Welcome to Tech Talents! In this newsletter, I share real-time key talent movements in the LatAm tech ecosystem, including founders entering and exiting stealth mode, executive-level movements in unicorns, and partner-level changes in local VC firms.
Here’s a quick look at what you’ll find in this week’s edition:
🎊 Startup Launches: Simbios, Claint & more
🤫 Talents Entering Stealth: Ex-Product Director & Head of Insurance at Stone, ex-Investor at Upload Ventures, ex-Strategy and Operations Manager at Revolut & more
🦄 Unicorn Movements: New Chief Design Officer at Unico ID
📖 Recent Reads: Why time speeds up as you age, Stripe’s annual letter & more
👋 Tech Talents Match: Looking for a co-founder or to network? Click here to be connected with top talent that matches your criteria
Let’s dive in…
🎊 Startup Launches
Founders who have just publicly announced what they are working on.
Simbios
Overview
Startup Description: Simbios provides enterprise AI solutions for e-commerce growth, acting as a hands-on partner that deploys proprietary AI tools, processes, and intelligence with a dedicated team to boost conversions at every touchpoint.
Industry: E-Commerce, AI
Team Size: 4
Time in Stealth: 5 months
Founder Profile
Erik Santana - Founder & CEO at Simbios
Previously featured as a Stealth Founder in Tech Talents #41
Founder Highlights: Serial Founder, Ex-Consultant, Ex-Corporate
Previous Experience: ex-Founder and CEO at FestaLab, ex-Founder and CEO at Vinklo, ex-Product Advisor at Lemon Energia, ex-Consultant at Bain & Company, Bachelor’s in Industrial Engineering from Universidade Federal de São Carlos.
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Ask for an Intro: Click here
Claint (fka Newsco)
Overview
Startup Description: Claint is an AI platform for investment advisory firms that turns scattered data into reliable client context and actionable insights.
Industry: SaaS, AI
Team Size: 6
Time in Stealth: 2 years, 6 months
Founder Profile
Lucas Bastianik – Co-founder & CTO at Claint
Founder Highlights: Serial Founder, Technical Founder, Ex-Corporate
Previous Experience: ex-Head of Tech — Growth Squad at Banco Modal, ex-Co-founder & CTO at Carteira Global, ex-Solutions Architect at Somar Meteorologia, Information Systems at UNIVEM.
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Co-Founder: Gabriel Cantu (CEO)
Ask for an Intro: Click here
MendelX
Overview
Startup Description: MendelX develops robotics and AI-powered solutions to fully automate agriculture, grounded in a deep understanding of farmers’ needs.
Industry: AgTech, AI
Team Size: 2
Time in Stealth: 4 months
Founder Profile
Victor Gaia - Cooking at MendelX
Previously featured as a Stealth Founder in Tech Talents #37
Founder Highlights: Technical Founder, Scaleup Experience, Healthcare
Previous Experience: ex-Software Engineer at TRACTIAN, ex-Software Engineer at Meu Pet Club, ex-Software Engineer at Salebox, Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Unit.
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Ask for an Intro: Click here
+2 other recently announced startups over the past two weeks with Tech Talents Pro
🤫 Talents Entering Stealth
Talents with relevant experiences who have just entered stealth mode.
Alex Körner – Building at Stealth Startup
Founder Highlights: Serial Founder, Ex-Corporate, Top University
Previous Experience: ex-Product Director & Head of Insurance at Stone, ex-Co-Founder & CIO at 180° Insurance, ex-Head of Insurance and Head of Auto Compara Insurtech at Banco Santander.
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Time in Current Position: 1 month
Ask for an Intro: Click here
Daniel Castrillón Velásquez – Co-founder & COO at Stealth Startup
Founder Highlights: Investor, Ex-Consultant, Ex-Corporate
Previous Experience: ex-Strategy and Operations Manager at Revolut, ex-Consultant at Bain & Company, Bachelor’s in Administrative Engineering from Universidad EIA.
Headquarters: Colombia
Time in Current Position: 1 month
Ask for an Intro: Click here
Lucas Ciabotti Tavora – Cofounder at Stealth Startup
Founder Highlights: Serial Founder, Masters, Ex-Corporate, Ex-Consultant, Unicorn Experience
Previous Experience: ex-Director of Operations at Stoic Capital, ex-Director of Revenue at Origem, ex-Director (General Manager, Rio de Janeiro) at Kavak, ex-Founder at Crānio Labs, ex-Senior Manager at EloGroup, MBA in International Business from Hult International Business School.
Headquarters: Brasília, Brazil
Time in Current Position: 3 months
Ask for an Intro: Click here
Mario B. – Co-Founder at Stealth Startup
Founder Highlights: Investor, Ex-Big Tech, Ex-Corporate, Masters, Top University, Unicorn Experience
Previous Experience: ex-Investor at Upload Ventures, ex-Investor at SoftBank Group International, ex-Product at Uber, MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Headquarters: Mexico
Time in Current Position: 1 year
Ask for an Intro: Click here
Nathan Batista – Fundador at Stealth Startup
Founder Highlights: Serial Founder, Masters, Ex-Big Tech, Ex-Corporate, Ex-Consultant
Previous Experience: ex-Sênior Product Manager at CRMBonus, ex-Head of Tech, Produto, UX e CS at Potência, ex-Product Manager at Linx, MBA in Business Innovation from FIAP.
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Time in Current Position: 3 months
Ask for an Intro: Click here
Rony Meisler – Construindo algo novo at Stealth Startup
Founder Highlights: Serial Founder, Previous Exit, Top University, Ex-Corporate, Investor
Previous Experience: ex-Co-piloto de empreendedores de valor at Rebels Ventures, ex-CEO at Grupo Reserva, Engineering from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro.
Headquarters: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Time in Current Position: 1 month
Ask for an Intro: Click here
+3 other Talents to Watch (likely to move) over the past two weeks with Tech Talents Pro
🦄 Unicorn Movements
Promotions, new hires, and other movements in local unicorns’ executive-level.
Paul Ray (PJ) Judia Jr. – Chief Design Officer at Unico ID
Previous Role: ex-Product, Design, & Marketing at Apple
Previous Experience: MPS in Political Science from St. Edward's University, BA in Political Science from St. Edward's University, Master of Arts in Political Science and Government from Texas State University.
Headquarters: United States
Time in Current Position: 1 month
📖 Recent Reads
My quick takes on interesting articles, news and data that I’ve come across recently.
Why time speeds up as you age (and what to do about it) is an essay by George Mack that talks about time and how we perceive it. It has nothing to do with tech but, as someone who set being more present in the moment as one of my goals for 2026, it struck me more than probably anything I read this past month.
To explain the central question of why time seems to speed up as we age, the author brings up Janet’s law:
When you’re 5 years old, a year is 20% of your life. And when you’re 50 years old, a year is 2% of your life. Janet’s law states that you experienced roughly half of your perceived life by 20 years old.
Or to put it another way: The summer for a 5 year old feels as long as the 10 years from 40 to 50 years old.
Most importantly, the author then shares his Three Laws of Remembering Your Life:
Law 1 - Seek Novelty. Do something different each day, no matter how small it is.
Law 2 - Optimize for the best story. I’m not a big fan of the “do it for the plot” mentality, but we indeed tend to remember more stories with beginning, middle and end than random events of our lives.
Law 3 - Marvel at the smallest details. If you look hard enough at anything around you, regardless of how trivial it is, I guarantee you will notice something you’ve never noticed before. This will inevitably slow down your perception of time.
Stripe released its 2025 annual letter. The payments processing company has a unique position to talk about agentic commerce as it processed $1.9 trillion in total volume last year, much of it coming from ecommerce businesses. The general idea of agentic commerce is that AI will soon be making online purchases on your behalf, but they anticipate this innovation happening in 5 different stages:
Eliminating web forms: You decide what to buy, but an AI agent handles the tedious part
Descriptive search: Instead of searching by keywords or product attributes, you describe a situation and the system reasons across weather, sizing, reviews, and delivery timelines
Persistence: The agent remembers your preferences, past purchases, and requirements, so you no longer have to reintroduce yourself every time but you still choose
Delegation: You stop choosing altogether. You set a budget and the agent handles search, evaluation, and purchase on your behalf.
Anticipation: There is no prompt. The agent knows your calendar, preferences, and budget, and proactively purchases what you need before you ask.
We are still sitting between levels 1 and 2. I’m excited to see where we will be in 5 years and how these levels translate to other online activities.
Anthropic released a new study on how AI will impact the labor market. It serves as a detailed and data-driven analysis of a core issue surrounding this technology. Two things stood out to me:
There’s still a massive gap between what AI can theoretically do across occupations and what it’s actually doing today
The professions most exposed to AI tend to employ workers who are older, female, college-educated, and in higher income brackets
The chart below shows the share of job tasks that LLMs could theoretically perform (blue area) and Anthropic's own job coverage measure derived from usage data of their products (red area):
As the study also points out, it is extremely difficult to measure the real impact of any technology shift on the labor market, even looking in hindsight at past revolutions, such as the internet and the industrial revolution. However, initiatives like this one, which aim to measure effects on a recurring basis as the technology evolves, are crucial to avoiding or at least better understanding any deeper problems we might face.
👋 Co-Founder Matching
Looking for an early or late-stage co-founder?
In case you missed it, I recently launched a co-founder matching platform focused on the Brazilian market. The platform is independent of any VC or accelerator, completely free (zero equity, zero cost), always active, and carefully curated based on experience and matching preferences.
👉 Click here to be connected with top talent that matches your criteria.
You can get started in three simple steps:
Define your preferences (technical, business, industry, timing, etc.).
Receive compatible profiles via email or on the web platform.
Send and accept connection requests with those who interest you most.
Here’s a quick demo video of the platform:
If you have any feedback or suggestions about Tech Talents LatAm, please share them with me through my LinkedIn.