearing and I was like well like this person just like. Ah, made it to like a pretty horrible failure um in front of me which which was ah new and I’ve really embraced that the fact that failure is acceptable and part of life and it’s how how societies progress.

Alejandro Cremades: Now in your case, it sounds like entrepreneurship was the path that you wanted to do I mean you even studied that in universities. So why did you explore the investment banking side of things instead of just going at it right away.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah I think just like anyone I think I had a few ideas of what I what I could do on banking I just thought would give me a breath of knowledge of other businesses that would help me shape my thinking around what I wanted to do and yeah I went into investment banking. We were. Doing m and a for tech companies always representing the founders in an m and a process and there I just fell in love with the founder Journeys and these were entrepreneurs that were either probably between 7 to 15 years into their journey as as founders a lot of them were bootstrapped. Um, which was really inspiring and they ended up having these really successful and life changinging outcomes but 1 of the things I that’s I think when I realized that I really really wanted to be an entrepreneur the main common theme I saw is people were creating value out of thin air and that just felt like the closest thing to magic. I could dedicate my life to do just building companies that can change the way communities cities, countries regions or the world work depending on the scale of the business.

Alejandro Cremades: So Let’s talk about how you really venture into the entrepreneurial world I mean you did it. You know first I Honestly think that you did it in the right way because people go at it right away you know in this case, you kind of like got your feet wet got to really experience how companies were doing it. And then basically you went at it. No, but in your case, you know what you experienced was being part of wayfare being part of postmates and then get around before you really pull the trigger now in your case you know it’s quite ah, quite the switch going from investment banking to all of a sudden really developing an expertise around. Ah, growth you know, growth hacking and and scaling and how do you acquire more customers and channels and I mean out of all things. Why did you decide to dive into that segment of of of startups.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah, um, it’s interesting in banking. Um in this m and a deals I was handling the most common theme I found in consumer startups which was what called my attention the most for for me to build it was that. Without a proper growth marketing highly technical team that understands how to track attribution of a new customer that understands lifetime value of a customer and understands the cost to acquire that customer and the payback period that is acceptable to the company. If a company doesn’t get that right pretty much at product market fit. Um I find that the company has trouble later. Um, even after raising a series say or series b and so I realized that that skillset or in my opinion at the time my thesis was I think this is probably the most. If all ceos are generalists but with a specialty I think that if I am a generalist ceo and founder that has a specialty in growth marketing and growth hacking on consumer for consumer as a category in startups. It would probably be 1 of the most important skills. Have and I fast forward to today I really I really believe there was the the right bet which could have gone wrong and and I would have iterated and in myself. But I think that really worked out and that’s why I ended up going to wafer wafer was actually the place that I could go that thought of um growth marketing hires as not necessarily with.

Vicente Zavarce: Prior marketing experience but they actually hired their approach was really interesting. They hired a wide breath of people that had a highly analytical role in their past and for me that was banking but 1 of my peers was this person that went to school for biotech and they were like part of their 1 % graduating class in biotech and this was like a highly analytical person that thought about testing in a really methodical approach in a lab and that approach could be replicated in growth marketing and so with that hiring mindset I thought waiver would be perfect for me to really experiment and um understand growth. Um, and that’s where I think I got my my schooling in growth marketing at waiver actually.

Alejandro Cremades: So what was your takeaway you know when it came to um to growth and and acquiring users from because I mean on average you spent about a year and change you know with wayfarer postmates and then also get around so what were the. The main takeaways if you had to take just 1 takeaway from each one of those companies you know when it came to acquiring users and and distribution channels and how to think about that in order to scale and grow. What was the key takeaway from each one of those experiences. So.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah, definitely I think at wafer I think the main learning was um, opinions don’t matter data does um it was it was just a place where people could have opinions. But when the data showed something different. Everyone really. Went in the direction of the data and it was just a highly data-driven organization. 1 of the one of the most I’ve I’ve encountered in in my career. Um postmates I would say that the normally a growth marketer would say you know I’m optimizing for for a low cac and a high ltv. And so we should just allocate our money regionally based on the lowest cac or the highest ltbtocac and the problem with that approach is that postmates and delivery businesses and ridesharing businesses like on-demand economy is a highly hyperlocal. Business and what really mattered was to dominate um hyperloalities or cities in this case. Um, even though a use her to give you an example for postmates in a even though I use her inla could have been at times more expensive. Than a user in say a planter um or you know Austin Taxes um we needed to prioriti prioritize a la because it’s where we were marketer Kings and we needed to continue growing in penetration to successfully ensure that no matter how big the budget that someone else had.

Vicente Zavarce: Um, someone that came with a big budget. We were able to say we have all of the consumers and all of the merchants in our marketplace will always see more revenue from us done from another player and so I think my biggest takeaway from postmates was that the metrics that our growth marketer looks like looks at normally. Might not be the end answer of a business goal and in this case, the hyperlocality of postmates makes it so um and then in get around I think I really learned the importance of not only driving demand but driving supply because for the first time I had to lead all of you at postmates I was leading all of user acquisition. But focused on the demand side and to me I just saw you know the lack of merchants or the lack of drivers things that hurt my conversion rate when I went to get around I really realized that I could drive all the demand that I want but if I don’t have the cars for people to rent. Then my effort is completely irrelevant and I think I I learned that the supply comes first and that our true client in a lot of these marketplaces is not the consumer because the consumer is getting a real benefit and ah on a real convenience but the driver or the car the car host or in Urbmb’s case for example the hosts are the true client and I and I really believe that the supply is normally your your true consumer that the true part of the ecosystem that you care about the most.

Alejandro Cremades: So now here you are you know, working at get around and it’s about 2020 what felt different. You know at this point what what felt you know what gave you kind of like the thinking that it was time it was time for you to start your own thing now.

Vicente Zavarce: I just felt really ready I felt like I had a really deep understanding of of acquisition and growth marketing and um, of course I can always learn more? Um, but I also felt like um, contributing to someone else’s journey and to someone. You know someone else’s net worth other than my own and you know building an ecosystem of something or creating value in a way where I didn’t have the final call even though I started to value more and more my own opinion. Um. Just didn’t seem right anymore and I felt but the biggest the biggest pieces I just felt ready I felt that I had dominated a specialty and I had a good enough of a generalist approach to things that I felt like it was a good time to try something and at the same time actually the other thing that was different is. Um, Venezuela had been dollarizing I saw this effect of you know in 2018 late 2018? Um, the government starts to make some decisions that it starts behaving a little bit less in Cuba and more like China in a lot of things still with their you know socialist. Ah, ideology but with an approach of we do want. You know the economy to thrive and private businesses to thrive and the first thing they did the most important one in my opinion is they ah allowed the free flow of capital or the fle free free flow of money they removed capital controls. Um.

Vicente Zavarce: In Venezuela you had to go through the government to exchange local currency for usd or euros or whatever or you had to go to a black market that had the crazy pricing that was driving inflation and for the first time ever. You could just exchange local currency into whatever. Ah, with no problem and you could move money in and out of Venezuela with no issues anymore and the result was the economy since 2018 to 2019 dollarized pretty heavily to the point where ah 50% of transactions on the ground were happening on usd. And not paying the law firm or paying the tech team it was if you went to a hot dog stand New York style hot dog stand in the street. It was $2 for hot dog and when I saw this happening I thought that there was no going back and I realized that high hyperinflation would probably slow down. And that regardless of geopolitical risk I thought to myself. Um, if we can make an ecosystem win. It doesn’t really matter whatever the ideology of of you know the regulators is everyone will win right? The the gig economy. Workers in in an ecosystem like a yummy or a postmates or or 1 of these on-deman startups will have new earning opportunities merchants in ah in a marketplace will be able to have incremental revenue. Um and a lot of people will have some convenience of of.

Vicente Zavarce: Ah, complete vacuum of consumer offerings that are just not available and when I realized this I said I think we you know Venezuela just hit macro bottomt and I think there’s also a lot of countries that might not be suffering from the same hyperinflation but are suffering from the same vacuum of consumer offerings have Venezuela is that have. Low cart ownership that don’t have access to good credit that there’s no financial inclusion that don’t have a bc ecosystem like Mexico or Brazil and where there’s just no tech entrepreneurs to come and fix it and I just felt like an incredible amount of responsibility almost um to do something about it and. After thinking about it for a while I realized that after living in the us for for 10 for for almost ten years back then eleven years now my american dream was really building companies and and being very entrepreneurial like the american culture is and building it. With a structure here in the Us but a company that is able to operate where I was born and where I grew up and in economies that share similarities where there’s you know future young vicentes that won the opportunity um to to see what I was able to see here but at home.

Alejandro Cremades: So so then let’s talk about yummy now you know for the people that are listening what ended up being the business model of yummy. How do you guys make money.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah, totally so we are so yummmiy is a super app and and that’s a broad comp set but it’s basically the idea it’s it’s a 1 ne-stop shop in the form of an app where you can do anything and everything and so the main things you can do in yamy today you can do you can order restaurants like a doordash you can order. Groceries like an instacart or a go puff. Ah you can order pharmacy anything that’s in a pharmacy you can order clothing electronics anything you would find in a male if it fits in the green backpack and we call that vertical delivery of anything then we have a transportation vertical so you can order a ride in a car. Or a motorcycle if you are a single passenger you can order tickets for events. So for example, last year we sold the National Baseball League Baseball is the biggest sport in Venezuela and we sold the tickets for the national baseball league directly in our app in the form of of digital tickets and. Ah, we will soon. Our hope is to be able to include a fintech offering and when we just got granted the sixth ever issued fintech license in Venezuela earlier this year so our hope is to be able to create a fintech that creates financial inclusion in the process as well.

Alejandro Cremades: So I know that obviously you know for something like this I mean this is capitaltensive so you guys you know had to um you know Pursue money Pursue You know, getting this finance and I know that at the beginning It was not Easy. You know you had to convince your wife you know also to put all the savings in here and they. And I’m sure that was that was not a that was quite a challenging Time. So How did you guys go about that and what was that process of finally you know getting this thing financed.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah I think at the beginning I was driving this and I was like you know like this we need to do this and you know we’re gonna spend some money but we didn’t know how much and then um I think there was a point where she was actually the the one that made me quit get around when I started yummy I didn’t just. You know quit and start yummy. Ah, for the the first few months I was I was still ah having a full-time job and there was a day where like we had launched and you know the the app was crashing and and you know there was so much going on in both my full-time job and. Yummy and I was like totally overwhelmed and my wife got home from from work and I was like look like I I I don’t think I can do both and I’m worried you know I’m at this point I I have the bigger income between the 2 of us I I don’t know that I should quit my full-time job I don’t know what to do. I’m thinking that maybe I I stop yummy because I think where we might we might just spend way too much money on this and I don’t think we’re ready and it will be really hard to fundraise with Venezuela as the main country and my wife basically stopped me and she said I agree that you need to do only 1 thing but I think you need to quit. Get around tomorrow and I was like yeah, but what about what about us Moneywise and she said like great like let’s say rammon for a little I think that if this doesn’t work then we’ll know in a couple of months and it will have been ah a good learning and if it does work.

Vicente Zavarce: Then it will have absolutely been the right decision and whatever time we a ramen for a little won’t matter and let’s put all behind this I think that you are uniquely positioned with your experience in growth and beam from Venezuela to do this and why not try I think you could build something incredible effectively the next day I quit and. We did have to ah fund this ourselves with our with our own savings for a while we put over a hundred k behind that and our credit card. All was also like maxed out between all of them over like 50 k in credit card debt pretty scary. But after 4 months we were able to get the data to prove that there was a business that looked like a rocket ship that we were building and executing well and we were able to convince the first angel investors to to start backing us and we ended up racing close to 500 k in angel funding within within the next. You know, 2 to three month period

Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing because I now up until up until this point How much capital have you guys raised for the business and how is that.

Vicente Zavarce: Um, a little over $70,000,000 to date and yeah, function of it being a capital intensive. You know you didn’t acquire demand you need to acquire supply. You also need to build in if I did this in the us you just log into stripe or whatever from a payment infrastructure perspective but in in in in Venezuela and places where. This infrastructure hasn’t been built before we almost need to build a small little companies that build that infrastructure to build our own core business as well.

Alejandro Cremades: And how is that the process of being able to operate you know a business in Venezuela where you know you have a people that are senior executives outside of Venezuela I mean in your case. For example, you are in Los Angeles so I mean how do you and other members of the team are able to um. To to to run and to execute effectively from the distance.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah, definitely so I think ah, a member of the management team just goes every couple of months to to the operation but we also have incredible people that I even started this with or that have joined along the way that are the key players of yummy that are local. Right? That are in Venezuela and Bolivia where we operate today. But yeah, we’re a little over 300 people and we have close to 10 people based in the us mostly management focus ahead of analytics head of finance I’m I’m here. And then you know our head of rights is in Venezuela our cdo is in Venezuela or we have a local head of finance there head of operations is there etc head of customer service. Everyone else is there I would say we had to be really intentional about how we set this up because when.

Alejandro Cremades: And what.

Vicente Zavarce: I so I actually started working on this in November of 2019 but we launched in April Fifteenth of 2020 and we did our first 12 orders that day but that happened during covid when I started working on this covid was like this virus in China that like you know was probably going to go away. And when we launched it was like full-on lockdown and the country had actually closed its borders completely so I couldn’t even travel into the country at that point and so we had to when the baby was learning to to you know to crawl not even to to walk. We couldn’t go the people that were based here. And so we had to figure out just effective ways of of doing remote work and giving a lot of power and decision making to the people that are on the ground.

Alejandro Cremades: And also talking about being intentional. How were you guys being intentional to about culture.

Vicente Zavarce: Yeah I think I think culture is a bit of a same thing like a word that’s complex to define to me corporate culture just means that um, a good company culture would be 1 in which the majority of the people in my organization would make the same decision. That I would make face with the same problem and I think for that we just communicate a lot. We just share our perspective if we’re going to launch a new product for example to give you an example. Um, we recently in writes. Ah, writes used to work the same way as uber meaning we set the price. You know it’s $5 to go from point a to point b but we recently launched an alternative called guadarralo within the app that means to arrange in spanish as you know, but. Ah, it basically allows you to negotiate the fare with the driver as the user and we did that for ah for a few reasons. But um, it’s an alternative to to pay. It’s a true free market. We realized that we had a lot of orders that were cash and we realized that on theground a lot of people in Venezuela has. Have cash in dollars but they don’t have change and if the write is $5.6. You can’t really pay in cash and and it’s like a change problem. But now you can say look I have $5 that’s all I have I have a $5 bill I’m just going to move with this in a similar way. Maps doesn’t work correctly in every city in the country.

Vicente Zavarce: It mainly takes you through like the main roads but it doesn’t take you through smaller roads that might be the fastest way to get there and so the algorithm may set a price that is wrong. Um that it that shouldn’t be that it’s more expensive than it is or that it’s on the other way. It’s cheaper than it is and the bidding really fixes this ah and and we were just able to. When we launch an initiative like this. We really involve a lot of people and we talk to our customers and everyone is involved to the point that everyone understands why we’re launching this? Um I think that is just a way to to build culture you know and and just to drive people together and to make sure that everyone understands that we’re building something bigger. That it will affect the 20000 drivers that we have on the ground and the one point two million customers that that we had last year that purchased at least once.

Alejandro Cremades: Now Obviously as part of of culture too. I mean I’m sure that vision you know was a big one and and also something that you shared too with with the investors that you got on Board. So I guess to that to that end if you were to go to sleep tonight. And you wake up in a world where the vision of yummy is fully realized what does that world look like.

Vicente Zavarce: Ah, man I think that world is a world in which um, over forty percent of the population in Venezuela ah uses yummy on ah on a monthly basis. At least 1 of our core verticals whether it’s a ride a delivery a ticket front event um a world in which our digital wallet to be launched is is live and being used by by millions of people. And is the leading peer-to-peer transaction mechanism similar to how a cash app or a venmo are in the us and it’s a world in which um, that facilitates credits and it facilitates access to financing for gig economy workers to. You know, operate from a motorcycle to a car or to get a better car and for a merchant it means additional capital for them to expand into a new location because we can clearly see that they are an anomaly in our marketplace in the particular delivery category where they operate because we pay them every week and we see how well they’re doing. Comparison to the rest. Um, and it’s also our worldld in which all of those learnings from the deep penetration in Venezuela that we have achieved has been expanded into the other underserved countries in Latin America that are you know I think when vcs talk about latam.

Vicente Zavarce: Most of them are just saying go to Mexico and go to Brazil and I I have the hope that yummy will be a clear example of how a big business can be built that isn’t just in Mexico and Brazil.

Alejandro Cremades: Got it. So So I guess saying now let’s talk about the pastor with a lens of reflection. So Let’s say we put you into a time machine here and we bring you back in time you know perhaps to that moment where. You know you were still like get around you were wondering what you were going to be doing of your own you know something that they where you thought that that ah maybe hey you know it’s time for me to to start something. Not sure, but but let’s say you are able to go back in time and you’re able to sit down with your younger self right? there right? right? next to yourself and there. You’re able to give that younger self one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why give me what you know now.

Vicente Zavarce: I would say I would say to him that whatever happens he should just remember that if the ecosystem if the players of the ecosystem that he builds. Have a way to improve their lives because of the platform that you’re building your shareholders will win to and that nothing is more important than that and making the pieces of the ecosystem win.

Alejandro Cremades: I Love it now for the people that are listening be thin I will love to ah reach out and say hi. What is the best way for them to do so.

Vicente Zavarce: Ah, yeah, totally I mean they can reach out to me on Twitter my ah, my handle is meta bare. So ah meta barsi like my last name or you can reach out to me on Linkedin. Ah, they sent the salar say on Linkedin. Um, or you can just send me an email. The center at yumysuperapp.com please don’t sell me stuff that I don’t need. But if you want to reach out if you’re trying to start a business I’m I’m happy to to listen gone through it.

Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. What have you sent to thank you so much for being with the deal maker show. It has been an honor to have you with us today.

Vicente Zavarce: Thank you so much for having me.

* * *
If you like the show, make sure that you hit that subscribe button. If you can leave a review as well, that would be fantastic. And if you got any value either from this episode or from the show itself, share it with a friend. Perhaps they will also appreciate it. Also, remember, if you need any help, whether it is with your fundraising efforts or with selling your business, you can reach me at [email protected]

The post Vicente Zavarce On Raising $70 Million To Deliver Anything To Your Door appeared first on Alejandro Cremades.