Tomás Bercovich says that there are two things that have accompanied him practically all his life: sport and the desire to sell. He grew up playing golf, dreaming of seeing the world and finding any excuse to do business. At the age of seven he was already selling things and, looking back, he believes that there he learned one of the lessons that he still applies as a founder: resilience.
Because undertaking, he says, is getting used to hearing many “no’s” before a “yes” appears.
“In the end this is about solving problems all day long. And that day to day is full of obstacles that one has to solve”
Then came IZYTECH, Cuponatic and finally Global66. Three very different companies, but the same learning: building a business does not only depend on having a good idea, but on understanding what problem is really worth solving.
Choose a problem that matters
Tomás recognizes that one of his first mistakes as an entrepreneur was falling in love with a solution rather than the market.
With ZhetaPricing they developed a revenue management tool for the film industry. It worked, but it solved a secondary problem for his customers. It was what he calls a «nice to have» more than a priority.
• What changed between that first-time Tomás and the one who is building Global66 today?
“Today I am much more critical. Before investing time in a business I ask myself if I am in a large industry and if I am solving something really necessary for the client’s daily life”
That logic was what ended up giving rise to Global66. The thesis was simple: the world became global, but financial services continued to operate as if people and companies never left their country.
While it was increasingly common to work, sell, buy or live between different markets.
“Financial institutions were designed for local people and companies. We saw the opportunity to build financial services for global people and companies”
Since then, Global66 has built a platform with a principle that, it says, remains intact: if a product is not faster, simpler or cheaper than the alternative, there is simply no point in developing it.
Climbing also means learning to lead
For a long time, Tomás was convinced that he was good at leading small startups. He liked to build MVPs, go out and sell, and do guerrilla marketing.
He couldn’t imagine leading a company with hundreds of people. With the growth of Global66 he had to learn a completely different job.
“The skills to lead a company from zero to one million are different from those of a company worth one hundred million. My job has completely changed”
Today you spend a lot less time building products and a lot more time building teams, talking to investors, and creating context for other people to make decisions.
For him, a good leader is measured in a fairly simple way.
• What does it mean to be a good leader?
“When you manage to attract very talented people, who stay and want to project their career in the company, you are doing something right”
That is why he insists that the biggest challenge of building a regional fintech has never been technology. It has been the talent.
Find people capable of executing, put them in the right place and give them enough room to do their job better, even better than the founder himself.
“First you choose who with and then you decide where”
Think big, grow with patience
Although Global66 today operates in multiple countries, Tomás assures that the company’s strategy has practically not changed since 2018. What did change was the path to get there.
The roadmap adapts, products evolve and new technologies such as artificial intelligence or financial agents appear, but the vision remains to build a global financial infrastructure for Latin America.
Looking ahead, he believes the next few years will be marked by real-time international payments, hyper-personalized financial services, and a world where people will manage their money with artificial intelligence assistants.
But when asked what advice he would give to Tomás who started Global66, he doesn’t talk about product or expansion. Talk about people.
“Less is more. The growth of a company does not have to do with the number of people you hire, but with solving a problem that really touches a nerve of the customer”
In fact, he says that would be the only change he would make. It would have made the company grow more slowly. Because teams also need time to mature and a company can become bureaucratic long before it is ready to do so.
After more than a decade of entrepreneurship, Tomás continues to believe that thinking big is essential.
But today he is just as convinced that the strongest companies are not always the ones that accelerate first. They are the ones who learn when it is worth doing it.
