How Digitt Raised $60M in Equity & Debt for LatAm Fintech

Your Pain Is Your Platform

David García Aceves grew up in a middle-class family in Guadalajara. His childhood was happy, but a defining moment came when he was 10: his father’s business went bankrupt. Watching his parents struggle with the fallout gave him a visceral, lifelong understanding of financial instability.

This experience didn’t just shape his character; it became the source of his "founder-problem fit." Many VCs look for founders with an "unfair advantage." Often, that advantage is having felt the problem you’re solving more acutely than anyone else. David’s early exposure to financial hardship wasn’t a hurdle to overcome; it was the raw material for his future company, Digitt.

His ambition was further fueled by attending a university where he was surrounded by peers from wealthy backgrounds. He wasn’t resentful; he was analytical. He saw what was possible in Mexico and started decoding the patterns of the successful people around him. He decided he would become an entrepreneur.

Mistake #1: Building Something You Don't Care About

After a stint at IBM convinced him the corporate world wasn't his path, David jumped into his first startup, Adactivo, an out-of-home advertising company. The market seemed promising, but the work felt hollow.

“You shouldn’t start a company you’re not passionate about,” David reflects. This is a critical lesson. When the inevitable downturns hit—a co-founder leaves, a product launch fails, you’re running out of cash—market opportunity alone won’t get you through it. You need a deeper, almost obsessive, connection to the mission.

How to Avoid This Mistake: A Founder-Passion Fit Checklist

The 10-Year Test: Can you see yourself working on this problem, in this industry, for the next decade? Even if this specific company fails? · The Dinner Party Test: Are you genuinely excited to talk about your industry and its challenges, or do you dread being asked what you do? · The "Reading for Fun" Test: Do you find yourself naturally consuming information about this space in your free time? · The Problem-Love Test: Are you more in love with your solution, or are you obsessed with the problem itself? Solutions are disposable; obsession with a problem fuels iteration.

David’s lack of passion for advertising made Adactivo’s failure an inevitability. It was a lesson he paid for with his time and energy.

Mistake #2: Targeting a Market That Can't Support Venture Scale

His second company, PagoSafe, was a fraud-prevention startup. This time, the idea was rooted in a real problem he’d experienced. It was closer to his interests in fintech. But it had a fatal flaw: the market was too small.

David learned that in Mexico, the entire potential customer base was only about 50 banks. Compare this to the thousands of banks, credit unions, and fintechs in the United States. To make matters worse, many of those 50 banks didn’t issue the retail cards PagoSafe was built to protect. The total addressable market (TAM) was tiny.

When he finally got in front of potential bank customers, they told him it made more sense to build it themselves. The business wasn’t viable.

How to Avoid This Mistake: A TAM Red-Flag Checklist

Count the Customers: Is your total potential customer count in the dozens or hundreds, rather than thousands or millions? (Red Flag) · "We'll Build It Ourselves": Are your potential customers large, technically sophisticated companies that could easily replicate your product? (Red Flag) · Single-Country Bottleneck: Does your model only work in one specific regulatory environment, limiting geographic expansion? (Red Flag) · VC Math Failure: Could you capture 100% of this market and still not build a $100M+ revenue business? If so, it's not a venture-scale opportunity. (Red Flag)

From Rock Bottom to a Real Insight

After PagoSafe failed, David was adrift for 18 months with no income. His personal credit card debt ballooned, with interest rates climbing to a staggering 70%. The problem he’d been circling with his startups was now his own personal crisis.

The breakthrough came while listening to a podcast episode with Renaud Laplanche, founder of LendingClub. Laplanche described his frustration seeing his money earn 2% in a savings account while his credit card charged him 18%. David wasn’t just being charged 18%; he was facing 70% APRs. He saw the same arbitrage opportunity, magnified by the realities of the Mexican market.

This is where Digitt was born. The mission: refinance credit card debt for Mexico's prime and near-prime consumers—people with good credit and income who were still being gouged by traditional banks.

How to Build When You're Not the Expert

David and his co-founder, Manuel Alvarez, had the vision and the personal drive, but they had zero experience in consumer lending. This "naivety" became their greatest asset. Unburdened by industry dogma, they approached the problem from first principles.

Step 1: Reverse-Engineer the Business Model

They asked a simple question: How can we offer lower rates and still build a profitable business? Instead of accepting high default rates or expensive marketing channels as a cost of doing business, they built their underwriting models, customer acquisition strategies, and operational infrastructure from scratch to be brutally efficient. Every dollar they saved in operational costs could be passed to the consumer as a lower interest rate, creating a powerful competitive advantage.

Step 2: Aggressively "Recruit" Your Knowledge Gaps

David and Manuel knew they needed to learn from the best. They became relentless networkers, sending targeted, intelligent cold emails to senior figures at pioneering fintech companies like LendingClub and SoFi. They didn’t ask for jobs or money; they asked for advice.

Subject: Question re: your work on [Specific Project] at [Company]

My name is David García, and I'm the founder of a startup in Mexico tackling consumer credit card debt. Your work on [Specific Project, e.g., "the early underwriting models at SoFi"] was foundational.

I’ve been trying to solve a similar challenge in our market, specifically around [one-sentence description of a specific, non-obvious problem]. My question is: When you were first starting out, how did you think about balancing [A] vs. [B]?

Any insight you have would be incredibly valuable. Totally understand you're busy, so no pressure at all.

This persistence paid off. They secured angel investment and advisory support from SoFi's former president and CFO, instantly giving them credibility and a deep well of industry knowledge.

Fundraising: The $60 Million Equity and Debt Strategy

The title of the source article mentions a $60 million raise in equity and debt, a crucial detail missing from the body. For a lending company like Digitt, this dual-track fundraising is standard, but it’s a critical lesson for founders in any capital-intensive business.

Equity vs. Debt: Two Tools for Two Different Jobs

Equity: This is the money you raise from venture capitalists in exchange for ownership in your company. You use this capital to pay for operations: salaries for your engineers, marketers, and data scientists; your tech stack; and your office space. This is the capital you use to build the machine. A typical pre-seed or seed round for this kind of business might be $1.5M-$3M. · Debt: This is the capital you borrow to function as the raw material for your product. For Digitt, the "product" is loans. They raise large lines of credit from institutional lenders and use that money to refinance their customers' debt. This capital isn’t for hiring; it’s the inventory on their balance sheet.

When you pitch a lending business, you are making two distinct cases to two different types of investors. VCs (equity investors) are betting on your team, tech, and growth potential. Credit funds (debt investors) are betting on the quality of your underwriting—your ability to get the money back with interest.

To raise the $60M, David and his team had to prove they had a machine that worked. They likely started with a smaller equity round to build the product and lend out a small amount of money (perhaps their own, or from a small initial debt facility). They would have tracked their loan performance obsessively, proving low default rates and profitable unit economics. With that data, they could go to larger debt providers and VCs to pour fuel on the fire.

How to Apply This This Week

Audit Your "Why": Use the Founder-Passion Fit checklist above. Are you working on something that passes the 10-year test? If not, start asking what problem you'd be willing to dedicate a decade to solving. · Run a 15-Minute TAM Check: Identify the total number of potential customers for your product. Is it a small, defined list? Or a massive, growing pool? If it's the former, you may be building a great small business, but not a venture-backed one. · Send One Smart Cold Email: Identify one person who has built something you admire or solved a problem you're facing. Use the template above to draft a short, respectful, and specific request for their insight. · Mine Your Frustrations: List your top three personal frustrations with products or services you use. Is there a 70% APR credit card in your own life? Your next billion-dollar idea might be hiding in your own pain.