Introduction:
As an early-stage investor in tech, I’m constantly looking for new trends and opportunities. As a consequence of that, I decided to start writing publicly about fintech opportunities in Brazil. In this newsletter, I will try to, once in every 2-3 months, provide a in-depth article about an opportunity or market regarding fintechs in Brazil.
As I understand how I can be misunderstood by readers about my goals in this project, I decided that the first article would be about why I decided to write publicly and how readers should view my conclusions, so here we go:
Why did I decide to start this project?
I’m passionate about discussing business models and the activity of investing, even more when it comes to technology and venture capital. Being able to discuss how the world will be in the future (with all the uncertainties that come with it) and afterwards seeing the predictions unravel is an activity that brings me a lot of joy.
More specifically, my interest around fintech has been increasing over the years. I’m curious to understand the commonalities between successful businesses in the space. Moreover, it is such a massive space that new opportunities seem to come around very often.
Finally, from a personal career perspective, I believe there is value in specializing in a specific area, so I hope in the really really long run these studies will pay off and this will bring me (and the firm I am (or will be) working at) an unfair advantage in selecting our bets.
How should readers view my conclusions in articles?
One of my main concerns in publicly writing is coming across as arrogant. I see some junior people in VC writing posts as if they were in the industry for tens of years. By definition, a VC vintage takes ~10 years, so one should be willing to wait that long to understand the outcome of investments.
Moreover, as Taleb would put it, even the outcomes are not such good indicators of the quality of decisions. In that sense, even if the conclusions were coming from very successful (or lucky) investors, it wouldn’t be wise to take them as hard truth.
Also, it is important to mention that the conclusions may differ from Canary’s institutional opinion.
To conclude, please do not take my conclusions as hard truth or investment advice, since (I) I’m far from being an expert and (II) I’m completely open to changing them. My conclusions are just a product of conversations with founders, investors and going over industry reports.
What I do encourage readers to do is to question my assumptions and conclusions. I’d love to keep the discussion going!
Why don’t I keep the writings to myself?
Fair question. If I’m not trying to teach or influence anyone, this should indeed be an option. However, I figured that (I) writing publicly might be an effective way to enlarge my network and find other people to discuss these topics and (II) having other people to help and discuss with me will dramatically improve the quality of my studies.
Why did I decide to write in English?
English is not my first language and for sure my views would be better expressed in Portuguese. In that sense, I’m aware of the risk of losing credibility because of that. However, I decided to write in English because I want to expand my network outside of Brazil, which, as mentioned above, should improve the quality of my studies. Also, given the increasing interest of international investors in Latin America, I hope these articles might be useful for them in the future.
How about DeFi?
Although I understand that DeFi can make most of what I study and write obsolete, it is something that I still have to study a lot more before feeling comfortable to write about it. I definitely see the potential and am spending some time studying the matter.
