Issue link: http://endeavor.uberflip.com/i/1070318
JOSE FERNANDO VÉLEZ Colombia, PayU More than 15 years ago, I co-founded a payments processing company called Pagosonline. com. After several years of growing almost organically in Colombia, we clearly saw that to reach the full potential of the company, we needed to expand regionally and while looking for an investment to expand, we decided to sell the majority stake of the company to Naspers, a very big South African media conglomerate. At that time, it was very difficult to find VC money in Latam, especially in Colombia and Naspers conditions couldn't be matched by any local investor. We sold the majority stake of the company six years ago, and since then, the company (the Latam operation of PayU) has grown from less than $1 million USD in revenues per year to more than $60 million, and we have significantly benefited economically from that growth. We transformed the company from a local operation in Colombia, to a regional one, by merging with two companies in Latam, one in Brazil and one in Argentina. The merger of those companies was not an easy process, and we have had several ups and downs in the road. Recently we decided to change the operating model in PayU. We changed our operating model from a regional one to a global one, a in a sense, we are replicating what we did in Latam to a global scale. I also changed my role from Regional Manager of the Latam operation to global CTO. To be honest, I have mix feelings: on one side I'm very happy to come back to technology, I really love technology, but on the other hand, I miss starting something new, where I could have much more autonomy, and apply all the lessons learned in the long journey that I have had in PayU. PayU is already a unicorn, and based on our revenues we are already one of the biggest payment companies worldwide. Nonetheless, our previous operating model lead to a lot of duplication, especially in IT, and our profitability is below industry benchmarks. If we are successful at transforming our operating model to a global one, and if we can reduce our technology complexity, our valuation could be 3 or 4 times higher, which would mean a material improvement in my personal wealth, since I'm one of the minority shareholders of PayU. I definitively want to start a new business and I want to build it for the long run. But I'm looking for something that could be very big one day, something where I could spend my next 20 or 30 years of my live. If something characterizes me, is my resilience and perseverance, and I need to find an idea where I can put all my love, energy and attention. I don't like to start a business to sell it after a couple of years; in PayU I had to do it, due to our circumstances and our lack of experience, but I don't want to repeat the same story again.