For years, Sebastián Ferrer and his co-founders insisted on Paymox, a solution to optimize prompt payment to companies. There were interested clients, but the technology was not there: about 15 years ago the electronic invoice was just starting and almost the entire process was still manual.
They were not able to provide the service to any of them. Until one day they looked at each other’s faces around the table and said: “Let’s go for change.” It was a decision, he says, that over time proved to be the right one.
A married father of three children, Sebastián describes himself as a quiet and low-profile person, who likes sports, hanging out with friends and, above all, being with his family. As a child he was attracted to lawyer series and thought of law as his future.
And it was for more than 20 years, with a focus on tax law, until it took a radical turn. Today the legal profession is not strange: its is a dynamic world, from day to day, and what orders everything is an idea that it repeats like a mantra: having focus.
Fall in love with the problem, not the solution
He liked tax law because it is, he says, the most dynamic area of law: all branches have a part that intersects with taxes, and the reforms do not stop. In parallel he undertook. At Paymox he was a co-founder and the company’s lawyer; the other partners were on a day-to-day basis.
- What did you learn from the Paymox failure?
“That one tends to fall in love with a solution and not the problem. We were focused on solving the problem, but with the solution we had in mind, and now, looking back, we realize that we should have pivoted much sooner”
“You have to be more practical: if something doesn’t work, you don’t have to force it or try to make a complex monster. Things have to be simple and efficient”
RindeGastos is the result of that pivot, almost 12 years ago. The partners saw a problem that almost no one was addressing: American and European players served large transnational companies, and the rest of the industry, from a kiosk to the multinational, continued to report expenses with Excel spreadsheets, stapled receipts, and errors that sometimes amounted to fraud.
Furthermore, it was a solution that they could develop 100% themselves. It is difficult, he admits, because out of pride one tries to carry forward what one started. But they were practical.
Paymox’s lesson remained in the company’s DNA. Before the change they had developed a robust platform, but they were not the best at anything it solved. This time Sebastián affirms that it was different.
“We are going to create the best expense reporting solution in Latin America,” they said to themselves, and everything they developed was along those lines: “focus, focus, focus.”
Surround yourself with people better than you
Leaving tax law was not a one-time event: Rindegastos was growing and needed more involvement on their part. He came as CEO to learn. He took off his jacket and tie, went from a very traditional industry to a technology company and got into each area to understand the processes and detect the key pieces.
When he took over as CEO, supported by a board of co-founders, his strategy was to put together the best team possible.
- What is it like for you to be a leader?
“It is very challenging. From day one I have conveyed to my team that the most important thing is them. I am convinced that, for a company to be successful, whoever leads it has to be accompanied by people much better than him in each of the things they have to do. And that is what I have worried about.”
The most difficult thing, he says, was the transition from startup to scaleup. Areas had to be professionalized and processes implemented, and that meant letting go of people who had worked with them for a long time and had completed their cycle.
“That is always difficult, because they were very dear people, with whom we had a tremendous relationship. But the company was going in a different direction and the decision had to be made”
His life is almost 24/7, between trips and meetings, but his formula is to prioritize and separate: “Hopefully when I get in the car I make the switch,” although he admits that it is not always possible.
Grow without making noise
Rindegastos grew without external capital, with its own resources. That was, he explains, their main advantage: it forced them to be organized and have focus, without “burning money like many companies when they raise capital.”
The disadvantage was not being able to grow more aggressively, although today he sees it as a good thing. While others made noise, they went under the radar, until they positioned themselves as number one.
Today they have operations in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Argentina, and clients also in Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador.
- How did you decide to sell the company you built?
“We were not looking to sell. We were profitable, we had no debt and we were number one in Latin America, and private equity funds contacted us practically every month. But what caught our attention the most about Visma was its value proposition: we wanted to maintain the culture that had cost us so much to form and give our people a place to develop”
The economic part, he admits, also weighed a lot. Integration into the group, he says, opened synergies instead of imposing changes, and it didn’t change him either: he is still the same person, getting up early.
- What advice would you give to Sebastián who was just co-founding?
“Have focus. I have had many endeavors of different natures and, looking back, I believe that striving to do one thing in the best possible way is the key to success. When you focus all your efforts on a single objective, the probability of success is not guaranteed, but it increases significantly!”
I wouldn’t change anything: today you are the consequence of your successes and failures, and you are where you are thanks to the path you have traveled. Including Paymox, the failure that, looking at it from now on, was the first step in learning to do one thing and do it well.
