Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling, and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America

by Brian Requarth

Viva the Entrepreneur shares the lessons Brian learned while building his company. He shows how to manage your own psychology and your operations, be it working with co-founders, building a culture, or managing a board of directors. Brian also reveals the secrets of scaling a business and best practices for raising venture capital in Latin America. You will develop an understanding of the most critical parts of an investor term sheet, and gain perspective into the inner workings of the venture capital game.

Genres: Business, Startup, Leadership, Entrepreneurship

256 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[Mixer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read for building startups in Latam

[Yuri Danilchenko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brian shares his amazing journey as an entrepreneur in Latin America where he built Viva Real from nothing to a $550 million dollar exit. He shares everything he learned about building a scalable business in Latin America, a region full of unique challenges.

Brian's transparency and local insights serve as both a practical guide and an inspiration to founders tackling opportunities in LATAM.

[Niklas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a good book that teaches valuable lessons for entrepreneurs.

[Jose Honorato · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary: Entertaining read, but not as informative as I expected.

If you're looking for general advice on how to build or scale a LATAM-based VC-backed startup, this book is NOT for you. Although I enjoyed the book, it is disconnected from it's title; it will not give you any practical and up-to-date guidance on how to "Found, Scale, and Raise Venture Capital in Latin America".

With examples drawn from the author's experience on building, scaling and selling a Brazil-based property tech startup, this book is an entertaining, down-to-earth version of "The Hard Thing About Hard Things". The narrative is exclusive to Brazil (mentioning "all about Brazil" throughout the book), not touching on any other LATAM country whatsoever.

Other things this book doesn't have:

1. A compendium of the most prominent Angel, Seed, and VC funds in LATAM.
2. What the financing ecosystem looks like.
3. How to access talent in the region.
4. Regulatory and Legal landscape.
5. Success stories about other startups (briefly mentions MercadoLibre and Nubank, but mostly in passing).

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone looking to build or support tech startups in Latin America. Brian built Viva Real, a tech company that recently sold for $600M and is now one of the most successful startup stories in the whole region. His book is a vulnerable account of the experience with great learnings spanning from developing the right relationships, overcoming bumps in the road, playing the VC game and more.

As Linda Rottenberg says in the foreword, it is "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" for Latin America.

[Felipe Salinas Rangel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book if you want to read a business story that will inspire you and entertain you while learning from real life experiences.

—————

Viva the Entrepreneur is Brian Requarth’s journey on founding and scaling Viva Real (Real Estate digital Listing) up until selling his company for a staggering USD $550M to Grupo Zap in Brazil.

Overall I found the book to be really entertaining and with great story telling, it is light to read and It feels almost as if Brian was narrating it to you in your head.

I found it to be really inspiring as well. Brian narrates his life story of how he made his way up from rookie to high-impact entrepreneur and how finding love made him move to Latin America, first Colombia and then Brazil, building a tech company from scratch while bltizcalling and learning in the process.

There are really good learnings on recruiting, company culture, managing co-founders conflict, raising capital and even handling personal life balance while being an entrepreneur. It also demonstrates the importance of purpose and focus.

As an entrepreneur, I could relate to several stories, characters and settings as I was reading!

In terms of content I would describe it as reading a Latin American version of “The hard thing about hard things” from Ben Horowitz, with a touch of “Secrets of Sandhill road” from Scott Kupor.


CONCLUSION:
——

Expect this book to be a story telling with real life examples and tips on building, scaling and raising venture capital from an anecdote approach, rather than a detailed guide on how to do each at a deep level.

If that is what you are seeking, I would recommend taking a look at books that specifically cover these topics (e.g Blitzcalling from Reid Hoffman, No rules Rules from Reid Hastings, or Secrets of Sandhill road from Scott Kupor).

Overall I really liked and would highly recommend it to any aspiring entrepreneur in Latin America!

[Tomas R · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are (or want to be) connected to the startup ecosystem in Latin America; this book will matter to you. Brian Requarth sat on the front seat of it during the last decade or so, as the founder of ViVaReal/Grupo ZAP in Brazil (and now as a supporter of early stage startups with Latitud). Here he shares his pains, learnings and successes with an honestly that will be helpful for anyone navigating the entrepreneurial journey in such an amazing region.

[Jose Jair Bonilla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una historia inspiradora y una guía práctica

Este libro reúne en pocas páginas la historia de la vida de un emprendedor que sirve de inspiración para las nuevas generaciones que sueñan con cambiar el mundo. Una aproximación humilde a pesar del éxito a una larga lista de aprendizajes de los cuales tenemos mucho que aprender.

[Santiago García · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are funding a startup in Latin America is a must read. Good tips and explanation about the vc ecosystem and how it works. Also advises if you are a first time founder in technology, definitely they will save you a lot of time and suffering.

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book doesn’t really help you figure out how to do a successful startup specifically in Latam. But it is good tips on dealing with investors and term sheets and an interesting story of an entrepreneur who made it.

[T. Laane · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the beginning the book seemed like too much Latin America, but it was absolutely not. I myself am at a startup hub Estonia, one of the leading countries with unicorns per capita in the world. But since it's not USA and Silicon Valley, we also seem like Brazil to the world :) So all the references about culture came in very handy but me. Besides that, the book gave me many new insights and a lot of notes - and this is a high bar, since I read so much about startups. So - I do recommend!

[Yan Mendes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply amazing! Brian outlines the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face when building a company in Latin America. A must read for every startup founder in the region.

[Sabina Peskin · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who works with start-ups, this book has been key to better understand the ecosystem. Highly recommended. It was so relevant that I read it within a day.

[Felipe Baulé · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just an amazing book for any founder In LATAM looking for a human perspective of the entrepreneurial journey and very rich tips to make it happen!

[Thiago Garuti · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good work!
It was really nice to read about Brain's journey, a lot of practical and useful advice.
It is also really inspiring to see his optimism with Latin America!

[Wilson Moreno · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is great, and I enjoyed reading it. It does not provide any "new" information about startups, entrepreneurship, or venture capital in general. However, its Latin American-ish flavor (still from the viewpoint of an American foreigner) makes it really interesting to read.

[Julia Duarte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good book!
Basically a latam version of horowitz’s book