Nathan Lustig's Interview with Pedro Varas, CEO and Co-Founder of FounderList

September 7, 2018

February 23, 2021

Last month, I had Pedro Varas, the CEO of FounderList, interview me in Spanish on three topics: my personal journey, my view on the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Latin America, and vesting. You can watch the three trailers and find the links to the full interviews below. I hope you enjoy the videos.

Part 1. My StoryI was born and raised in Wisconsin. It wasn’t clear at first that I would follow the path to entrepreneurship since I studied political science in college. Then, in my freshman year, I couldn’t get season tickets for our football team,which upset me because I had been looking forward to the games quite a lot. I tried all means to find a ticket, and that is how I found out about a book exchange website at my university. I ended up buying the site with a friend and brought it to 175,000 users across  10 universities. After selling the site to another company, I started my second company, Entrustet, which aimed to resolve the issues of managing digital assets when someone died. This startup took me down South to join the pilot round of StartUp Chile, where my course changed. I eventually started my current career as a venture capitalist that bridges US and LatAm. [embed]https://youtu.be/WSvSphVLhfI[/embed]To view the complete interview please click here. I also did a podcast in which Devin Baptiste from GroupRaise interviewed me in English. Check that out here if you are interested in knowing more details.

Part 2. Why Startups FailIn this part, I talked about the startup ecosystems in LatAm, what will make an investor say no, why most startups fail, how I view the wage gap between US and LatAm, and which industries are the most promising for the region. When I first arrived in Chile, I saw there were many opportunities to improve the way business is done here. Following my entrepreneurial instincts, I stayed and became an investor. Fast forward to 2018, and things have improved a lot, yet there are still many opportunities. As the startup ecosystem continues developing, the time to invest in Latin America  is now. At the end of this interview, I recommend a daily practice to help every entrepreneur-to-be identify problems and create solutions. [embed]https://youtu.be/upYL8fFb2DE[/embed]To view the complete interview please click here.

Part 3. VestingVesting is an important concept that many founders fail to understand. At Magma, we have rejected some good companies because they have founders who had left the company a long time ago but still owned a big share of the company. This is not fair to the founders who stayed and actually worked to make the company survive. In this video, you will find out what vesting is, why it is important, the difference between founder vesting and employee vesting, when to have an employee option pool and some cases. [embed]https://youtu.be/FNT3lzooWPk[/embed]

To view the complete interview please click here.