This Entrepreneur Raised $70 Million To Deliver Anything To Your Door
Vicente Zavarce has already raised tens of millions of dollars for his LA based startup that is expanding in Latin America, beyond the usual suspects of just Mexico and Brazil.
On the Dealmakers Show Zavarce talks about the most important skills in startups, the true customer and most vital side of marketplace businesses, bootstrapping and fundraising, company culture and international business.
Vincente Zavarce was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Where he grew up through high school, and eventually landing in Boston for college.
Growing up Zavarce was able to experience the social and economic turmoil of an environment gripped by polarized politics and hyperinflation.
On one hand Venezuela should be one of the wealthiest countries in the world thanks to having some of the most substantial oil resources on the planet. Yet, shifting even further some being like Cuba, to even more like China created an enormous amount of financial and social problems.
Among these were severe food scarcity, supply chain issues, and hyper inflation. Which brought even more instability and lack of security.
On the bright side, Vincente says that this has created many entrepreneurs. A lot of it stems from the necessity to be creative and innovative, and learn how to build something from nothing.
Attending Northeastern University for a degree in finance and entrepreneurship opened up many resources and a great support network for Zavarce.
He joined the entrepreneurs club, and was inspired by the speakers they brought in. He saw how others had successfully built companies from nothing. As well as being encouraged by an environment in which it was okay to fail. Which happened to be really helpful when his first startup attempt flopped after raising $5M.
The Most Important Elements Of Building A Marketplace Startup
Out of school Vincente took a job in investment banking. A path he saw as being able to help build his breadth of business knowledge, while thinking about what his next business would be.
In this role he was representing founders in M&A transactions. Many of which had bootstrapped their companies for seven to 15 years, and were enjoying life changing outcomes.
He was inspired by how they were magically creating such value almost out of thin air. As well as how he saw that building companies can change the way in which communities, cities, regions, and whole countries or the world work, depending on the scale of that business.
Next he took roles in consumer startups including Wayfair and Postmates. One of the biggest lessons he discovered was that “without proper growth marketing, a highly technical team that understands how to track the attribution of a new customer, and that understands lifetime value of a customer, and the customer acquisition costs, with an acceptable payback period, the company will run into trouble later. Even after raising their Series B.” He saw that growing marketing was the number one most important skill to have on a startup team to make the venture successful and sustainable.
Additionally he learned that data was way more important than opinions. Especially when conquering localized market segments, and being prepared to beat bigger competitors with more funding.
Specifically in the case of marketplace startups he says that he determined that the supply element is actually the most important side of the equation. That those supply side merchants are actually the most important customer. You should be building up the supply side first.
Otherwise he says that all of your efforts and even success at pulling in many consumers is wasted if you don’t have the supply side figured out first.
Eventually Vincente recognized that putting his whole life into building other people’s dreams and net worth no longer made sense. He should be doing it for himself.
At the same time he felt like he had developed enough insight and skills to venture into founding a company of his own.
Then things began to change in Venezuela, which made new things possible. They had been shifting more to the use of the US dollar. Controls were removed that had previously forced extreme inflation. This opened up more freedom to transfer money, and the hope of inflation slowing. Creating a more feasible environment for a business. Dynamics that may be useful for leaping into business in other countries as well. With the hope that the economy had hit bottom, and there could be more positive growth, Zavarce decided it was time to jump in, and fill some of the gaps that existed.
Vincente Zavarce’s Yummy super app connects consumers to just about everything they want and need in a one stop shopping app.
That runs the gamut from groceries and restaurant food delivery to medicines, clothing, electronics, rides, and baseball tickets.
Based out of Los Angeles, they are already operating in Venezuela and Bolivia, with a distributed team of around 300.
After putting in he and his wife’s personal savings, and maxing out their credit card, they began to raise outside capital, beginning with angel investors. They’ve now raised $70M for the journey.
Funding your startup · Company culture · Expanding into new markets · Vincente’s top advice for other entrepreneurs
