Guillermo Acuña, Koywe: From police shutting down his startup to a YC fintech company

Thunder wisdom pod with none other than Guillermo Acuna he is a full stack handyman at koiwi AKA founder at koiway question interesting I must say he's from Chile so I stayed in Chiles for quite some time in Hong Kong near where Guillermo was probably staying and working I think it was in uh it's called again Valparaiso or uh Santiago yeah beautiful place I mean yeah you have that's like near the water Santiago is the city it's a valley I've never been there well I arrived there I guess but it's just a beautiful place damn he has quite uh The Eclectic background um he started a couple of fintechs has been obsessed with that has faced hard challenges actually Corey way means a tree uh in Patagonia that survives really harsh weather I like that Guillermo can you introduce yourself tell us a bit more about what you're up to nowadays yeah so I'm an engineer from Chile I was born and raised in Santiago I went to University in September as well and I always liked technology I learned how to code when I was 10 years old building a web page at Dragon Ball Z web page um and I I always saw it stupidly as a hobby not as a business opportunity so when I went to University I wanted to be like a CFO or something like that and I took some Finance classes um and I my first job was an investment bank at the trade desk and I felt like I was waiting wasting my child my talents as an engineer and like I decided to leave I worked there for a year and then traveled the world but someone a friend called me from the government and he said okay come and work to Foster entrepreneurship and Innovation each day so I went to work for the government and that's when I got introduced to a startup world we helped start the startup Chile program in Chile that attracted Founders to work and I got tired of bureaucracy working for the government and joined some friends to start complim uh peer-to-peer lending platform that uh still processes small business loans in a Marketplace the company has over 11 years old and has processed over a billion and a half in in dollars in loans in Chile Mexico Peru and maybe soon in the US but after nine years I of building that we had some cool Adventures the the police the like the FBI in Chile the the regulator decided that we were illegal even though it was perfectly legal according to the code of Commerce from Chile uh they presented a complaint and the Chilean FBI went to our offices to our co-working space to see what we were doing um of course we cleared everything later but it was like we had in total like a thousand dollars in revenues three months of life and the banks were going after us because we found out from The Regulators that the bank had said okay stop it uh so we were making something right making Banks uncomfortable this little startups but it was um challenging to say the least to have the the police come to your office as any careers and after nine years of building that I brought it to Mexico and I found myself doing the pandemic I had left a team in charge of Mexico after leaving Chile the team didn't need me in Chile and I found myself living in the south of Chile by Lake during the pandemic and thinking okay this is the perfect time to try something new um I'm not neither anymore and I can start something that feels more like my like my own and and I started pivoting some ideas with a friend a high school friends well school like primary school high school we met when we were five years old so over 30 years ago and and we started thinking talking like what could we do now he had left his previous company he had he had an exit and we started thinking okay why don't we work on something related to crypto and climate change see let's see how we can change the incentives around that tested some ideas but we realized that there was a big onboarding problem in Latin America especially we would ask our friends okay go and buy this carbon offset on our website and they would say yeah I want to do it how do I do it ah you have to go to your exchange take out your ether send it to your metamask wallet then take it to polygon bridge bridge them to polygon and then go to sushi swap to exchange them for something else and then go to our website and buy the office and they were like no you know what let me just transfer the money to your account and you said it and then we realized that there was a need to build that infrastructure to receive local payments in local Fiat local currencies and help with the onboarding of groups and always with a like a real use case mindset how do we use this to power real use cases and real businesses and today we we have a business it's been eight months with customers we are profitable and we are done in July we did like 13 000 transactions and most of them are just like enabling Financial traditional Financial use cases nothing like no overpriced jpegs or things like that no price speculation just people sending money to our to other countries or investing their money in stock or ETFs that's a brief intro Guillermo International story the FBI part and I mean for people uh nine years in the startup world is the equivalent of 90 years or 900 years in the real world so and stress was an understatement for sure um and yeah it's kind of disturbing it's not the first story that I hear like that in Chile uh whatever happens at the government level I know that there's been political upheaval in the last couple of years we know that the U.S intervene I believe in the Pinochet regime and so forth so things are still not stable but you participated in the startup Chile program which is quite Successful by any means do you feel that these tensions at the higher level could potentially corrupt the startup ecosystem in Chile no I don't think so like the corruption is low compared to other countries in Latin America there is some upheavals like you say like there are some people are trying to revolutionize what what's happening like people complain that Chile is not very equal according to the genie coefficient for example but things are like relatively comparing to comparing Chile to other countries in Latin America we're doing very well it could be better there's always ways that things could be better uh but it's I think it's going well I can feel your reality you know like it really gave a huge blow to to yourself uh we identify ourselves as Founders and entrepreneurs you had to take up while I've been in these spots myself you know like by Lake and meditating and thinking about life and what's next tell us about like yeah that decision how how did you get through kind of seeing a part of you die as a Founder like psychologically how did you grow out from that yeah I think I there were of course there's always like the narrative is not as simple as you make it sound but uh my dad had passed away the year before in 2019 unexpectedly and I was living in Mexico at the moment so I that was like a little shocking and it it brought my world like all the my dad was very healthy he died actually while running in the mountains so he was exercising while he and he had a heart attack so like it it it was an earthquake for my World Vision like worldview uh and then the pandemic hit and I was uh started to think like what okay this is the perfect moment to do a change like I felt like I was I have put myself inside a cage and I needed to spread my wings and it was a self-imposed cage no one had logged me in there I had done it by myself and it was very liberating to to open the lock and just be free right the product the idea in itself I mean it's just ridiculous all the the transfers and the currency exchange and the the Yadi the yadas it was also my experience with crypto that the product is still not there and unfortunately there's a lot of scam in that industry because it's money related um I'm still quite bullish on on blockchain what you're building is kind of apis um as a service kind of why latam only like what is the specific problem that is latam specific in that case yeah I don't think it's specific to latan but we are entrepreneurs from Latin America and we have done businesses in many countries across Latin America so we know this is not something that's very hard to do in one country but doing it in four countries or six countries or eight countries at the same time in Latin America they look similar but the financial infrastructure is different rules and regulations are different payment methods are different and we want to focus on one region first build a network effects and then maybe if everything goes well start looking at other regions that look similar like southeast Asia or places like that that also have the same challenges that Latin America faces unless you charge per API calls and how big can this business scale like and what is your average um transaction per customer like per month because yeah if it's per API call we can't talk about mrr really or maybe we can tell us a bit more about the stats here yeah so we last month we did 13 000 transactions we charge uh either a fixed fee or a percentage of the of the transaction and our business model is very similar to a payment method because our customers have to integrate our apis and there's a like a long conversion process but once the customer is converted and integrated chances of losing that customer are very low because they already invested Dr for and the time and the money to integrate your apis and that's that's what we do like a transaction fee or if they wanna they want help from us to build something more complicated like a front-end specialized front-end or special API we charge a fee for for the custom endpoint right um how much uh well not how much but what do you do to get uh more clients through the door because in Latin my experience has been that everyone says yes to a meeting but it's very hard for them to commit to buying um so how do you go with scaling that so it's a good question I think that that it depends on the country again in Chile if people say I'm interested they are really interested and they are going to buy if they say yes they're gonna buy it but in Mexico if they Yes means no and that's like the the Spectrum you have of countries in between uh more summer more straightforward others are more like indirect and you have to invite them for lunch or some mezcalis or whatever um so far uh this it's been eight months with customers and we've been lucky that they they somehow somehow find out about us and they have a problem and we have the solution so the it's easy to sell them because they are looking for us and now we're starting to test some ideas on how to reach uh more customers we're testing some AI services that personalize the messages and like look for potential customers on the public databases and we hired someone someone from the industry with uh like uh I forgot the name like a with uh with customers with its own like portfolio of customers and that's how we're starting to to look for customers but yeah I agree um the interesting thing is that some of our customers don't need to be Latin American they can be other in other countries and wanting to come to Latin America right when's the next round of funding and how much are you seeking for uh I don't know right now we're profitable so I in theory we have an infinite Runway and the question is do we want to maximize the profits or do we want to maximize the growth and that's something we're figuring out now like if because maximizing growth would mean to race around but also like doubling the BET and increasing the risk and the chances of failure and we're over like I'm we're gonna be 40 soon in two years um and we we want a balance like do we make something that's profitable and that can scale for many years or we want to build something that can be I don't know do an IPO in five years and that but that's very hard like how many people have done it in Latin America not that many so that's the bet we have to to choose do we go for the safe uh like the milking cow or do we go for a for a unicorn and you go bootstrap and still go unicorn yeah I think so uh it takes longer time longer time or is it just about betting in the Right Slots yeah I think it's about betting and like it's a good question because the how do you how do you compete with the big companies that are doing payment methods today like the local or kushki that are already unicorns and going like having like a branch of crypto wouldn't be so hard for them so that's the the race you would have to to go into Do you want to build something that's profitable or do you want to go and race with those guys and to race with those guys you need more money in the background I agree with that because the Counterpoint would be that like when you inject like rocket fuel into something that's not a rocket you just get you know and then it crashes to the ground uh injecting that rock and fuel can really stress out people as well it can hinder their decision let's do everything quicker and on a bigger scale and then all you need is a series of failure to bring you down to the ground like probably eight out of 10 startups out there um may I believe that yeah we can bootstrap and and still go unicorn now does that mean going RPO I think it's like the changing technologies that we're gonna see as well in the next few years um a lot of people say that the next unicorns uh well some some next billion dollar company they're gonna be uh three co-founders and an army of bots right an army of uh gbts uh do you believe in that Vision do you think that's possible yeah and that we are I think it's wiser to have like a goal a more abstract goal and like I I don't want to be a unicorn I want to be the most productive company in the world per person and how do you do that with all the AI tools that are coming up uh I think that's a more important goal for me personally than building a unicorn like how do we become the most productive company or the most efficient company per person in the world a building for example building a unicorn with 10 people uh I don't know or 15. that's a a more entertaining challenge than than racing lots of millions of dollars and uh trying to be like burn them up and trying to compete with some big people and how how does one do that um because I I can remember listening to some podcasts saying that oh the this and that business was built like with two or three employees one of or like very few employees one of them was FTX right um apart from being a scam I think FTS and crypto you know just skyrocketed from people or a generation of people wanting something new wanting to participate in this new economy um so that that was FDX it wasn't like necessarily but there's certainly other companies that uh were built on the back of bots but how would you do that in your situation uh with koiwi what's uh what kind of system could you build as a CEO to make sure that your time output um relents and give them and maximizes the energy output at the other end yeah it's a good question I think for us the the answer is an ongoing process my my main tasks nowaday are more operational and coding so on the ctpo of the company cpto cheap product and Technology and I'm in producing tools to the team to a sales team like how to how to make them more proactive instead of writing emails by hand that's like the the low hanging fruit like uh but then starting with the basics and introducing the tools to the team so they can so everyone can be creative and like come up with things that they could use AI for for developers it's like running tests automatically I I don't code anymore without asking DBT to write the first draft I don't write a blog post without gbd writing like a first draft draft and I just completely unite my style and and that's that's like the starting point if you're not testing the those things to find how to work with them you're gonna be like someone is gonna do it better and they're gonna beat you um so it's testing experimenting and doing things that make sense for you how did you get into IC we applied like for the summer of 22 the white that patch and we didn't even get invited to an interview because it was an idea that we didn't have very clear what we wanted to do and then we the second time we applied uh I just completed the filled the application by myself my co-founder was didn't know I asked him like complete your part let me know when it's over so I can submit the application but the second time we had everything so much clear that it took me I don't know an hour to complete everything and it was a lot more concise than focused and I explained so we applied before with this idea that change with we discovered this problem that needed to be solved and this is what we're doing and we're gonna do it with or without YC and then we got invited to an interview which was coincidentally on the same day that FTX crashed so we had that interview with YC and we were like are they gonna accept us like crypto is crashing all over and well they did um and we were one of the oldest of the batch they're all younger entrepreneurs but it was like going to a boot camp before like a professional tennis player goes through a bootcamp to get back in shape to go back to Circuit uh it was like that like seeing the these young kids with all the energy but not much experience and we were thinking we can beat them like we we can we can build something better and that was that was very good and refreshing and just being exposed to a network and the resources was great do you feel that age sometimes you know thinking that your 38 can bring you back because I started feeling all that like 22 you know I started like getting in business at that time it's like I'm old now uh don't you think this mindset kind of brings you back uh sometimes uh I don't know like I I have fun I've always felt younger than I that I am um and as long as you're having fun like you shouldn't feel old like that's my view at least like if I feel old then it means I'm not having fun right no well I'm still a kid in many sense you know I love playing and imagining and creating stuff and being artistic so yeah I fully Embrace that in me I don't think I'll be that different and at 60 years old I still will be that young heart so I think that's the the importance right there um last question what's ahead of you for this year like what are your priorities today this week and uh this month today is revamping the documentation for apis they for a company that's mostly infrastructure their documentations the recommendation is a part of your product just as important as how you're coding it how do you explain it to the people who are using it is very important so I'm reading everything very detailed uh writing what needs to be written and ideally I'm going to have an AI tool in the future that I can give it the whole people and I ask it like buy the documentation but it's still not there yet but I use it to translate it to English or Spanish or whatever if I'm writing in English I ask you to translate it to Spanish and if I write if I'm writing in Spanish it translates to English that's the priority this week um onboarding more customers the next month is deciding do we double the bets or do we build something that's profitable in the long term uh I mean the next year is building the the vision that we decide and have the most productive company per person in the world love it dude where can people find out more about you about me they can there's a website accuna dot me Acuna dot me and there you can find all the my email my LinkedIn my Twitter everything and to know more about going where you can go to koiwe.com k o y