MAU [Talk]

Ep. 012 Gina Gotthilf

April 09, 2021 Gina Gotthilf - Co-founder - Latitud Season 1 Episode 12
MAU [Talk]
Ep. 012 Gina Gotthilf
Show Notes Transcript

Hear from Gina Gotthilf, co-founder of Latitud, a network supporting tech entrepreneurs in Latin America. Adam and Gina discuss esoteric mobile growth topics as well as some of her greatest achievements from her previous roles at Duolingo, Tumblr and more. 

To connect with Gina directly, you can reach her on LinkedIn @GinaGotthilf or on the MAU Vegas website, MAUVegas.com.



MAU[Talk]:

Hey guys, welcome to MAU [Talk]. A podcast from MAU Vegas, the premier mobile acquisition and retention summit. On today's episode, I'm chats with Gina Gotthilf, co founder at Latitud to discuss some esoteric mobile growth topics, as well as some of her greatest achievements that she took lead on within her previous roles. Take it away, Adam.

Adam Lovallo:

Gina, thank you for joining me, Gina Gotthilf for anyone who doesn't know her, although most people in the mobile app install ecosystem probably do. I think Gina we probably first met I don't know, four or five years ago, and MAU contacts. So thank you for joining me on the podcast.

Gina Gotthilf:

Thank you for having me. And thank you for having me at MAU many, many years ago.

Adam Lovallo:

Indeed, indeed. Okay. So Gina, this was what I wanted to cover, I wanted to not spend too much time on the past, but certainly have to speak to Duolingo, and maybe even some of the Tumblr stuff, and then get into modern day. And then I had some more kind of esoteric growth topics to talk about around like press if they've done a lot of etc. So this podcast primarily focuses on mobile growth. But you know, at this point, I think growth and mobile growth are basically synonymous. So when in your career, did you first start interacting with native applications, iOS, or Android stuff?

Gina Gotthilf:

That's when I started working with Duolingo. But to be super candid, I never actually thought that this is what I was gonna do. I didn't really realize that like, if you asked me all the time, like, are you interacting with native apps, I wouldn't really know what you're talking about.

Adam Lovallo:

Yeah.

Gina Gotthilf:

So it kind of all happened step by step, not by accident, per se, but it was not as planned as people would think. I've been working with Tumblr before. But that was very web based. There was there was an app as well. But like, we were mainly focused on the on the on the web. And my work was really not. We, I couldn't really touch the products because I was just doing quote, unquote, marketing. And so I wasn't really interacting with engineers, designers, etc. But when I started working with Duolingo, actually, one of my first jobs there was to help them launch their Android app.

Adam Lovallo:

Okay. And at the time, I assume, what year did you would did you start at Duolingo?

Gina Gotthilf:

2013.

Adam Lovallo:

Okay, so pretty early in the App Store ecosystem, I can't remember when the iOS store launched, but not that many years before that. Okay. And so you started working on this Android app product. Talk to me about how how did your role evolve at Duolingo? Because I know you were there for a big part of the company's growth, although they that that trajectory has continued to today. So what it what did it? What did it look like as you evolved into a quote unquote, mobile growth person before that was really a title that existed?

Gina Gotthilf:

For sure. So I wasn't Duolingo for five years. And they hired me as a consultant to help them grow in Brazil. That was kind of the context, I had just opened a company to help tech companies and startups grow in Latin America, and position myself as an expert in that only because I had helped Tumblr grow in Latin America. And so they hired me as a consultant. And my sort of the only stuff I was doing originally was figuring out how to get Brazilians to lands in Argentinians to hear about Duolingo. And so that translated into press, and then some social media, figuring out localization stuff, scouting partnership opportunities, talking to government officials, like whatever it's trying to figure out what those schooling ecosystem look like, very non product in a way, just kind of trying to figure out how to make this thing grow. And then they asked me to do that same thing all over the world. So I went to Europe, Asia, and all these crazy countries and to launch Duolingo. The only interaction I had with like, with the more of the product type stuff, during that time was one on the localization and internationalization front, I didn't see it as a product thing. I just saw it as like, Hey, guys, like this is how this is how this looks here. Should we be thinking about doing things this way? Like? Are we sure that like, we were translating things properly, whatever. So like, from that perspective, and then also, I was trying to be friend, all of the local App Store people in all the different countries to get us featured in that country. So that's kind of like, was very light interaction. It wasn't until about two and a half or three, maybe years in, when they said to me, Hey, we really need someone to own our daily active users and our growth metrics. And it kind of feels like you're the, you know, the most natural person to do that. Because all of my PR and communication, social media, whatever I did was always braided based on how well how much it impacted the use anyway. And they were thinking of hiring externally but in the end decided to to promote me to sort of that role. I didn't know what growth was actually went back to my desk and googled growth, like growth app. Like, what is it? And then that's when I discovered Andrew Chen's blog that day and I was just like, Okay, look at this dude. And I start reading his blog and like, that's how I started learning. And in the beginning, all I had was like this one engineer was a back end engineer and me and they were like, do something. And I'm like, I got this. Don't worry, guys. And I'm like googling, like, What do I do? Google, please tell me. And so that's when I, when I started working with that, and it was, it was really exciting to grow from from zero.

Adam Lovallo:

That's awesome. Okay, so let's talk about still on the Doulingo. Yes, on the Duolingo. Friend, because we've spoken many times over the years are presented and stuff about the presswork. Because Duolingo correct me if I'm wrong was not really a major, you know, paid UA thing that maybe has never been. So when you think about similarly, early stage companies, like what do you recommend to them? To try to have similar press success? I mean, did you was there any unique approach that you took? Or were you just reaching out to people like, what what what do you think was the real driver?

Gina Gotthilf:

I am a big recommender, of avoiding paid acquisition if you can for as long as possible. And that's what we do at Duolingo . And we didn't start doing paid acquisition until maybe the end of your honestly, like, I think the fifth year of the company, maybe fourth or fifth year. So we really focus on organic, which forced us to be really strategic about like the product and making it something that people really like and focusing on our retention numbers. And, and yeah, and telling a good story for press. There are I can't recommend that to everyone. Because there are instances in which you really do need to pay growth for a reason or another, even if it is just to help you reach an audience that can then help you figure things out product wise, are we so the civil significance, etc. But so in terms of PR, I started doing that with Tumblr, I didn't know what PR was, I just thought, okay, these guys want me to help them grow. And I have no budget, what do I do? And I thought like, Well, you know, if I get if I could get like the tech section of this, like major newspaper that I read, they have like a tech, like little like, I don't know, column once a week. If I get that guy to write something really cool about Tumblr, maybe people discover Tumblr. And then I was like, Okay, well, how do I, how do I reach this person? So I was like, sort of started Googling, that I was like, Okay, I think I can like, maybe I can find them on LinkedIn or Twitter. So I looked them up, and then send them a message. And then I thought, well, it's not just this column, like, well, who else would write about Tumblr? Maybe, you know, I'm thinking, Well, actually, actually, like, there's a lot of fashion stuff on Tumblr, maybe there's an interesting story there. Maybe Oh, my god, there's like sports and food. And I can actually tailor this to all these different ways. And that's kind of how I started doing PR. I just didn't know that was what it was. And I also started getting better at understanding what it is that I had to say or write to get people to be interested. So for example, like, I could just say, Hi, my name is Gina. I'm blah, blah, blah, I already lost that person. Or I could say, like, Hey, I'm working with this site. And they're doing like, also lost that person. Like, what are the things I have to say immediately to make people go like, Okay, this is interesting. And so that's when I like, started dropping all the signifiers I possibly could into the first sentence, and being like, US New York based because that means a lot in Brazil, New York based, like David Karp has loved you know, like, and then just started like finding how do I how are they already have this many users and this many in Brazil, and like, and then I figured out also that like, if I added like a time component to it, and made it really urgent that they were much more likely to respond to like, they are available for conversation for two days this week, and then never again, you know, like, I don't know, like an engineer be like, Hey, guys, you need to come visit Brazil, because then I actually can say that you're going to be physically in Brazil for like three days. And that's the only time that you get to interview them. And understanding those trends. That worked out really well for Tumblr. So then when I started a company that was kind of part of the playbook with Duolingo, we definitely kept kept that going. And my playbook there was was kind of like back, it was a little I think inverse from what you would think about like you, I wouldn't just go and reach out to press I would think, what would interest press, I would make that thing happen. And then I would reach out the press afterwards. So let's say for example, we're going into Turkey, where no one knows Duolingo, no, one knows, what's going on on and maybe the CAPTCHA story is also not just people don't really know the whole CAPTCHA thing, who like how do I get journalists to care about Louisiana? Well, I know what journalists do care about which is their most important university I think that if their most important university invites Louis to give a really important talk, then suddenly, this means that this guy's important like it adds meaning to him and into the work. And if I get a second important conference at the same time, and he can speak there then we can like kill two birds with one stone. And I can reach out to PR and say, Louis, one on has been invited by webproxy and was at university bla bla bla bla bla and suddenly there's no one heard of him, but they go, Oh, like, I guess I'm behind the times and I should know about this person because he was invited by all these important people. You know.

Adam Lovallo:

Right, right, right. like

Gina Gotthilf:

So that kind of became my my playbook, internationally, at least for the first two years or so, figuring out kind of like how to how to befriend journalists how to understand what stories they were interested in, and sometimes how to actually backtrack and do the thing that would then interest them, like, let's do a government partnership, you think that the Government Partnership would help you grow, but governments are super slow, so that didn't actually help us grow. But reaching out to press and saying we are now partners of your government is a big thing. And that reaches a lot of people who then think that you have credibility.

Adam Lovallo:

Did you ever in Duolingo, create, you know, like, create content, like aggregate statistics? And you know, we got this like any of that kind of stuff? Or was it more personality based with like the CEO, and you know, that kinda thing.

Gina Gotthilf:

Totally like that stories are super interesting. So we just started out the personality thing, because that was kind of my easiest, like, lowest hanging fruit at the time. And that was like that one, at one point, you have to stop telling the origin, the company origin story, it's kind of gets pulled up. Although let me tell you that like two years later, all the journalists have already like gone to another publication, and the new people won't bother to check if they've written about this before, and they will write about it again. So don't give up. But yes, database stories are great, because journalists are looking for, for new information, new trends and oftentimes, as if you if you have like a successful app, or if you're really paying attention to a certain vertical, you have a really good grasp of what might be interesting, what trends you're seeing what trends your competitors are saying. Actually, someone I spoke to recently said like that what they did, this is a big company here in Brazil, big a big tech company, they would do surveys with their user base, or even like, more broadly, like about their whatever. So it was a real estate company, like who, you know, where are you looking to buy and whatever and like, and they would get that from that data from their user base, but also externally, and then put package that up neatly in a way that made them look good, and then send it to journalists. While more interesting, cuz you basically just did a lot of the work that the journalist would have to do in terms of verifying things, you have numbers, you have statistics. So I would think about it from the perspective of what can I do to make that journalists life easier and more interesting today? So if I'm going to give them a story, what are they going to need from the story? And what's going to make this really interesting for them and for their readers? And the more you're able to answer that question, the more likely they are to actually just take you up on it. Did you, did you always do the outreach, you know, kind of manually slash yourself? Or did you ever find that, especially as Duolingo grew, and submitter, you know, made different major markets, retaining, quote, unquote, PR agencies was actually beneficial to get to some of the right people? Oh, look, at the time, I was very bullish on just do it yourself, because I have not had good experience experiences with PR agencies. And my and my hunch is that in general, and so of course, there are amazing exceptions, but in general, PR agencies don't have to don't have the same incentives as you do as your ambassador at the company, because the PR agency is trying to maintain a relationship with their clients and make the clients happy, but they're also trying to maintain great relationships with the journalists, right. So that's their, like bread and butter. So if I Duolingo, I'm like, hey, I need you to pitch this to the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times that, uh, they're gonna think like, this is I'm not gonna do this. Because every if I have to email my contact as New York Times every day with someone else who asked for that, like, they're, they're going to block me, and they're not going to think anything I say is relevant. So I have to be very careful about what I'm going to send to the New York Times, which is like, that's what I would do if I was a person who was doing PR, because yeah, you don't want to piss off the New York Times guy like or woman. But as, as the, you know, the spokesperson for your company for the head of growth, you is that you want to you want to piss off anyone, but you have a lot more of an incentive to just do what they call NPR spray and pray, which is considered to be big, which is when you just go to ask everyone to write about you, and you like try to make it work, without pissing people off. Like you can't like if you pitch seven people to New York Times, this will never happen if you pitch seven people at TechCrunch. And like two of them, right, like write about you, they're gonna get really mad, because like, you just, you just made their lives harder. So not not doing that kind of thing. And of course, giving people exclusives when when appropriate, but in general, just trying to get whoever to write about you. That's your incentive. So doing that internally is easier. Also, journalists really like hearing from especially like the CEO or the founder of a company, it's like the middle there. So that is also an advantage many times, it was really tough, because journalists and editors change jobs a lot, they get fired, or they quit or they move on. It's just a very fluid industry. And so I would, you know, collect all of these amazing, I don't know, like a little I would have my little Rolodex of people that I had contact. And I had a Google Sheet like a spreadsheet of like 10 different tabs each for each country that I was. So it'd be like Brazil, Turkey, China, India, like and trying to maintain that. But then you email that same person like six months later and the email bounces because they're gone. And now you have to figure out. So that's super hard and time consuming, and etc, it was really worthwhile for us the beginning, if you're able to find an amazing, very small boutique agency who's going to treat you like, like a major client, and as you know, they already have all the context pre established, etc, it could be advantageous. And also, you can use something like decision, which I didn't know about until I hired someone in VR. And they were like, why are you not using CISION. There's there's also a cheap CISION now, but basically like a database of all the emails of journalists, however, I do think that reaching out piecemeal is effective because I was reaching out to people on LinkedIn or Twitter. So it wasn't a, it wasn't a random person, they could see my profile there. And so they knew immediately know who I was, and you know that I had some cre ibility. So I think that hel s me get through the door.

Adam Lovallo:

Awesome. I love it. Okay, so that's the main Duolingo thing, but I wanted to hit although I'll have a few more. But before I give my my last couple topics, could you tell me what you're doing now? Cuz I don't even know, like, what are you doing now?

Gina Gotthilf:

Who knows? My parents don't know, in fact, um, well, and I'm very happy to talk about Duolingo all day, every day, because we did some really cool product led growth stuff there too. And, you know, that's, it's the book that I was my school. That was my growth school for sure. So I went on to then work on the Mike Bloomberg presidential campaign. So I did that was from a growth perspective was fascinating, because we were, you know, spending like a million dollars a day. And like in the whole company, I with my budget, I was able to reach the physical significance on like landing page modifications, like three times a day, which is crazy, because normally you wait two weeks for numbers, if I'd be like, Oh, this is like 2% conversion rate. Now I made this much Oh, and now it's 5%. Now it's not because we're reaching, we're just reaching so many people. So that was fun. And then that's also when I met around the time when I met, this guy called Brian Recworth. Brian is an American from California who sold three companies in Latin America, and the third one he just sold last year for $600 million. So pretty successful tech entrepreneur. $600 million in Brazil is a lot like our currencies worth, like 1/5 of the dollar right now. And so we ended up talking about the tech ecosystem in Latin America, from a perspective from two perspectives, one just like, Oh my gosh, like, why is it so hard to be a tech entrepreneur? What are all the difficulties? Why is that our but on the other hand, look at how much opportunity there is just look at how much low hanging fruit because the ecosystem is many years behind that of the US and other developed countries. And the problems to solve are much bigger in terms of like infrastructure, health, banking, whatever you name it, safety. And there are really amazing entrepreneurs that I had been meeting and he'd been meeting as well, I'm a mentor for an organization called endeavour. And they're very big internationally, they help companies grow internationally. And I just met some really fascinating people who had in fact studied at like, Stanford, or MIT or had worked at Uber or whatever. And I had some other people I was meeting in Silicon Valley, but we're going back to their home countries to help to start solving problems there. And we just thought, like, what can we do to help bridge that gap and to help support early stage tech companies so that we can potentially 10x the number of very successful tech companies coming out of the region? It's also behind India and China, you know, like, even if, as a developing country, we're super behind. And so we we started plotting out kind of like, what are the things we think are missing that make it that much more difficult for an early stage tech founder to get off the ground? And what can we do to support them? And that's when we decided to build Latitud and Latitud without an E at the end, because that's how you say it in Spanish. my American friends make fun of me. And they say it's latitude and hate it. latitud.com. And we started building that. And it's basically like, yeah, we're trying to build a lot of different parts of the ecosystem out, down, down here, so to speak. So we started with a, like a fellowship for early stage founders who already have kind of like an MVP, but like seed stage, and connecting them. So the first thing is community connecting them to each other, because one of the coolest things about the US, especially in Silicon Valley, and now more so New York, is that entrepreneurs kind of know each other. And honestly, even if you go on a date as my experience in San Francisco, even if you go on a date, you end up having a tech startup conversation where like you find out like who is doing this how, what for design and how they solve this girl's problem. And you know, where to hire an engineer, you just you're constantly learning and sharing knowledge. And that doesn't exist in many other places. And it definitely doesn't exist out here. And especially across borders, because Latin America is perceived as one by the US but here, we all are very sort of separate from each other like Mexico is Mexico. Brazil is Brazil, we don't even speak the same language we have a different culture, sure that our languages are very similar and we have a lot of the same problems like the corruption, the danger, like It all of that stuff, it's there's a lot of similarities. So connecting those mines and helping share knowledge in terms of like someone learning from someone who is succeeding, and they're like one year or two years ahead of you in Latin America can really expedite your, your success. And for an entrepreneur, like a week that they go to spend researching something, but they were able to solve in a day. That's, that's like light years, because as an entrepreneur, every day counts, and you're losing money, and you're constantly trying to not die. So that's the number one thing like community. And the second thing is mentorship. There are amazing mentors everywhere. But the thing is that there's just a lot less successful tech companies in Latin America, they're still mostly in the US, and and now more so from other countries as well. And so why would you, you know, why wouldn't you get mentorship from the best of the best if you could, and it's hard having access to those people. But I know a lot of people now because I spend so much time, kind of in the ecosystem, Brian is also pretty well well connected. And so we we better bridge that gap and help people really learn from the best of the best, regardless of where they are. And then the third part is capital, there's a lot less capital like that just VC firms, like it's a lot less of a developed ecosystem down here. But also, it's just a lot harder to break into, like, people don't really know what VC is, and how to play the game and what it means how to pitch and if you're not in the little boys club that like is part of the VC world, you just have no way in. And so trying to break those those boundaries, too. And so that's, that's Latitud. And we're doing a number of different initiatives to help solve those problems.

Adam Lovallo:

Amazing. And I mean, this is not a not for profit thing, although clearly it's mission driven. Like, you're gonna potentially make money as investors, I guess?

Gina Gotthilf:

We're, you know, we're is tech a typical startup answer, we're figuring out our monetization strategy. Okay, but yes, we are raising a fund will probably raise something like small like $5 million, by the end of the year, we made one investment, we're probably gonna invest in two more so so long term I think we can make we can make money with investments, because we are getting to know the top tech founders from the entire region, and the region that we believe is going to go crazy in the next 10 years. Short term like we are, so we're raising a rolling fund. And so we can retain some fees. And that can allow us to pay our operations. But then also, we're trying to figure out how to monetize like the actual programs that we're building. So far, they've been free equity free, because we don't want to get in the way of entrepreneurs in any way. But I'm launching an ideation fellowship in May, which is basically like, a program for people who are in the time of their lives that I found myself in after Duolingo, which is like, I think I want to be an entrepreneur, I want to I want to build something in tech. I have ideas, but I don't know exactly what it is. And I'm not really sure how to move forward. And then you're in this awkward phase where people are like, what do you do? And you're like, I'm an entrepreneur, and they're like, cool, what are you doing? You're like, nothing, I'm thinking about it, you know, like, What's your idea? I don't know yet. Like, it's so awkward, and you feel so crappy about yourself. And then eventually, like, an amazing job offer comes by and you take it because they're just whatever like, so I want to build a program that like helps fit that moment for people here in Latin America, and bring more people that wouldn't otherwise think about becoming tech entrepreneurs, especially women, to to the dark side, and help solve a problem.

Adam Lovallo:

I love that. Yeah, I do. You know, I've run into a few though. So obviously, you know, the reforge guys, they have people who are like, in residence. I came across a program here, maybe you've seen it there, it was called On Deck not to lend company but like Yeah, I was like, Oh, that's kind of cool. Like, I had personally, um, I had, I had an E IR title out of fun for six to 12 months, which was really nice of them. But like, I didn't like do anything. I couldn't come up with anything. So I basically started an agency, which is okay. But that's awesome. I could it's such a vacuum because you're exactly right, you, you have some cool job, you leverage that cool job title and the consulting for three to five brands. You do that for a year, year and a half, that gets kind of boring, or lame or annoying, more more than anything because being a service provider sucks. And then you know, not Uber, but the next Uber hits you up and it's Oh yeah, well, I guess the next Uber Why not? Like that's, I can completely relate to that. And it's such a yeah, it's such a like sort of it feels inevitable that that path so having an alternative option with structure, I think is a huge value for people who like want to do that but maybe don't have that idea. Okay, I have a question about Lad and stuff. So you know, American guy don't know those markets meaningfully. I look at but but I've run into in my own career, the rocket internet type approach, which is not solely but at least initially like take thing clone take thing clone, take thing clone. Like, I'm curious, is that still a strategy that people execute successfully? Or is that now? So passe because you know, people on the ground in local markets are ahead of anybody who would just be cloning something, you know, coming out of the US or China or Europe or something? Like, is that still a thing? Basically.

Gina Gotthilf:

it's still a thing. I don't have like a I don't have a definitive answer for this, because I've heard a lot of discussion around it here. Since since we started with Latitud. But yes, you're totally right. I knew a lot of the rocket guys when I was here, helping launch Tumblr and stuff. I follow that closely. Now there's like, among like, the more like, I'm gonna call them the elite entrepreneurs, like the guys who have been around for a while. There's this whole rhetoric of like, oh, like, I can't take people copying ideas anymore. We need like, we need to be original. And I believe in that and I largely believe in that. I think that that's obviously the way forward because I want tech companies coming out of our region, not to be the block of our country, but to be like, block and then use all over the world, which like many companies in China and India are now like, in addition, or other.

Adam Lovallo:

Look at gaming. I mean, look again at the top companies are all Chinese at this point exactly.

Gina Gotthilf:

Are they look at Israel and what they would like if they wouldn't, they're not blocked Israel, which is super small, they've just like built like, you know, Loki, WhatsApp or Skyple so I think we're in a moment where both applied because they're still great ideas and solutions that are being deployed in the US or in Europe, or whatever. And those companies are probably not going to look at Latin America in the near future, because it's going to be hard to monetize down here, because our currency just not worth that much. But they're great solutions that can be great businesses and can solve problems for people. So I I don't Foley's like think that like, it's not a good idea. If there's if someone's not building a thing, and you think you can build a solution right now that do it, you know, like, maybe you're going to have to sell to them or whatever. But long term, I do want us to graduate to being an ecosystem where we're actually building our own things. And I see a lot of that happening. Now. The companies that were accepting into latitude, I will say very few, if any of them, I'm not gonna say none, because I'm not sure. But the vast majority are innovative ideas. Just yesterday, I spoke to an amazing founder from Peru. And I wish I could remember the name of the company, so I could promote her, but I can't the second. And she was building something that was basically like the, I think it was like a fitness pass or class pass for Peru. And because of the pandemic, and everything

Adam Lovallo:

100%. went south so quickly, they had to sort of like figure things out. And now they're building this amazing platform that I haven't seen anywhere else that like solves for like, a lot of like health and wellness problems on in a B2B sphere. And so I think that's cool, too. Sometimes you need to start out

Gina Gotthilf:

And it might take a long time for it or for that with an idea that you think is amazing. And that will then the market will and your work in the market will help you evolve towards something brand new, but don't ever question there's, there's still some of both, and we're, you know, we're sort of in that in that middle. I honestly think that like if American or like, you know, Silicon Valley, quote unquote, entrepreneurs were to spend time in China and identify opportunities, there's no reason why they wouldn't want to do the same thing. Chinese entrepreneur to really, maybe it's hard for the US to think about these things, because everyone wants to go to the US. And so like, it's an obvious market, whereas like Latin America, we're just gonna be like, year four or five, you know, for most startups.

Adam Lovallo:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think. I think I think you're exactly right. I don't think that's really happening yet, at least not meaningfully. But, you know, the meal kit space, that was a European concept that was important to the US like Blue Apron and stuff.

Gina Gotthilf:

Really? I didnt know that.

Adam Lovallo:

So that it's not, it's not at all. Yeah, it's not at all without without precedent. Okay, so

Gina Gotthilf:

Adam just one thing because I learned this has been super interesting. I found out about a fund here in Brazil, what they do, is I also don't know their name, I'm crap at promoting anyone. But what they do is they look for amazing startups operating out of like, Sweden, and or just the Nordic countries, and find, like business opportunities that seem like they would work really well in Latin America, they then contact that company and convince them to like, basically get a partner who's a local or like Latin America partner who's going to build them out here. They support them from what the tech and make it happen. And I think that's like, that's a hybrid really interesting approach too.

Adam Lovallo:

Yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. I mean, the Nordic countries, just like your Israel example, grossly over index, you know, in our industry in terms of, especially really successful stuff. Okay, spectacular. Well, in the interest of time, I'll let you go on the off chance that someone listening wanted to apply and get involved in your stuff, maybe even since most of us are Americans I don't know that I mean, as mentors or people that help, like, What, how can people hit you up? And you know, what, where should they contact you? How can they learn more, etc.

Gina Gotthilf:

Well, there's two ways to get involved. First, there's a lot of people in the US who are actually like originally Latin American and ran away, much like me. And so if you're listening, this is for you. If you're an American who's very bullish about the future of like growth of tech in Latin America, the wild wild south, I don't know how we would call it there I also have some some of our fellows are US base or Europe base in their building for Latin America. So that's what we do. And if you just want to get back or interested in mentoring, Latin American companies, then amazing we want you and so you can get in touch either just directly with me on LinkedIn, or on Instagram Gina, I'm on Twitter, I'm Gina G. Or you can apply through apply.latitud.com and remember that his Latitud for an American.

Adam Lovallo:

Okay, I love it. Well, Gina, this was spectacular. Thank you so much.

Gina Gotthilf:

Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure.

MAU[Talk]:

Thanks for joining us. You can find Gina's contact information in this podcast description or at mauvegas.com. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll catch you on the next episode of MAU [Talk].