This week’s episode of Funding & Disrupting presented by Oura Collective welcomes Mateo Folador, CEO and Founder of Adelante. With Folador, Keith has interviewed VCs from 5 continents, adding South America to the list.
Keith interviews Mateo to learn more about his company, business in LatAm, and their funding processes. Folador talks about his experiences and evolution of Adelante, formerly known as Talentu.
How Technology & Adelante Evolved in Columbia?
The interview begins with a general discussion of business in Latin America and Mateo’s background. Mateo Folador fondly tells why and how he built Adelante. Being a Columbian, he shares the hardships he faced and how he overcame them to succeed in his business.
When Keith asks Folador how he came up with the idea of Adelante, Folador calls it to be an accident. Keith and Folador had a laugh discussing how it is always such accidents that make such things happen.
Folador goes ahead to tell how he was doing a job related to monitoring and was nowhere near the IT field. He also tells how Columbia was not technologically advanced at that period. However, as soon as Folador was introduced to technology, he instantly fell in love with it. He realized how vast its potential is and how so many inventions can be made.
Folador also shares how there is a popular saying in Columbia that it is ‘full of problems’. With technology around, Mateo knew how tech could help efficiently solve their problems. It is how technology evolved around Columbia, and Adelante started building. To date, Folador has done many projects, out of which some succeeded, and some didn’t.
Inspiration and Idea Behind Adelante
To get more detail, Keith asks Mateo Folador to discuss his inspirations and idols. Folador talks about how he had the same idols everyone shares, including Steve Jobs. Folador felt that Steve Jobs understood its users and improved accordingly.
Talking about the inspiration behind building Adelante, Folador shares a touching incident that happened with him. Folador tells how while getting out of a call center, he saw a woman crying. Mateo Folador went ahead and asked the woman why was she crying. She told him that she did not get a job at the call center and that she needs money to run her house. She told him she’d been trying for almost two years now and had no money, making her quite vulnerable.
Mateo Folador decided to walk through her resume and asked her to make some changes. Mateo even prepared her for her interview. Within the next two weeks, she found a job, and eight weeks later, she even became the top performer at her company. You’ll love to learn what was the feedback and help from Mateo that changed the tables for her.
Folador also shares the position of Latin America when it comes to employment opportunities and the way businesses work here. He talks about the negative cycle in all jobs in LatAm and how it is financially forgotten. Mateo Folador exemplifies this by telling how the top interest rate that is 18% in the U.S is 700% per year in LatAm, emphasizing how critical the situation is in Latin America.
Technical Challenges
Keith further asks Mateo to discuss the different technical challenges he faced in the industry and how it all worked out for him. Mateo talks more about Adelante telling how it is a combination of B2B and B2C companies. He goes ahead to share the biggest challenge his company faced.
Folador tells how getting people to change the way they do things was the biggest challenge for him. He shares how Latin America was not technically advanced back then and still isn’t in some parts. So, making people believe in his ideas and company was one of the crucial hurdles he had to undergo.
He also talks about his success story with a company they worked for. Mateo Folador tells how Talentu reduced a company’s costs from 2.2 million to 600,000 through their ideas and data analysis skills. He also tells how Adelante uses such success stories as examples to show users how they can save money.
Talking about the old times, Folador shares how the biggest challenge for their company was adoption. However, now people are more aware so Adelante focuses more on adding new layers of business.
Fundraising & Plans to Scale
Keith moves ahead to understand more about the fundraising process and Adelante’s plans to scale their business. Folador tells how he strongly believes in making connections. Mateo Folador believes networking is the key to business opportunities in any sector. He also shares his mantra for business which is, “people invest in people”.
Folador believes it is your attitude that matters more than the product to investors. Investors will always look for financial benefits but will also look for a person that has the potential to evolve. He casually tells his listeners, “If you make connections, you’ll get the money.”
Folador speaks with experience as he tells how Talentu acquired its first funding in 3-4 weeks. Mateo Folador even goes ahead to tell how they created a budget before raising funds and asked for nearly double the money they needed. It helped them cover the costs of mistakes.
Mateo Folador also shares his plan to scale by understanding different sectors like retail, logistics, and manufacturing among others. They creates lists and uses cases from different industries to expand Adelante. He also shares how Adelante is close to becoming a unicorn. He suggests using HR to acquire users using data. You’ll love the part where Mateo tells how he reduced the cost of acquisition to 90% by converting their users to financial services.
Advises for Founders & Investors by Mateo Folador
In the last segment of the interview, Keith asks Mateo to give some advice to the budding entrepreneurs. Folador gives simple yet super-effective advice to his listeners by asking the entrepreneurs to get a growth mindset.
He asks people to be more flexible and not stay fixed on one skill. Also, tells his listeners to keep on building new talents. Folador shares his experience of how he learned and invested in himself before investing in Adelante.
The second piece of advice that Mateo had to share was something every entrepreneur must possess. Mateo Folador suggests that one must understand how one can provide value to someone. He advises his listeners to learn how to put their thoughts in words and present their ideas effectively.
On this note, Keith concludes the interview by asking Mateo to share his contact information. If you are someone who’s still struggling to find the right opportunity, then this interview is for you!
Adelante Story Notes
Evolution of technology in Columbia
Inspiration & idea behind Adelante
Technical challenges faced by Mateo Folador
Fundraising process for Adelante
Adelante’s plan to scale
Advice for budding entrepreneurs