#85 - Building from first principles: Francisco Larraín, Topsort

Francisco Larraín's professional journey tells a story of coming full circle.

It all started as a founding team member for advertisement network Tapjoy. Having gotten a taste for the world of startups, he went on to found payment technology solution Zappedy and to have a $30 million exit to Groupon, where he stayed as Head of Local Engineering for 3 years.

It wasn't long before Francisco got back on the saddle and founded Maxxa, the largest insurtech company in Chile, and he scaled it up to over 25,000 SMB customers before looking for a new challenge.

When he felt ready to tackle the next big thing, Francisco decided to go back to his beginnings in the monetization space: he and co-founder Regina Ye started auction-based advertisement solution Topsort in 2021 hoping to bring innovation to marketplace advertisement.

Having just raised a $8 million dollar Seed Round at a $110 million valuation from names like Pear Ventures, Quiet Capital and FJLabs, I'd say they're well on the way to accomplishing their goals.

Today, Francisco and I are going over:

• His successful exit strategy for Zappedy
• The challenges of tech leadership roles
• Topsort's journey from idea to Product-Market fit

Building something new? Apply for the Latitud Fellowship at apply.latitud.com

Building good sh*t in Latin America?

• Learn about how Latitud can help you at latitud.com
• Discover and pitch Latitud Ventures, your partner from 0 to 1 and beyond
• Sign up for our weekly newsletter for founder insights and some tough love
• And follow us on Linkedin / Instagram / Spotify to stay in the loop