- Kavak and QuintoAndar were founded, built, and scaled by regional teams in Mexico and Brazil.
- Valuations, transaction volumes, and investor money back up Latin America’s record of building category-defining companies.
- Executives looking for senior product and commercial leadership can treat the region as a proven source.
A lot of US executives carry a quiet assumption: big tech companies in emerging markets need imported leadership to work. Kavak in Mexico and QuintoAndar in Brazil make that assumption pretty hard to defend.
Kavak peaked at $8.7 billion. QuintoAndar hit $5.1 billion. Regional founders and teams dreamed up, built, and scaled both of them, and the details below show how.
Growing to thousands of employees also left both companies with a deep bench of senior product and commercial leaders. That’s the part that matters to any executive hiring for those roles.
How Kavak Turned One Bad Car Sale Into $8.7 Billion
Carlos García Ottati founded Kavak in 2016. He’d been defrauded while selling his own car.
But it’s not exactly rare in that market, as it turned out. Roughly 90% of used car transactions in Latin America were informal, inside a $60 billion Mexican market with high rates of peer-to-peer fraud.
García Ottati had an Oxford MBA, two years at McKinsey working with Latin American clients, and a senior role at e-commerce firm Linio. He took all of it home and used it there.
Kavak became Mexico’s first tech unicorn in September 2020 at a $1.1 billion valuation. By September 2021 it hit a peak valuation of $8.7 billion. Roughly eight times in a year.
The team went from 15 people in 2016 to 2,500 by 2021. Regional hires built the inspection centers, the pricing algorithms, and the operations behind nearly 120,000 transactions by 2025.
How QuintoAndar Became Latin America’s Most Valuable Proptech
Gabriel Braga and André Penha founded QuintoAndar in 2013. Both had been through frustrating rental experiences in São Paulo and Campinas.
Penha’s tech background came from a computer science master’s degree at UNICAMP in Brazil, plus a mobile games company he started and sold.
The company became a unicorn in 2019. By August 2021 it was valued at $5.1 billion, the highest for any proptech firm in Latin America.
At that point it had 2,000 employees, more than 175,000 active rental contracts, and over $50 billion in assets under management. Headquarters and leadership never left Brazil.
Investors backed the execution with real money. QuintoAndar raised $755 million from General Atlantic, Ribbit Capital, Tencent, and Kaszek.
What This Means for US Execs Hiring Product and Commercial Leaders
Companies this size end up working like training grounds. You can’t grow to thousands of employees and billions in managed assets without senior leaders in pricing, go-to-market strategy, product development, and commercial execution.
Both companies grew that bench in-house. A 2019 LinkedIn ranking even put QuintoAndar fifth among the most desirable startups to work for in Brazil.
For US executives, this is practical. The ecosystem that produced Kavak and QuintoAndar also produced a generation of senior product and commercial leaders who’ve done the job at billion-dollar scale.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why are US companies looking to Latin America for senior product and commercial leaders?
A: Because companies like Kavak and QuintoAndar couldn’t grow to thousands of employees without senior people in pricing, go-to-market strategy, product development, and commercial execution. Both grew that bench in-house, so the region now has leaders who’ve done these jobs at billion-dollar scale.
Q: Did Kavak and QuintoAndar need imported leadership to scale?
A: No. Kavak’s regional hires built its inspection centers, pricing algorithms, and operations. QuintoAndar’s headquarters and leadership never left Brazil, even at a $5.1 billion valuation.
Q: What problems did Kavak and QuintoAndar set out to solve?
A: Problems the founders ran into themselves. García Ottati got defrauded selling his car, in a market where about 90% of used car sales were informal. Braga and Penha went through frustrating rentals in São Paulo and Campinas. How much that drove the results is hard to say, but both companies were built around fixing it.
