๐งต Today, after over 15 years of dreaming about this moment, I am a permanent resident of the United States ๐บ๐ธ
I achieved this through the EB1A visa (Green Card) for noncitizens of extraordinary ability, also known as the visa for the top 1% of experts worldwide.
This was my
@levelsio
I have one in my building, they are quite useless when a security issue happens, like an open door at late night.
They have in avg 8-16 screens simultaneously.
The idea is that it costs 1/8 of a full time security guard, but you also get 1/8 of the service ๐
I moved back to the UK in 2021 with Rebill, and entered Y Combinator four months later. I realized running Rebill from the UK was killing me because of the 5-hour time difference, so I returned to Argentina to build up the team.
Now, we are 12 in a kick-ass team, operating the
- Document preparation + recommendations: 7 months
- Approval of the first part of the case (1050-page file): 8 days
-Time to interview (first priority): 4 months
- Countries visited to date: 17+
- Previous residences: ๐ฉ๐ช Germany and ๐ฌ๐ง UK
- Farewells from friends every time
Not many know the struggles I faced to get here and the ones I still have by challenging me every day.
Spoiler: it wasnโt by selling courses on TikTok about becoming a millionaire with dropshipping.
I promised myself that if I moved to the USA, it would be through the grand
I started programming 15 years ago while in high school.
I met Sonia Oster over LinkedIn, the director of the Fulbright Alumni Association and an SV entrepreneur who mentored me early on and introduced me to Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial mindset and customs. She also
At 19, I started my first company, Shovel Apps, "The WordPress for mobile apps", and took my first solo trip abroad to San Francisco.
I stayed in a rough part of SF (Tenderloin), ate pizza at events, and negotiated Uber rides off-app to save a few bucks.
In 2015, I was selected for an exclusive program from
@MIT
that would be the first time out of Boston. Out of 4k+ applicants, 70 entrepreneurs from 50+ countries would meet in Seoul, South Korea, for one week as part of a three-month program.
The program was one of the most
I got accepted by three US universities, but none offered a full scholarship. Without a cosigner or residency, I couldnโt get a loan. Therefore - I could not attend. ๐โโ๏ธ
Today I did my first angel investment in a
@ycombinator
startup.
Their founders are tenacious, humble and ship-obsessed. I canโt be more grateful to support them on this journey.
@octolane_app
is building an AI-powered CRM that will change the way companies engage with
We got into an accelerator, and I spent 3 months in San Jose, a nearly empty city in South Silicon Valley.
The nearest club was at 30' by car in Santa Clara and closed at 2 am. That was all the partying around ๐ฅด
In 2016, we had to close my first company - basically, we crashed and burned since we couldn't find PMF.
The hit hurts twice when you believe you are building the next Facebook and disappoint your friends and family.
We had to meet with the investors and tell them they lost
Back in Argentina, I was interviewed by Google, Facebook, and AWS. I preferred AWS over the others and was invited to interview in the UK.
On my trip there, I felt London was my place on earth. While I did not make the cut for AWS, I did get the UK Entrepreneurship residency time
@Jason
The issue when tipping is that you are indirectly supporting that the employer doesnโt need to pay a good wage since the employee has its own tips from the end customer. Imho, if everyone stopped tipping, the employee would look for the best job offer, and the employer would be
Hoy fuimos a abrir cuenta en
@BancoGalicia
para una nueva sociedad que tenemos con Rebill, ya siendo clientes con otra figura societaria y la experiencia fue nefasta ๐
Nos interrogaron como en migraciones, para decirnos que no nos abririan nunca la cuenta.
Esperamos 30/40' a
Next time you think you cannot make it think twice. Everything is about determination.
Are you considering applying to YC or fundraising and need some advice? Just ask for it, DMs are open :)
@samuelekpe
I didnโt go over the details but when I got accepted I didnโt have the funds to pay for the tuition as well, so I worked my ass off to get a scholarship from the local government in just a few weeks; and the payment to the program was made just 24h before the departure of my
We launched 1-Click Checkout at โก๏ธ
The first cross-border and cross-merchant payment experience available in 10 countries of Latin America.
Now your customers can pay with their saved cards in any country or store associated to Rebill, in less than 15
Last time we met with
@woloski
was in 2015 in Temple Bar in Palermo,
@auth0
was a 30~ person team.
(And we convinced
@rauchg
to invite the shots)
Nearly 9 years later Iโm grateful we have the chance to meet again, now powering
@portalbosque_
payments in LATAM
Letโs keep
Suddenly, from battling obscurity, we were welcomed by YC's LATAM founders, including an immediate investment interest from Platzi's
@cvander
and
@freddier
. Overnight, our struggle turned into a $250k lifeline and entry into the world's
#1
accelerator.
If you're not embarrassed by what you're launching, you've launched too late.
For Rebill, this meant processing 3,000+ subscriptions manually every month in the early days. ๐ฑ
Kudos to our "Smart Retries Engineer"
@RangelHen
We learned as much as possible about fintech and the market itself. We had so many insights that we became domain experts. There is a great ref on this by
@paulg
๐
Now you can make the checkout page an extension of your website and brand with
๐ Custom Domain
๐ Custom Logo
๐ Custom CSS
๐ฌ Custom JS
In this demo, I changed the whole style of the checkout and added Intercom's Chat in 20 seconds.
3AM, we went in.
@mwseibel
started. He said something like "First, I want to congratulate you. You've answered all my questions after I challenged you. So, there's only one more question I have for you: Are you ready to join YC?"
We were in shock, so I answered "Are you serious?"
The numbers talk by themselves:
- 17,000 startups applied to YC Winter 2022 batch
- 414 got accepted (2.4%)
- 8% Latam founders
- 43% of the batch applied only once (like us), so our chances were approximately 0.09%.
Lawyers' emails came back and forth during the weekend; we signed on Tuesday, and the money got wired 4h later.
Interestingly as is, all the following deals were also closed over WhatsApp as well.
Be tenacious at all times.
This is absolutely mind blowing.
Animated UIs are the big leap forward on modern interfaces. Already thinking on how to build our website using these ๐ก
We were struggling, and some interested investors required a "lead". So I called
@rauchg
, and he committed as an angel investor. Though he was not leading, it was a trust signal - and everything we needed. ๐ค๏ธ
Create instant payment links in a few clicks with .
Now supporting local payment methods in ๐ง๐ท Brazil, ๐ฒ๐ฝ Mexico, ๐จ๐ด Colombia, ๐จ๐ฑ Chile, ๐ฆ๐ท Argentina, ๐ต๐ช Peru, ๐บ๐พ Uruguay.
Set specific prices per currency and start offering a localized experience with
There is no better customer acquisition strategy than being recommended by current customers.
We believe that our service shall be so good that youโd want to recommend us with your friends and peers.๐ค๐ค
We understand how important your business is, and how key is to have a
Existe canal de adquisiciรณn mรกs gratificante que la recomendaciรณn por parte de tus clientes? ๐๐ผ
Tambiรฉn me puedes escribir y te ayudo a cobrar a tus clientes argentinos.
Acepta tarjetas locales, transferencias bancarias, efectivo e incluso wallets como Mercado Pago y Ualรก.
I do enjoy remote, specially when I need to focus and ship - though going to the office and be surrounded of so much talented people and positive energy just pumps up your week.
There is no match to in person coworking ๐
@diazailan
got locked down in Chile in a quarantine hotel and was prohibited from returning to Argentina. I got into a quarantine period in London. Both of us were in rooms of less than 15m2.
Ariel suggested we should apply to
#YC
. ๐ฌ
๐ข Are you the founder/director of a SaaS looking to efficiently scale your business in Latin America? ๐ Thread alert with 5 practices to manage payments and subscriptions efficiently. Keep reading!
#SaaS
#Latam
#payments
#subscriptions
#efficiency
Recover up to 25% of your failed payments and reduce churn in your SaaS with Smart Retries @ .
Set how many times, and when to charge your customers when a subscription charge fails.
The game started. We connected to the Zoom call, and the first face I saw was
@mwseibel
. I started sweating right away. A few seconds later, the other four partners joined the call as well. Michael opened with the classy question, " OK guys, so what are you building?"
Freshly out of the oven ๐จโ๐ณ
Meet the most sophisticated and easy-to-use Checkout SDK in LATAM. โก๏ธ
In less than 10 lines of code, get a checkout ready in 10 countries through bank transfers, cash, wallets, and cards.
Start accepting Pix, Boleto, Nequi, Khipu, Oxxo, QRs and more
It felt like we were getting a second interview. This sparked a whirlwind of speculation. What didn't he like? "We can still make it!" The following 2h were filled with immense stress as we combed through the questionnaire again, wondering what he might ask next.
In June 2021, my co-founder
@diazailan
moved to Chile for the
@startupchile
program. Since we had less than 6 months of runway anyway, I moved to London to keep the company running from a salary if that's what it took to keep it going.
I texted him over whatsapp. He answered immediately: "Hi Nahuel! Yes, we are in!". I quickly asked him for an email confirmation, which came just minutes later.
The handshake was confirmed.
I pulled out my computer in the restaurant to answer that email ASAP.
You have 10 minutes to pitch your life's work; you don't get to bullshit around. So I answered quickly.
- We are building Latam's fastest subscription billing tool.
M: Oh, so you are building something like X for Latam?
- Yes, that's right.
M: I don't think that X is that big.
We are redesigning our APIs and platform to bring the best payments experience for digital businesses in LATAM.
The next couple of months will be full of product releases, stay tuned ๐
Next to come: a new SDK that allows you to deploy a crossborder checkout in 3 languages and
Sep 29, 2021 - YC recommends using time before the interview to calm down. I went to a park nearby to feed some ducks, and Ariel kept reading over and over the Q&A.
The interview quickly scaled on how we saw a blue ocean market opportunity in Latam. Michael didn't breathe and kept asking questions. The other partners didn't speak. The whole interview ended up being 14' long.
-We gave it all. If it's not now, it was not ought to be.
Same-day rejection emails go out by 5 PM SF time; if you get accepted, they call you. Waiting in London, the clock ticked 23:57. Then, an unexpected email from Michaelโanother call in 2h. Was that a second interview? ๐
On Sep 27, 2021,
@diazailan
got an email from YC inviting us for an interview! ๐ฑ
Only 6% of the applicants make the cut. As a ref, Harvard accepts about 3-5%~ of their applicants.
The date was fixed for September 29 (two days after).
๐งต Setting up cross-border payments in
#LATAM
typically feels like running a marathon โ it takes over 30 days, filled with manual contracts and endless red tape. At , we chose to disrupt this norm. ๐
When developing Rebill, we faced the challenge of connecting with various acquirers, processors, and third-party tools, often with minimal documentation. We dealt with everything from SOAP to XML/HTML responses. ๐
Now, REST APIs are the new standard. This thread is dedicated to
For the last couple of months, I had contacted over 100+ investors, from angels to VCs. 67 answered back and confirmed an interview. 64 Said "No". Bigger VCs needed "more traction"; smaller ones didn't see an opportunity for us/the business.
Introducing
#ChatGPT
and
@chaindesk_ai
into our ecosystem took our capabilities further, enhancing communication and providing instant access to data across platforms like
#Notion
and
#GoogleDrive
.
The welcome speech by YC was quite inspiring:
- If you do what we say, you may survive. But also,if you do everything as in the book, you will die. Use your gut to follow your decisions.
- 97%+ of you will fail by 2nd year.
- Raise just enough to move fast until demo day.
- Ship.
ยกLuz, cรกmara y acciรณn! ๐ฅ๐ฌ
En Rebill, la producciรณn de
#video
es sรบper importante para comunicar nuestros productos y soluciones, pero tambiรฉn hay tiempo para divertirnos. ๐
Iniciamos el aรฑo a pura risa, y te invitamos a reรญrte con nosotros.
#work
#team
#fintech
#culture
ยกLanzamos nuestro plugin para
@WooCommerce
! ๐ Hace semanas venimos trabajando este plugin que permite que cualquier negocio de LATAM cobre suscripciones de forma automรกtica y gestione todas las รณrdenes desde su panel de WooCommerce. Abrimos hilo ๐งต(1/6)
Just few days more to go for a white-label onboarding that allows any marketplace to start opening sub merchant accounts with ease ๐
The real payments infrastructure for Latam ๐
Yesterday
@diazailan
and I had an exotic vegetarian Mexican dinner - tacos without meat! ๐คฏ with
@cvander
co-founder of
@platzi
and one of our early supporters ๐ค ๐ค
So happy to see Platzi's success, keeping their position between
@ycombinator
Top Companies this year.
#edtech
We just launched Payment Invoices!
Now you can stop overpaying those $2/invoice at stripe.
Get crossborder payments and invoices out-of-the-box with ๐ค๐ค
Enย
@RebillTeam
, seguimos pensando en mejorar la experiencia de nuestros clientes, por lo que acabamos de lanzar nuestra nueva featureย Invoicesย ๐ !
I am excited to be part of the
#BuenosAires
#innovation
#techweek
as a panel speaker sharing our experience on how to scale faster in 2024 ๐
Join us next Friday ๐
This is how we slashed our annual PCI DSS compliance costs and avoided paying $60k+/yr in audits. All thanks to our in-house tokenization tool, bluebox - and yes, it's open source. ๐ซถ
Starting my Sundays (and every day) with 10-20 minutes of mindfulness. It's not just a practice, but a ritual to ground myself in the present. Focusing on breathing is an anchor.
#Mindfulness
#EntrepreneurLife
@SmartBeemo
just raised $6M to build the ultimate ecosystem for e-commerce entrepreneurs.
They pivoted to a subscription-based career that scaled rapidly.
Their secret sauce is customer obsession: they want to see their entrepreneurs' stores succeed.
Sumamos
@bunjavascript
a uno de nuestros proyectos en
@RebillTeam
.
Hace tiempo lo vengo utilizando como reemplazo de npm y ahora llego el momento de dar un upgrade y sumarlo al proyecto. Sinceramente un notable redimiendo
Alguna empresa que tambiรฉn lo este usando?๐
Are you struggling to get paid in USD from companies in Latam?
B2B in the region can be hard, so we designed our payments and invoicing products that helps you get paid faster by charging in local currency.
We collect the payment in COP, MXN, and 8 more currencies and payout