
Shakin' Hands
Welcome to 'Shakin' Hands,' the podcast where entrepreneurship meets fascinating stories from the most intriguing minds today. From proven business practices to groundbreaking ideas that challenge the status quo, Shakin' Hands' is not just about the handshake that seals a deal but about the shared experiences and values that unite us all. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or someone who loves a good story about overcoming odds, Shakin' Hands' promises to deliver compelling content that shakes up the conventional and celebrates the extraordinary.
Tune in to Shakin' Hands' where leaders, thinkers, and doers come to share, inspire, and, most importantly, connect. Let's shake hands with the world, one story at a time.
Host: Jack Moran
Powered by DreamSpear
Shakin' Hands
Ep. 60 | Modernizing Finance for the 21st Century - Felipe Echandi
In this episode of Shakin’ Hands, Jack Moran interviews Felipe Echandi, the co-founder and CEO of Cuanto. The conversation dives deep into Latin America’s fragmented digital economy and how Cuanto is building tools to empower small merchants to sell online and through social media. Felipe also shares his experience serving on Panama’s Banking Superintendency, helping reform outdated regulations to match the speed of internet innovation, and describing what it was like to be a Y Combinator recipient in 2019. Together, they explore the challenges of financial inclusion, the dominance of global platforms, and the opportunity to create a localized commerce ecosystem in Latin America.
Thanks for listening
Host: Jack Moran
Powered by: DreamSpear
Want to connect with like-minded entrepreneurs and growth-minded leaders? Join our Dreamspear community on Skool at skool.com/dreamspear or learn more at dreamspear.com. Whether you're building a business, leveling up your mindset, or looking for real conversations, we're here to grow with you.
Follow Shakin' Hands Podcast
Website
Instagram
YouTube
Dreamspear
Website
Instagram
SEE YOU NEXT WEEK!
Welcome to Shakin’ Hands, where we provide the platform for entrepreneurs and thought leaders to share their stories in order to hopefully influence others to get out of the rat race and chase their own dreams. If you have any recommendations for guests or questions that you want to be asked, please don't hesitate to reach out. Anyways, if you enjoy the podcast, please like, comment, subscribe and share in order to keep the podcast growing. Otherwise, I'm your host, Jack Moran and this is Shakin’ Hands. If you're looking for business mentorship, I have a place where you can get feedback on your unique personal development and business growth challenges. Over the last year, I've brought together a group of impact driven thought leaders where we meet every single day to discuss psychology, communication, mindset, and business case studies. We have people who have made millions of dollars, lost millions of dollars, Harvard MBAs and new entrepreneurs like you and I. Entrepreneurship can be lonely. So if you're looking for a support system, please follow the link in the description below for some more information. Have you done much traveling? I. Yes, I've been to Asia, to Europe, to the US. I don't know, Africa or India. But parts of Latin America and and if you compare it with other parts of Latin America, Panama is safer. It is, more stable. It has got expensive in relation to our region. But yeah. I'm going to start. Right. Yeah, we did good. We, I'm going to Asia, in two months. For a month. Okay. Or did you go. China. Okay. I haven't been to Southeast Asia. Japan. All those parts, which apparently are amazing as well. Yeah. I'm very different among themselves. I mean, it's a huge region. Half of the world's population. Yeah, or so you know. But China was really interesting. I was there in 2008. So it was like before WeChat had like WeChat pay. So you still used the cash to pay for stuff. And it was weird because it was it felt like a growing place. But at the same time you would go to a random ATM and they would give you fake bills, and then they will tell you, oh, you cannot go to any ATM, you have to go to a legit ATM from these four banks and you're like, oh, I had no idea. So like those types of things are have changed, I think. And that doesn't happen here. Like, you go to any ATM and you won't get a fake bill. So, yeah, Asia is interesting. What do you do for business or pleasure? I was there for sort of a study abroad type of thing. So it was, I guess, more pleasure that business. I was supposed to be studying, but it was mostly getting to know the place. It wasn't Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, and it was really impressive. It's just the scale of things are just massive. You go to Beijing and you buy there. Is this technology city where they have this market where you can buy anything technology related, and you and the bargaining, the price. And then they take you to this random building with a matrix like white corridor with, you know, doors that are exactly the same and you feel you're going to die there, but they just open a door and you enter a room with a bunch of boxes and they give you the camera you wanted to buy or something. No way. And it's a 50 story tall tower filled with rooms with stuff that people can buy it like. It's just massive. Wow. Yeah. What is your business now? So I have a startup. It's called quanto. Which means how much in Spanish. There was a play in words initially, and we are trying to build the local e-commerce experience for consumers and the operating system for independent entrepreneurs to sell online. What we think is e-commerce won't be the same here as it happened in the US or in Europe, and we have seen that in Asia. When you go to your trip, you'll see that e-commerce is completely different there. It's more mobile, it's more chat based. It has. You have apps like WeChat in China and Alipay, you have Gojek in Indonesia, and it's a completely different experience. Sometimes it has a more on demand experience. You have social shopping where you can buy things together with your friends and get discounts. Things that you don't really see as widespread in in the US, where you just go into like a traditional ecommerce, like a Shopify store or an Amazon, and you buy things and they show up in your mail. And what happens in our region is, of course, we're a developing region. But we have 700 million people, which is a lot. That's half of India's population. But we have, 1.5 the GDP of India. So there's more disposable income in Latin America than in India, on average. And nine out of ten people use the internet in their phones every day, all day, every day. In India, you have four out of ten people connected to the internet. That's of course increasing, and changing rapidly. But we've seen in India, huge companies emerge and huge platforms emerge that have changed, that the consumers and sellers, experience to be able to actually transact and sell online without barriers and without interference. And that's what we want to do here. And what how it works is you just download an app and you create a little no code store that, think of it as a very simplified version of Shopify that allows anyone to put it in the link, in bio, share or share it via WhatsApp and integrate it, in their story, you know, content and all that. The money is processed by us. It arrives to their local bank account, and we have been rolling out new features to help, sellers, operate your business in a more effective way, like logistics, delivery, inventory management. And eventually we want to be their back office. So you can just focus on whatever you're selling. Like it happens in more developed countries. You don't have to build everything from scratch. But in here, things are, different. You know, like the local address system sometimes works, sometimes it doesn't, as you've probably noticed. So you cannot just have a normal logistics provider that ships things and puts it in the mail. Like, that just doesn't work. Tracking doesn't work. Sometimes when they deliver something to your house, you're not there and they call you. So you know, all those things and each each country and city has their own flavor. But we think with with this connectivity that I mentioned before, it can be solved and we can just unlock and a ton of value, for people that want to sell online. Yeah. What's up with the addresses here? It's incredible to me that like. Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, it's something that happens in many cities in Latin America, not in larger ones. If you go to Mexico City or if you go to Bogota, or if you go to, some other larger cities, you have an address system. The thing is, smaller cities, and countries that have become very car centric just don't care about addresses. And it's also some, you know, ineptitude of the local government that they just don't have that in order. But, Waze and Google Maps and all these apps to solve the problem. You don't really need an address. You just send the pin and people show up. So why invest, you know,$50 million or whatever the amount is in aggregate for a neighborhood to put all the, you know, street numbers and the signs and everything. If you, you know, you just have a free way of doing it. But it is super frustrating. And every country has its own flavor. We also operate in Costa Rica, for example, which is where I was originally, born. And in Costa Rica, the way addresses work is you have a reference point and you use cardinal points. So you say from the McDonald's of this place two blocks north, one block east. And that's how people say things. Of course, you would have to know where the north is or where south is, and you eventually do. It's really weird. When I go to Costa Rica, I have this like ingrained radar in my brain that knows like a, like a compass that actually works. But that is an absurd inefficiency for, you know, logistics and transportation in general. So, you know, every every country has its, its flavor in Nicaragua, it's like the mountain or the lake. And, you know, the border has, you know, a rational system. But that's not true in most of the developing world. Africa is like that. Parts of Asia are like that. And and yeah, that's another example of things that just work. And people never really question how they would affect their lives if they just didn't work. Because it's it's complicated. You don't have mail. You don't have a mailroom. The mail might arrive two months later, to your home, or might just get lost. So you have to use other providers to send your stuff? Yeah, it's it's a different reality. How did you get into this business? Well, it's a long story, but, I'm originally a lawyer, and I discovered crypto in 2012, and it blew my mind on how something was going to change the landscape and the way money moves around. So the money movement part of things was what interested me more. And then I realized that practicing law, although, you know, it can be sometimes a lucrative career and very interesting, especially in this part of the world, if you do it in a corporate way, it won't really change the way society works. It will just sort of guard trust between people. That's what lawyers do. You know, you have a contract with another person and you want something that's time tested. You want something that works, and the lawyer will make sure that you're using the right structure. That's time tested, that works, that is legit, and that it will protect your interests and will align your, you know, whatever you need with your counterparty. That is not what disruption looks like. You know that. It's not what creates new value at scale. And that just hit me in the face like a train. And I was like, I have to do something and start a startup. Which is the easiest way to do it. Right now we have software. You don't really need to move atoms around. You can just, you know, code. And now with AI and coding and everything, it's just become way, way less expensive and easier. So we started with allowing people to send the payment link. Via social media, and that evolved into this ecommerce vision that we have now. And, we were accepted by Y Combinator in, nice in the US, we're the first Central American company, Panamanian company that got in, and they were at the time really focused on Latin America. Now their, their focus is I of course. And that blew our minds because, it sort of validated that what we are trying to do is something that is possible to build. When we were there, we met other founders who have done this type of attempts in Indonesia, in Africa, in the Middle East and, and simply trying to bring tools that have already created the modern world in other parts of the world, but adapt them to the local experience in a way that really unlocks value for people. So that's been more fun than law. And, and yeah, that that was about six years ago. So, ever, ever since it's a roller coaster, of course. Sometimes very frustrating, sometimes really interesting and exciting. Yeah, that's that's how it happened. What is the experience of a Y Combinator like? I would say pressure is the word that comes to mind. They first the interview process is, is is really brutal. When you get to the final round. It's a ten minute interview. So many rounds. Is it? I think it depends. So just walk me through the kind of start to finish on it. So at the time we, we, we applied, when they created something that was called the startup school. So it was like a mock, where you could just take a startup course with all the wiki lore that we had read over the years. You know, all the advice that PolyGram has given and Sam Altman, etc., you would get in, you would be assigned in, in this peer group with a wiki alumnus that would sort of coach you and mentor you. And, the I think a thousand best startups would get a grant. And we said like, oh, okay, we won the grant from wiki. We've been reading Hacker News for a long time. We we won a grant from wiki and we want to learn. So we did that and they accepted everyone 15,000 startups from around the world, which was insane. They said it was an accident, but I think it was a brilliant marketing ploy because what they said is, we accepted the 15,000, they scaled it up with wiki alums, and there were a ton of clusters around the world, like basically just pitching what they were doing. And and sharing weekly feedback and all that. And then, they said, for you to be eligible for the grant, you should apply to the full batch. You need to apply to the full batch. We're like, okay, we want the grant will probably won't get in because, you know, Central America is small. No one cares about this part of the world. We applied and they answered and they said, oh, we have questions about your about your startup. We hopped in a call with a partner, and then we got an email inviting us to Mountain View and saying, hey, we want to meet you in person, come on December 12th. So we flew to California and we got to the then wiki headquarters, because now they moved to San Francisco. And there were three partners in a table. One of them is Michael Seibel, who co-founded Twitch. And in other rooms there were people like Bill Buchheit who invented Gmail. And, you know, those types of people. And we were like, okay, we're going to talk with them for ten minutes and they would say, hey, this is the minutes. We're going to be brutal. We just need to extract as much information as we can from you. So, let's get started. And they would just ask us what we were doing. And there's a way to prepare. They have in the internet, they have program generator, simulator generators and all that. Because one of the things they say that entrepreneurs often have trouble with is explaining what they do. What are you building? What is it? What you do. And people get all muddled and and, you know, and they answer and you don't understand. So once we finished the interview, we went to have some burgers in Palo Alto. And that night we got a call and we then they said, hey, we want to fund you. And we're like, oh, holy shit, we didn't expect that. We said, yes, of course. And we flew to California in January after the holidays and stayed there for three months. And the way it works, and I think the batches still work like that is you have a weekly dinner where a founder shows up, normally a successful founder. You know, we had, Airbnb founders, Patrick Collison from stripe, the Ruby founders from Colombia, and a bunch of others. And it would be off the record, conversations with dinner with other founders from your batch. You could answer questions and then just an informal, mingling with people. And then we would have, group meetings and you could have one on one partner meetings with whichever partner you want. And then you get access to the book face, which is their internal social network, where you get sort of like a Hacker News. But for wiki founders, you get discounts, you get deals, you get an investor database where you can see if the investor has been an asshole with someone else, or if it's, a good investor or not. And that network is for life. So you can just be part of that network and still ask questions and ask for advice, help, etc.. So for us, definitely, it was super transformational and opened our minds that we wanted to do this for Panama or for Central America. And we're like, no, let's, let's think bigger. You know, like, why only Latin America or why not globally? Why not? Why, why just Central America? You know, like people in Bolivia have the same problem. Or at least try to find out if that's the case. Yeah, it was really cool. What was the biggest takeaway from that experience? Biggest moment that you had? Well, there's a lot. But first you have to believe, super ambitious story if you want to build it, before building it. That's something counterintuitive. Here in Latin America, we sort of. And it depends on the person, of course. But, We sometimes feel when we speak with people in the US that people in the US know how to sell themselves. It's like, oh, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. I talk about myself. It's like ingrained in your culture. And here, depending on the country, you know, that is frowned upon. You, you don't you don't brag about what you're doing. It feels braggy sometimes, however, to to overcome inertia and to put an image in another person's mind of something that doesn't exist, you have to vividly describe it and if you don't describe it in a way that's compelling, no one is going to believe that story. So the first step is you have to really be yourself. And that is a super hard thing that has literally has been years in the works for me. You have to literally tell other people in their face, world building something that could be huge, and you have to tell them how and what's your vision and believe it. Also know that it is it has a lot of risk, and it is actually unlikely because most startups fail. But you have to say it with with a conviction in a way that you feel you're not lying and you're not scamming people. So that's a delicate balance. Here in Latin America, we sometimes have, you know, sketchy people that, you know, do things that, that, that sound impossible or sound scammy. So, so in here we, we sort of like equalize, thinking outrageously, ambitiously with something that's basically a scam. And that is not true. That is, those are two separate things. One thing is something that hasn't been built and the other is a proper scam. And, you know, there's maybe a gray area between between the two. So I would say the biggest takeaway is just, when you're going to create something new, define that vision with a very, very, very high resolution in a way that you yourself believe it. So you can then share it with others and paint that picture vividly in their minds. And then that will be the fuel to to build it or to try to build it at least. That is something no one tells you here. Because, you know, we don't have huge startup successes in Latin America, with some minor exceptions. So that mentality is never taught. Very interesting. Is the legal system in Costa Rica the same as Panama? No, similar. It's civil law. Can you practice law here in Panama? I actually started a Rica studied law in Costa Rica. So I'm licensed in Costa Rica. Panama. I can't sign documents or do certain things that are for barred attorneys, but I could give sort of basically help other licensed attorneys do the work. I was a junior associate at the time at a firm here. And, but the principles are the same. We in Latin America, we have, what we call a civil law jurisdiction, which is as opposed to common law, which is what you have in the US, with some exceptions, like Louisiana has civil law in some other states, it's more codified. You have like a civil code and it's based in Roman law, basically. So the principles are very similar. It's the same language. Of course, the Constitution varies and some laws varies, but you can sort of understand the principles and, and transpose things in a very easy way. So what are the differences between Latin America and the US? So the US and most like Anglo-Saxon countries, they have something called common law, which is law that's created by the judges. So it's created by by by legal precedent. Does that like starry decisis or whatever, more or less starry decisis is one of those institutions. So basically you have statutes, what we call laws here. So your Congress or your Parliament or whatever, approves a law and then that law is tested in a court and that that judge sort of refines this is here in the US. In the US, okay. Refines the way that law is interpreted and with stare decisis. What that means is that you have a uniform, sort of hierarchical system where lower courts have to enforce the opinions of higher courts. In our system. We also have laws or statutes that are approved by our legislative assemblies. But then judges interpret the law however they want. So the law, like what the Parliament does, is stronger than what the judge says. In the end, it ends up being similar. You know, you have the same Roman law, principles that have been time tested for thousands of years. But the, the power of the judge in our countries is weaker than in the US and in the UK and Australia and all these countries. So you have to, you know, the institutions are different. Litigation works differently. And yeah, yeah, we can geek out about this if you want, but it's, it's in my opinion, common law has proven to be a more flexible system. And a more at the same time, a more precise system in the way it applies. Here is common law. No U.S okay. Gotcha. So so you have, for example, startups, startups use normally. They used to incorporate in the US mostly every wiki startup, for example, almost every startup is incorporated in the US. At least they're holding company. We are. We're a Delaware corporation. And the, and the last time I checked, wiki only invests in, us corporations, Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and Singapore. That's it. All of them, I think, except Luxembourg are common law jurisdictions. So they understand it. You know, it's it's and the principles of like vesting shares and all that stuff. It's something that's well understood here in Panama. You can have a legal document where people vest shares, but it's not something that's commonly done. And judges probably won't understand it, not because they're dumb, but because it's just not an institution that is common and people just don't have it. So, you know, every country has like their specialty. And, even the US states have sort of you know, you don't incorporate in Kansas, you incorporate in Delaware or in Texas, if you're Elon Musk and you don't like the rules from Delaware and all that. So that happens for startups as well. And startups in Latin America now, for example, are incorporating mostly in Cayman. It has tax benefits. And, you know, while we segue into into law. Yeah. So the reason why I ask is because that's a major concern or talking point as we're starting to channel U.S investment to Latin America. Yeah. Like I just did,$400,000 raised over the past couple of weeks to Latin America for a land development. And obviously the contracts are a big piece, like we're collateralized that, you know, loan agreement and understanding, which I don't understand. You know, luckily those investors have a, you know, trust in me. But I wouldn't have been able to make that case to someone that I didn't know to raise that money. Yeah, because they don't understand the path to recourse if I don't pay back that that. No. Does it work similarly in, Panama, like if they say I defaulted on that loan, would it be difficult for them to recuperate that collateral or. Well, it depends on how you structure it. But but yeah, but that is precisely a problem we have here. First, the legal system in less developed countries is less trustworthy. You know, there's more corruption, it's more cumbersome, it's less predictable. And, that's I think one of the, the, the good incentives common law jurisdictions do offer, which because the law is created mostly by the way judges interpret the law, then every legal precedent has to be public and has to be widely available for everyone in here in Panama, for example, and this is not the case in every Latin American country in Costa Rica. They are public as well, all court rulings. But here in Panama, they're not really public. I mean, they print them somewhere and you can go get them, but you don't have a search engine where you can actually search the way a specific rule has been interpreted. So that sort of undermines the way you can actually predict how a specific clause in a contract will be interpreted. However, when you're talking about land, which is something that's, you know, really common, and there's a lot of, you know, banks have to when they give you a mortgage, you have land as collateral. That works, that works here, that works in most countries, unless there's a big sort of corruption scandal around or it's a politically charged case. In Panama, fortunately, you know, collateral execution works. We have a ton of banks here. However, I would, consider just, like, mixing and matching the best things of both worlds if you're going to have equity. And this is not legal advice, but just my opinion, if you're going to have equity, investors or that are going to invest in, in a convertible instrument like a safe, just don't use Panama as the, the jurisdiction to base it on. But if you need to collateralize something with Panamanian land because you're doing some development here, then you need some local instruments to do that, and you can maybe even match both. You can have, you know, part of the investment could be a convertible note, and another part could be a proper loan with a collateral that you have to pay back in whatever time. So it depends on what you want. It's not that that that our legal systems suck. They're just sometimes slower, less efficient, less predictable. But sometimes you need them because if you're doing local things like land development, you know, the land is here is not in the US, so you can't use U.S. law or like a U.S. court to enforce a contract, like, run right through the pens. Very interesting. Where do you see the opportunities within Panama? How do you see this as like a business culture and where do the opportunities lie? Well, the cool thing about Panama is it is it has been traditionally way more politically stable than, the rest of the region with with its back and forth. We had a dictatorship until 1989, however, that this dictatorship, at least in I mean, the ended up being a corrupt, basically financed by drug dealing. That was how it worked. And then the U.S. invaded and toppled, Noriega, who was the general. However, the policies in Panama have been largely the same, irrespective of who wins. We don't think like Argentinians do or like Venezuelans have done. Like are we going to be communists or are we going to accept people can own their property every five years or every four years or every six years? That is what happens in most parts of Latin America, where you don't have a broad agreement on on the business model for the country. You you have you have a lot of, of, of deficiencies and suffering. And, you know, there's a lot of poverty or people that feel left out. So they, you know, there's no agreement on how, you know, we're going to take Mexico forward, you know, or Colombia, which basically had a civil war until recently, or Argentina, which you know, is now has a super capitalist, president, but had this crazy socialist regime before. So, so that that doesn't allow you to plan ahead. Panama, fortunately, is stable in that regard. Irrespective of who wins with very important distinctions in, you know, are you going to tackle corruption? Are you going to strengthen our institutions, or are you going to do x, y, z? No one really questions that Panama lives from serving the rest of the world, from keeping the canal independent. And neutral from, you know, building value chains around logistics around the canal, for having an open services industry. So that is a really cool thing. And I think Panama could become a, sort of, you know, serve the function of what Singapore does in Southeast Asia or Dubai does in the Middle East. It sort of already does regionally, but not as powerfully as it could. And that is, you know, because we're changing from my more old school generation to a newer generation. And I think it's a matter of time, hopefully. Additionally, Panama is also, a smallish, smallish market. And it can be a testing ground for Latin America. So you can launch here and that that was our logic. And we also knew the market, so let's launch in Panama, which is a country that has less developed financial infrastructure than other countries in Latin America. But it has this stability. We can test the value proposition and then get more complicated with different currencies and all the craziness that happens in the rest of the region. So, yeah, I think Panama has a great sort of Latin American lab that could be a launching pad for, for, for cool projects, that can serve the region and can serve the world. And I think people accept that, whereas in other countries, you know, nationalism sort of closes mentalities or, you know, there's a revolution or they expropriate you or etc.. I hope at least that's the case. That's the opportunity. So we're seeing in the US, there's this huge there's a lot of attention going to Costa Rica. There's a huge movement of investment from the US to Costa Rica, where I see in my own intuition Panama having a lot more of the intrinsic qualities of a destination that is investable. You know, what is your take on on those two destinations? Well, I was born in Costa Rica and I have lived in Panama all my life and became a Panamanian. So I know both countries, I think fairly decently. And what I would say is Costa Rica has a more predictable legal system. Costa Rica, I'm on average a more educated society. People are more, in general, professionalized in some way. I think it happened out of need. You know, they don't have a canal. They don't have a huge logistics center like Panama. So they had to say, hey, we're going to just take care of our jungles and our animals and, and create this tourist destination. And when you create a tourist destination like that, people get there and they are like, oh, we can invest here, we can live here. They actually go enjoy the place. It's not just, a place that gives you services in an offshore way, which is what Panama has done. It's not that Panama strategy has been bad, it's just that Panama, I think, it's a younger democracy, you know, from 1989, we have a dictatorship like we discussed before. The, population is less educated than Costa Rica. We still have, you know, widespread, literacy rates and all that. But Costa Rica has a better public education system and in general, a larger tradition in, you know, a bigger chunk of Costa Rica's population speaks English. For example, Panama is fairly, bilingual, but it's not at that level. You can, walk around here in Panama City and go to a coffee shop, and maybe, maybe the person who sells you the coffee will not speak English. In Costa Rica, 90% probably will, because it's a tourist economy. So what I think is Costa Rica's Wall Street guy has done a great job. Sort of giving you the free trial when you visit, you know, you go there and you go to any part in the country and you will find good and bad experiences, but you will find great experiences in almost every part. You go. And, in Panama, for example, sometimes you won't get a great service in depending on where you are in the, in the, in the, in the country. So I think Panama has a lot to learn from Costa Rica in that regard. But I agree with you that it is sort of like, like a rough diamond, Panama, because, you know, there's the same jungles, the same beaches, the same monkeys, the same animals, the same weather, the same temperature with a better connected airport. That already serves the rest of the world. Like if Panama could learn those things and sort of incorporate them, Panama would be a way more attractive destination. The question is whether those education issues and and sort of, you know, corruption and legal certainty issues will be solved, in a way that will compete effectively against Costa Rica. While interesting, what would be in this? My final question, what is if you had to give entrepreneurs one piece of advice that you've learned through your entrepreneurial journey, what would it be? Well, in addition to what I mentioned, unlike believing your own crazy vision, I would say, fall in love with the problem first instead of the solution. Many people, and this is. I mean, this has happened to me, and it's. Sometimes I have to keep myself in check. We fall in love with whatever we are selling with a solution. I'm building this app for you to do X, or I'm building this, you know, real estate development for Y. What is the problem you're solving? What does that thing will give to people? Not you're not the actual product you're selling. But what needs will that product fulfill? And if you intimately understand that, you can first, actually solve a real problem, in whatever way you define that. And also you can flexibly change and move depending on the circumstances because it's the problem. You understand it correctly, then the solutions can change over time. But the problem will be solved by, you know, you will do attempt one attempt to attempt three of them before the problem is still there. So your mission has not been completed. Whereas if one solution fails and you, you know it was your baby and you fell in love with that, you're discouraged. You're like, you know, shit. You know, the baby died. So, you know, I'm going to go get a corporate job. And guess what? When you start a startup, especially in a part of the world where there's a ton of problems to solve, many of those babies will die, you know, like, you will probably fail in many of those solutions. So you will have to iterate. You will have to pivot. You will have to, you know, learn from whatever blind spots you had. So, yeah, fall in love with the problem, not the solution. At least first, very good advice. If people are interested in connecting with you or interested in your services, where can they find you? Cool. Well, my personal social media spellcheck f elc h e k and cuanto is cuanto dot app cuanto? I guess you can edit or something. Yeah, we'll put those in the link. But yeah, that's more like that on social media or web dot. Cuanto dot app? And yeah, anyone who's starting a business or trying to sell in Latin America let me know. So, you had a lot of great insights, and it's apparent that you have a very good bird's eye view on the market here. Which was very valuable to me. So I appreciate you coming on. Yeah, thanks for the chat. For sure. If.