The J Curve with Olga Maslikhova

Paulo Passoni, Managing Partner at Valor Capital, and Olga Maslikhova break down the two forces reshaping tech and capital markets right now — the end of 40 years of global integration as the US-China tech split hardens, and the collapse of the services moat as AI lets companies scale from $0 to $100M in revenue in 24 months by replacing labor. This is the May 2026 edition of TJC Debrief — a monthly show covering tech, venture, and capital markets through a global lens.We cover why China blocked Meta's $2 billion Manus acquisition and what the new US-led versus China-led ecosystem split means for global M&A, how SoftBank's blocked Arm-NVIDIA sale cost half a trillion dollars in value creation and why deals like it will keep happening, Anthropic's $50B round closing in 48 hours with secondary markets pricing ahead of the primary and what it reveals about AI's escape velocity, why Anthropic and OpenAI are forming joint ventures with Blackstone, TPG, Apollo, Sequoia, General Atlantic, and GIC to lock in compute capacity and guaranteed revenue, Plata's $5B round and why Qatar Investment Authority, US endowments, and long-only funds piled in alongside Valor Capital — and what mispriced Russian and Eastern European talent has to do with it, why data is becoming the last real moat and how Nubank, Revolut, CloudWalk, Mercado Libre, and JPMorgan are racing to train proprietary models on their own customer data, the radiologist paradox and what it predicts for tax accountants, lawyers, and every services job AI is supposed to kill, the legal AI startup Enter and the wild story of prompt injections hidden in PDFs filed to courts, why humanoid robots at $600/month today and $100/month in ten years will reshape global labor markets, Elon Musk and SpaceX as the "build potential, then monetize" playbook, and the $0 to $100M in 24 months phenomenon — why early movers in vertical AI are already hitting this scale and where the next opportunities will emerge across legal, wealth management, healthcare, and security.Subscribe to The J Curve Insider newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Latin America is the third-largest fintech and payments market in the world — bigger than India, behind only the US and China. Gastón Irigoyen is Co-Founder and CEO of Pomelo, the fintech infrastructure company powering card issuing and processing for banks, fintechs, and global enterprises across eight markets including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Puerto Rico, and Panama. Pomelo is backed by Index Ventures, Insight Partners, Kaszek, Monashees, and most recently Adams Street Partners in their first-ever Latin American investment.In this episode of The J Curve, Gastón unpacks the contrarian playbook behind Pomelo: why the team went regional from day zero on a $10M seed round instead of nailing one market first, how they built a "plug and play" hiring engine that's stayed at 90%+ since founding, why they tripled revenue without adding headcount, and what it actually takes to win enterprise customers like BBVA, Santander, Bci, Bancolombia, Binance, and Bybit when nobody trusts an infrastructure startup. He also shares the Series B-to-Series C lessons most founders never document — including the end-of-year memo that turned rejections into investor trust — and his framework for the AI transformation a five-year-old company is now being forced to run.This is a masterclass on regional-by-design strategy, B2B fintech go-to-market, founder-led fundraising in down markets, and building world-class companies from Latin America for the world.Subscribe to The J Curve Insider newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Paulo Passoni, Managing Partner at Valor Capital, and Olga Maslikhova break down Claude 4.6, Brex’s $5.15B sale to Capital One, and why only 4 US companies can IPO right now. This is the April 2026 edition of TJC Debrief — a monthly show covering tech, venture, and capital markets for Latin American founders and investors.We cover why Claude 4.6 was a bigger “aha moment” than the original ChatGPT for building companies and how it’s rewiring CTO roles, org design, and the question of what a moat even is anymore, how Nubank, Revolut, Tether, and Plata are reshaping consumer finance and why Paulo thinks regional US banks are an “aberration” that shouldn’t legally exist, the Brex x Capital One deal, Ramp’s software multiple, and what the prof stack saving late-stage LPs means for every fintech exit going forward, Brazil’s IPO window cracking open and Mexico’s sudden flood of Sequoia, Founders Fund, and a16z capital, why Paulo thinks many employees are already “worse than AI” and why every salary should now come with a token budget, how he built a working marketplace in three hours on Perplexity Comet without writing a line of code, and the coming collapse of low-ROI universities and what it means for talent in LATAM.Subscribe to The J Curve Insider newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Pedro Conrade is the founder of Neon — a $1B run-rate Brazilian neobank that serves millions of underbanked Brazilians and has raised $924M from General Atlantic, BBVA, BlackRock, and PayPal. In this TJC Originals episode, Pedro shares how he survived the 72-hour crisis that almost killed Neon in 2018, how engagement data beats credit scoring, and the fundraising playbook behind a decade of capital efficiency.We cover how to build a profitable neobank in an emerging market and why serving the underbanked is a better business than it looks, why engagement data beats credit scoring and what that means for fintech underwriting at scale, the 72-hour crisis that almost ended Neon and the real-time decisions Pedro made to save it, how Neon uses AI agents to handle collections, compliance, and customer support and what that means for headcount at scale, the fundraising playbook behind $924M raised from General Atlantic, BBVA, BlackRock, and PayPal, and why M&A destroys more value than it creates — and when it actually makes sense for a startup.Pedro also shares why the constraints of serving Brazil’s underbanked population made efficiency non-negotiable, and why that same constraint became Neon’s most durable advantage.Subscribe to The J Curve Insider newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Stelleo Tolda co-founded MercadoLibre in 1999 and ran Brazil for 25 years — building the $100B company into Latin America’s most valuable publicly traded business. In this TJC Operators series premiere, Stelleo unpacks how MercadoLibre outlasted 80 competitors, declared war on Amazon, scaled logistics from 8% to 95% in-house, and architected a three-year succession that actually stuck.We cover how MercadoLibre outlasted 80 competitors while charging the highest fees in the market, the dot-com crash survival playbook and what scarcity forces you to do right, why MercadoLibre declared war on Amazon and what happened in that war room, the 2010 technology bet of throwing away everything and rebuilding from scratch, the adjacency principle that turned one marketplace into payments, logistics, credit, and advertising, why MercadoLibre chose to build versus buy at every inflection point, investing in logistics CapEx as a public company and how to bring Wall Street along, the Champions League analogy for competing against the world’s best, how MercadoLibre codified its culture at scale, the succession playbook from advisor to board member to gone, what great board members actually do, and why scarcity makes Latin America’s builders better in the age of AI.Stelleo also shares why the worst thing for an entrepreneur is abundance — and why the next generation of iconic Latin American companies is being built right now.Subscribe to The J Curve Insider newsletter for deeper insights and follow Olga on LinkedIn and Instagram.