This Serial Entrepreneur Processed Over $7 Billion Through A LatAm Fintech Platform Enabling Cross-Border, Multi-Currency Money Transfers
Tomas Bercovich’s entrepreneurship path was never a straight line. All through, it has been a sequence of experiments, pivots, hard decisions, and compounding lessons; each one sharpening his instincts for what truly matters when building enduring companies.
Born and raised in Chile, Tomas has founded four startups across very different industries, from cinema revenue management to e-commerce, IT services, and now fintech.
Today, he is the co-founder and CEO of Global66, a fast-growing financial platform rethinking cross-border money movement for individuals and businesses across Latin America.
In this engrossing interview, Tomas reveals how a founder from “the bottom of the world” developed a global mindset, learned when to let go, and built one of the most capital-efficient fintech companies in the region.
Roots: Immigration, Entrepreneurship, and Early Hustle
Chile may be a long, narrow country at the edge of the world, but for Tomas, it was the perfect place to develop a founder’s mindset early on. His grandparents were immigrants who fled Europe—what is today Ukraine—and arrived in Chile with nothing.
With no safety net, entrepreneurship wasn’t a choice; it was a necessity. That reality shaped the family culture Tomas grew up in: building, hustling, and creating value from scratch. A mentality that showed up early.
By age 10, Tomas was already working retail. Soon after, he became a waiter, then a DJ at 13. Entrepreneurship, for him, wasn’t an abstract ambition; it was simply how things were done.
Learning to Think Global by Living Global
While Chile grounded Tomas, the world expanded him. He studied abroad for a semester in the UK, later lived in New York, and completed his MBA at Columbia University alongside entrepreneurs from across Latin America.
These experiences did more than add credentials; they rewired Tomas’s worldview. Living and traveling abroad taught him a simple truth: If you want to build global companies, you need to live globally. He learned what it is to build companies and teams to impact people’s lives.
Across borders and cultures, Tomas saw the same entrepreneurial challenges repeat themselves, such as capital constraints, operational complexity, talent, and execution. The industries and regulations changed, but the fundamentals remained the same.
That realization would later become critical when Tomas began thinking about businesses that could scale far beyond national borders. When he graduated from university, his lack of experience held him back from getting a job. So, he moved to the US to gain hands-on working experience in a company.
Doing basic tasks at this first job gave Tomas a perspective on how businesses are run. He started his first company in parallel, working nights and weekends. When a strategic opportunity arose, he quit his job and started working full-time on his startup.
First Startup: Learning the Hard Way in Cinema Tech
Tomas’s first startup operated in the cinema industry, offering advanced revenue management solutions, including pricing optimization, capacity management, and analytics. The product worked, but the problem was timing. Eventually, he had to wind down operations.
Cinemas were just learning how to sell tickets online. Tomas was effectively trying to sell the “cherry on top” before the cake itself was finished. The lessons he took away were painful but invaluable. Firstly, don’t sell advanced optimization before the core problem is solved.
Tomas’s clients were facing several issues, including how to increase revenue and profits. Revenue management wasn’t on their list of priorities. Tomas also learned that founders should choose industries that are large enough to sustain real scale.
Solving problems that are painful, urgent, and unavoidable for people or businesses increases the likelihood of success. As Tomas puts it, you either succeed or you learn.
Cuponatic Latam: Competing Lean Against Giants
The next venture, Cuponatic Latam, looked very different on the surface. It was a Groupon-style marketplace operating across Latin America. But strategically, it shares the same DNA, helping businesses optimize underutilized capacity and generate more revenue.
Cuponatic optimized infrastructures and increased sales not only for cinemas but also for spas, beauty centers, entertainment centers, and other businesses. While Groupon was a SaaS company, Cuponatic was an e-commerce company. Both had a relative impact.
This time, Tomas’s challenge wasn’t product-market fit; it was competition. A major Mexican client copied the Cuponatic system and bought the biggest cinema company, which was Cuponatic’s biggest customer.
Global players entered Latin America armed with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Cuponatic Latam raised just $1M, and its survival required extreme discipline. Tomas’s strategy was to ensure extremely lean and efficient operations.
This approach paid off because most players in the industry had very high fixed costs without a business model to support them. Many of the players went bankrupt or closed, and Cuponatic acquired three or four companies in the region.
When the pandemic happened, the players with fixed costs failed, including Groupon in Latin America. Although Cuponatic had its share of challenges, the company survived. After the pandemic ended, Tomas made it profitable again.
Today, Cuponatic Latam operates profitably across four Latin American countries and remains one of the strongest players in its category, growing quickly. The experience reinforced a core belief: Lean companies bend. Bloated ones break.
EasyTech: Knowing When to Step Aside
EasyTech was different. It emerged from an incubation model, with partners who ran the company day to day. Over time, it became clear that the people building the business should also own it.
Instead of forcing alignment, Tomas and his partners chose a clean, respectful outcome: they sold their stake to the operating founders. Not every entrepreneurial chapter ends with a dramatic exit. Sometimes, the right move is simply recognizing when your role is complete, Tomas says.
Why Fintech—and Why Now
By the time Tomas co-founded Global66, he had seen enough patterns to know when something truly mattered. He had built three startups and worked in different spaces, industries, apps, and environments.
Global66 happened because the pain in the Latin American financial infrastructure was impossible to ignore. Tomas strongly believed that through technology, they could help millions of people and businesses manage their financial lives much more easily, economically, and globally.
As Tomas realized, there were stark imbalances. In the US, around 330 million people are served by more than 5,000 banks. In contrast, in Latin America, 660 million people have fewer than 300 banks. The US has 35 more banks per person than Latin America.
Tomas points out that if you do the same exercise in Europe, you would get the same results. Banks in LATAM are the most profitable in the world and have limited competition. Return on Equity (ROE) in the US is 8% to 10%; in Europe, it’s around 5%; and in Latin America, it’s 18% to 20% and higher.
Add to that a world where people and businesses are increasingly global. They have the opportunity to travel, live, and study in different global locations as freelancers, importers, and SaaS subscribers, with international customers. The mismatch becomes glaring.
Banks, Tomas observed, are simply bad at cross-border financial products. As he points out, when his entrepreneur grandparents moved to Chile, it didn’t occur to them to conduct business overseas in countries like Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, or the US. They build local businesses, focusing on them.
However, entrepreneurs today envision expanding their companies cross-border, if not globally. They pay to hire freelance talent from global locations, source imports, and subscribe to software. They also receive payments from global customers.
The bottom line is that businesses have cross-border needs, and existing banks and incumbents haven’t delivered. They operate at extremely high banking margins and offer expensive, friction-filled, cross-border services. Global66 was built to fix that.
Global66: A Truly Global Account
Tomas was convinced that with technology, they could build a global account for individuals and businesses. At its core, Global66 offers local accounts across multiple regions, including US and European accounts for Latin American users.
As a result, users can avail of low-cost cross-border payments, multi-currency functionality, and a frictionless experience for individuals and businesses. The company earns revenue primarily through currency exchange spreads, which are significantly lower than those of traditional banks.
The mission is ambitious but clear: Make global finance simple, affordable, and accessible for Latin America.
The Hardest Call: Cutting Deep, Once
In 2022, like many growth companies, Global66 faced a reckoning. The team had grown from 40 to 300 people post-pandemic. Burn reached $700K per month. Decision-making slowed, and bureaucracy crept in.
After reading a memo that emphasized decisive leadership during downturns, Tomas made the hardest call of his career. He called his cofounder, Cristóbal Forno, and they decided to downsize. Ninety people were laid off, once, deeply, and decisively. The approach was intentional.
As Tomas recalls, they laid off people in a single, not multiple rounds. They stressed transparent communication and explained their reasons to the team. Tomas and Cristóbal also made a clear commitment to the remaining team.
The result was counterintuitive but powerful. Within months, the company was performing better, moving faster, and growing more efficiently with fewer people. Tomas’s takeaway: sometimes, leadership isn’t about avoiding pain; it’s about preventing prolonged uncertainty.
Capital Discipline as a Competitive Advantage
Global66 has raised just over $20M and still has roughly 40% of that capital on the balance sheet.
The company has been profitable for the last two years and hasn’t raised further capital since 2021.
Tomas’ philosophy is simple. He believes in raising only what the company needs. He also stresses spending as little time fundraising as possible. However, he is dedicated to operational efficiency, culture, and execution.
Storytelling is everything that Tomas Bercovich was able to master. The key is capturing the essence of what you are doing in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley legend (see it here) where the most critical slides are highlighted.
Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that founders worldwide are using to raise millions below.
The Long-Term Vision and Advice to Younger Self
If Global66 succeeds fully, Tomas envisions it as the default global financial account for Latin American people and businesses. It should be a platform serving millions of users, acting as a bridge that removes borders from everyday financial life, regardless of the activity or currency.
It’s a massive ambition, but it sits squarely at the intersection of a huge market and a deeply painful problem. Tomas often returns to a piece of advice given by a former boss. He advised that starting a company is only 50% of the job; the other 50% is keeping your eyes open to know when to pivot.
Tomas’s own addition is even sharper. He learned to choose big industries, and Global66 is in the world's largest industry, the financial sector. He also learned to solve real pain — not nice-to-have problems — and his words: “Don’t sell the cherry; sell the cake.”
That mindset is what led Tomas from cinema pricing to cross-border finance and why he believes Global66 can become truly transformative. He invites people to download the Global66 app, which enables onboarding from 60 different countries.
Users can fund their accounts with stablecoins and even directly via an ACA transaction, as is common in many Latin American countries. Tomas talks about many new products in the pipeline that will streamline banking services for users.
Final Thought
Tomas Bercovich’s journey is not about overnight success. It’s about compounding learning, disciplined execution, and the courage to make hard decisions early.
From Chile to the global stage, his story is a reminder that world-class companies don’t only come from traditional hubs; they come from founders who think globally, act decisively, and stay relentlessly focused on real problems. Sometimes, the biggest ideas really do come from the bottom of the world.
Entrepreneurship compounds through experimentation, failure, and hard decisions—not linear success. · A global mindset is built by living globally, not by thinking locally with international ambitions. · Startups fail when they sell the “cherry on top” instead of solving a core, painful, and urgent problem. · Lean operations are a strategic advantage—especially when competing against well-funded incumbents. · Knowing when to step aside can be as important as knowing when to double down. · Decisive leadership in downturns means acting once, acting fast, and communicating transparently. · The biggest companies are built by tackling massive industries with structural pain, not incremental convenience.
Maybe: This Serial Entrepreneur has processed more than $7 Billion through A LatAm Fintech Platform Enabling Cross-Border, Multi-Currency Money Transfers
Original Version
Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the DealMaker Show. So today today we have a really exciting founder that is joining us. You know, again, he's doing quite remarkable stuff out of Chile where they have their HQ and we're going to talking about everything that you can think of when it comes to fintech, when it comes to building, scaling, financing, going from one startup to the next. i mean, he has four under his belt, so think about that. you know Pretty unbelievable. But again, quite the conversation, quite inspiring. So brace yourself for the next 30 minutes or so that we have in front of us. So without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Tomas Berkovich. Welcome to the show.
Alejandro Cremades: So born and raised in Chile, Tomas, give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you?
Tomás Bercovich: Yeah. Yeah, I'm from the bottom of the world, small, thin, long country, and beautiful country. The south of Chile is one of the most amazing places in the world. and Very happy and life here, a family of immigrants. and My grandparents escaped from Europe and what today is Ukraine many years ago. A family of entrepreneurs. so When they arrived to Chile, they had nothing to do but start their own company. so
Tomás Bercovich: I grew with that mentality, founders mentality all the time. started here, then started for a semester in the UK, then later on, started in New York, in Columbia University as well. so and have been able to live a pretty global life, living and and traveling all around the the place. Something that I love. So happy to also be doing what I love, that is building companies, building teams, impacting on people's lives.
Alejandro Cremades: Now, one thing for you one thing for you, too, is you had the opportunity of having a different perspective. I mean, you went to the UK for a semester. Also, you've studied in New York, in Colombia, too, where you did your MBA.
Alejandro Cremades: I guess, what what do you think opened up for you being able to have the exposure to things that were happening, let's say, outside of Chile, outside of Latin America? How do you think that opened up a little bit more your worldview on things?
Tomás Bercovich: Yeah, so to think global, I think you must somehow live global. And the experience I've had, like leaving the UK twice, actually, I also, we started Global 66 from the UK. We lived two years in London. And being able to meet different people, and entrepreneurs, understanding different cultures, seeing that there's a whole world outside and and having the idea and looking for the way to build global companies.
Tomás Bercovich: a Yeah, I think it it has helped a lot being able to see the world and and sharing that in the degree I did in in Columbia University. It was just entrepreneurs from all around Latin America, being able to talk to them. and And really, you realize that it doesn't matter from where you are, where you do business, what industry you're in.
Tomás Bercovich: Like in the eighty twenty you have the same types of challenges, problems, whatever. So there's specific things to each country and each and each industry.
Tomás Bercovich: But overall, we all have to manage with capital raise, operations, technology, whatever. So, yeah, very, I would say, fundamental to being able to to live abroad and travel.
Alejandro Cremades: Now, for you, one thing that is interesting is, i mean, you were alluding to it, your family, you know family of immigrants, entrepreneurs too. I mean, you saw that early on why Why did you go work for somebody else before you got started, you know, with your first startup?
Tomás Bercovich: um So i started I started doing things when I was like 10 years old. I started i went to a retail shop to ask for a job, and I started working at 10. Then I was a waiter. Then I was a DJ since I was like 13 years old. so And when I came out of university, I wanted to go to ah to work to the US. No company wanted to hire me and send me from Chile to to the US. So I decided to work for a company that I could learn And I was like,
Tomás Bercovich: like the right hand and the guy that send like to do very basic stuff like send this invoice whatever so i have both worlds and that gave me a perspective to learn like everything that happens in a business and i started my first company in parallel so i started working on nights on weekends until we thought we we had uh like the opportunity to go for it and then i i quit and i started working full-time for my company but in the end i was yeah like an entrepreneur almost all the time
Alejandro Cremades: So the first day company that you did, you know, that was basically one that was more in the in the cinema industry, you know, with setting up pricing and stuff like that. So how was that first roadie? I mean, as they say, you you either succeed or you learn.
Alejandro Cremades: So you guys ended up winding down the operation. So I guess what what was the biggest lesson that you took away from that experience?
Tomás Bercovich: Many, but and the I would say the most important is you don't have to sell the cherry of the cake. You know, what we were selling there is revenue management solution for cinema industry.
Tomás Bercovich: And at that time, cinemas were just getting to have an online and shopping. So you they were just solving the way to sell online. And I was like selling something that was much more advanced to do all the, you know, revenue management, pricing, and capacity optimization and that went along with the online. and So and the like the the priorities of the management, they had more.
Tomás Bercovich: many things before like implementing revenue management that there was something that like increased their revenues and their profits and everything but so it was a complicated industry not that big if you compare for example with the financial industry and then i was selling something that was like when you have all the cake ready beautiful you just put the cherry on top of it so i like my view today is you have to go to bigger industries and to sell ah ah a problem that's that's really painful for for the people or the businesses. And there you have a chance to, to you have a higher chance to succeed.
Alejandro Cremades: Now for you, the next one was Couponati. So how did that transition how did that transition happen?
Alejandro Cremades: Because it sounds kind of like different, no? From the cinema to then Coupons, you know, a Groupon style.
Tomás Bercovich: Yes and no. Yes and no because what we did in setup pricing, we optimized the capacity of the cinema so they could have more revenues. What Kubernetes did was optimize and get more sales for not only cinemas, but also spas, beauty centers, other entertainment centers, whatever. so a In the end, the the objective was pretty similar. Of course, one was a SaaS company, a software company, and there was one was an e-commerce company. But the general idea was to help companies optimize their infrastructure and and sell more. So they had a kind of relative impact.
Tomás Bercovich: some things that were similar. And in the end, what happened, Setup Rising started winding down because we had a very big Mexican client that copied our system, kicked us away and then bought the cinema, the biggest cinema company, our so our biggest customer. So in the end, we started focusing more on Kubernetes. But that was a little bit the they transition. and It was a a nice story because we didn't have to a to let go anybody. So all the team from Setup Rising went to Kubernetes and and one one company started to wind down and that was growing very fast. So it was a pretty smooth transition.
Alejandro Cremades: So with Coponati, you guys ended up in building that into something meaningful. i mean, in four countries, basically with profitable nowadays. how was How was that journey like?
Tomás Bercovich: Oh, it was a roller coaster. So the company started growing very, very fast. We had a lot of competition and guys came to Latin America with, I would say, a couple of them with hundreds of millions of dollars and many of them with tens of millions of dollars. We just raised one million.
Tomás Bercovich: So we have to be very, very, very lean, very, very, very efficient. And that in the end paid off because a the industry, most of the players have very high fixed costs and they the the The business model didn't didn't support having very fixed costs.
Tomás Bercovich: and So many of them got, we bought like three or four players in the three players in the region. Many of them went bankrupt or closed.
Tomás Bercovich: And in in the end, what happened during the pandemic is the ones that had fixed costs died. ah One of them was Groupon in Latin America. And as we were very lean, we were also very close to to die, but we managed to stay alive. And in the end, ah after the COVID, we were able to a make the company profitable again. And for the last three years, it has been a profitable company again. It has operations in in four countries in Latin America. So it was a roller coaster, an industry that grew very, very fast.
Tomás Bercovich: And then a all the new industries it adjusted. In the end, it wasn't a very big industry, but probably Kubernetes is today the biggest of the kind in Latin America.
Alejandro Cremades: The next one was EasyTech. Now with EasyTech, it was the most immediate before Global 66. We'll talk about you know your latest baby in just in just a minute here. But with EasyTech, it was a little bit different because with Couponati, I mean, obviously the company continues to go, but with EasyTech, you ended up selling to your partners. I mean, it's a it's a little of a different approach then or a different way of turning the the the page or the chapter. So What happened there? you know so that Because I know that that was the most immediate thing that needed to happen for you to be doing what you're doing today with Global 66.
Tomás Bercovich: Yeah, so what happened, set up pricing was we incubated different ah companies, let's say. So after the revenue management, we did Kubernetes and we partnered up with two friends to do EasyTech.
Tomás Bercovich: One of them had a server solution. I had another one that went into that company. and So these two guys, Pato and Cristian, they managed the company from scratch. I wasn't in the management from the beginning. And and in the end, what makes sense is that They were the ones that that were building the company, that they owned the company. And we had a very friendly relationship. And in the end, they asked us to to to sell the business to them. and and
Tomás Bercovich: And it made a lot of sense. So we ended up selling and they keep doing very well. And everybody happy.
Tomás Bercovich: I’ll tell you what my boss told me at that time, which I think was a very wise piece of advice. Then I’ll tell you what I would add.
When I told him I was leaving, he wasn’t happy. He asked me what I was going to do, and I told him the idea for SetupRise. He didn’t say anything about it, but I saw in his face that he didn’t like what I was going to do.
He told me this: what you’re doing today is 50% of the road, of the job. Starting is 50%. The other 50% is keeping your eyes wide open to see if what you’re doing is the right path, or if you have to pivot and go for something else.
That was exactly it. We started Setup Pricing. We incubated Kubernetes and it started to grow very fast. From Kubernetes, I met my co-founders for Global 66. One thing started to lead to another, but it’s about keeping your eyes wide open.
What he should have said—because his face said it—and what I would tell the younger me is: choose an industry that’s big enough, and where you are sure, or pretty sure, you can solve a big problem for the customer.
Don’t sell the cherry on the cake. Sell something that’s really a pain for the customer. And that’s Global 66. That’s one of the reasons I believe this can be a very big company—if we do all the things right, bring in the right talent, and everything.
We’re in the biggest industry in the world, the financial industry, and there’s a huge pain for both people and businesses in doing cross-border transactions and their financial life in the end.
Alejandro Cremades: I love it. Tomas, for the people listening who would love to reach out, say hi, and perhaps learn more about Global 66, what would you tell them?
Tomás Bercovich: You can follow us. You can download our app. You can onboard today from 60 different countries. You can fund your account through stable coins today, and in many countries in Latin America directly through an ACA transaction. In a couple of months, we’ll have more surprises.
So you can get to know our product there. You can follow us on LinkedIn. You can follow me on LinkedIn too. We’re pretty active because we believe there’s a huge opportunity in communicating constantly—what we’re doing, the products we’re launching, how we build the company, and how we build the culture. So yeah, happy to have all you guys touching base there.
Alejandro Cremades: Amazing. Well, Tomas, thank you for being on the DealMaker Show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.
Tomás Bercovich: Thank you, Ali. Very interesting and fun conversation.
