Tomas Bercovich, CEO of Global66, shares his journey from a 10-year-old hustler to a successful entrepreneur, highlighting his mentality and lessons learned.
Tomas Bercovich, CEO of Global66, shares his journey from a 10-year-old hustler to a successful entrepreneur, highlighting his mentality and lessons learned along the way.
What you're doing today is 50% of the road. The other 50% is keeping your eyes wide open to see if what you're doing is the right path or you have to pivot and go for something else. [music] All righty. Hello everyone and welcome to the dealmaker show. So today we have a really exciting founder that is joining us. You know, uh again, he's doing quite remarkable stuff out of Chile where they have their HQ and we're going to be talking about everything that you can think of when it comes to fintech, when it comes to building, scaling, financing, uh 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, Thomas Burkovich. Welcome to the show.
>> Thank you, Alejandro. Happy to be here. >> So born and raised in Chile. Thomas, give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up for you? >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm from the bottom of the world, small uh thin long country. Um beautiful country. The south of Chile is one of the most amazing places in the world. Erh very happy um life here. Family of immigrants. My grandparents escaped from Europe and and what today Ukraine uh many years ago. Um family of entrepreneurs. So when they arrived to Chile, they had nothing to do but start their own company. So I I grew with that mentality, founders mentality all the time. Um so studied here then studied for a semester in the UK then later on studied in in New York in Columbia University as well. So and have been able to live a pretty global life uh living and and traveling all around the the place. Uh something that I
love. So happy to also be doing what I love that is uh building companies, building teams uh impacting on people's lives. Now one thing for you summary, >> one thing for you too is you had the opportunity of having a different perspective. U I mean you went to the UK for a semester also you've studied in New York uh in Colombia too where you did your MBA. I guess 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? >> Yeah. So to to think global I think you must somehow live global and the experience I I've had like leaving the UK twice actually I also we started global 66 from the UK we live two years in London and being able to meet different people entrepreneurs understanding different cultures uh
seeing that there's a whole world outside and and having the idea and looking for the way to build global companies. Uh yeah, I think it has helped a lot being able to see the world and and share in the in the degree I did in in Colombia University. It was just entrepreneurs from all around Latin America. H 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. like in the 8020 you have the same types of challenges problems whatever so there's specific things to each country and each and each industry but overall we all have to manage with capital race HR operations technology whatever so um yeah very I would say fundamental to >> now being able to to live abroad and For you, one thing that is interesting is, I mean, you were alluding to it, your family, you know, family of immigrants,
entrepreneurs to 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? >> Um, so I start 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 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 like the right hand and the guy that send like to do very basic stuff like send this invoice, whatever. So I had both worlds and and that gave me a perspective to learn like everything that happens in a business. Um and I started my first company in parallel. So I started working on nights on weekends uh 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. So [snorts] the first 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 rodeo? I mean, as they say, you you either succeed or you learn. So you guys ended up winding down the operation. So I guess what was the biggest lesson that you took away from that experience? >> O many. But um 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 and at that time so cinemas were just getting to have an online erh 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 uh you know revenue management, pricing uh capacity optimization uh that went along with the with the online um so and the like the the priorities of the management they had many things before like implementing revenue management that there was something that like increased their revenues and their profits and everything. But h 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 uh to sell a a a very a problem that's that's really painful for for the people or the businesses h and there you have a chance to to you have a higher chance to succeed. [snorts] >>
Now for you the next one was konati. So, how did that transition? How did that transition happen? Because it sounds kind of like different. No. Uh, from the cinema to then coupons, you know, group style. >> Yes and no. Yes and no. Because so what we did in in setup pricing, we optimized the capacity of the cinema so they could have more more revenues. Uh what Kubernetic did uh was optimize uh and and get more sales for not only cinemas but also spas, beauty centers, other entertainment centers, whatever. So h in the end the the objective was pretty similar. Of course, one was a SAS company, a software company, and the other was one was an e-commerce company. But the general idea uh was uh to help companies optimize their infrastructure and and sell more. So they had kind of relative uh some things that were similar. Um in the end what happened setup pricing started winding down
because we had a a very big Mexican client that COVID our system kicked us away and then bought the cinema the biggest cinema company our our biggest customer. So in the end we started focusing more on Kubernetic. Um but that was a little bit the the transition. Uh it was a a nice story because we didn't have to uh to let go anybody. So all the team from setup rising went to Kubernetic uh and and one one company started to wind down and that was growing very fast. So it was a pretty smooth uh transition. So with Coponati you guys ended up building that into something meaningful. I mean in four countries basically with profitable nowadays. How was how was that journey like? >> Oh it was a roller coaster. So it's a 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 1 million. So we had to be very very very lean very very very efficient. H and that in the end paid off because h the industry most of the players had very high fixed costs. H and the the the the business model didn't didn't support having very fixed cost. Uh so many of them got we bought like three or four players in three players in the region. H many of them went bankrupt or closed h and in the end what happened during the pandemic is the ones that had fixed cost died. uh one of them was Grubon 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 uh after the covid we were able to uh 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…