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: The Cognitive Loop, One to Many
🦄 Leadership Movements: Head of Revenue Operations at Clara, Head of Marketing Science at Purple Metrics & more
📖 Recent Reads: Where the value is going in AI, Sam Altman interview
🤫 Talents Entering Stealth: Ex-Sales Director at AppsFlyer, ex-Head of Technology at a Brazilian consumer brand & more
🤝 Tech Talents Match: Receba vagas em startups brasileiras que se encaixam no seu perfil, direto no seu WhatsApp. Acesse aqui.
Let’s dive in…
Esta edição do Tech Talents é oferecida pela Austera.
A Austera é o time financeiro da sua startup que você não precisa contratar.
A maioria dos founders só descobre que seus números são um problema quando um investidor pede para vê-los. A Austera atua como CFO & FP&A as a Service: assume a rotina financeira, incluindo contas a pagar e a receber, conciliação bancária, ERP e transforma isso em informação que sustenta decisões. Com eles, o fechamento mensal cai de 20 para 3 dias.
O escopo acompanha o estágio da empresa: BPO para a camada operacional, FP&A quando você precisa de visibilidade, e um CFO sênior na mesa quando o assunto é o planejamento dos próximos três a cinco anos. Sem o custo de um C-level interno.
Ainda tomando decisões no escuro?
🎊 Startup Launches
Founders who have just publicly announced what they are working on.
The Cognitive Loop
Overview
Startup Description: Builds cognitive infrastructure to turn collective judgment, decisions, and organizational knowledge into an accumulating digital asset.
Industry: AI, SaaS
Team Size: 2
Time in Stealth: 7 months
Pablo Gottifredi – Founder at The Cognitive Loop
Founder Highlights: Serial Founder, Technical Founder, Ex-Corporate
Previous Experience: Ex-Co-Founder & CTO at Match, ex-Co-Founder & CTO at MomentOfPeople, ex-CIO at Ministerio de Justicia y Derechos Humanos de la Nación, Founder Institute incubated startup.
Headquarters: Argentina
Ask for an Intro: Click here
One to Many
Overview
Startup Description: Automated takeoff software for window and door manufacturers: upload plans to get unit-by-unit schedules ready to quote.
Industry: Construction Tech, AI
Team Size: 2
Time in Stealth: 7 months
Sebastian Correa Gaviria - Co-Founder at One to Many
Founder Highlights: Serial Founder, Ex-Consultant, Top University
Previous Experience: Ex-Co-Founder at Finity, ex-Co-Founder at Plenti, ex-Makers Fellowship, ex-Senior Consultant at BIP Colombia, Civil Engineering from Universidad de los Andes.
Headquarters: Bogotá, Colombia
Ask for an Intro: Click here
+3 other Announced Startups over the past two weeks with Tech Talents Pro
🦄 Leadership Movements
Promotions, new hires, and other movements in local unicorns and scaleups’ executive-level.
Adriano Monaco - Head of Revenue Operations at Clara
Previous Role: Chief Operating Officer at Onnibank
Previous Experience: Ex-Sales and Marketing Manager at HydraForce Brazil, MBA from Nova Southeastern University.
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Time in Current Position: 2 months
Eduardo Ogawa - Head of Marketing Science at Purple Metrics
Previous Role: Marketing Science Partner at Meta
Previous Experience: Ex-Manager, Marketing Science at Mercado Libre, MBA Lecturer, Marketing Analytics at USP, ex-Measurement Lead, Analytics at Google, Ph.D, Marketing Analytics from USP.
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Time in Current Position: 3 months
Lorena Coimbra de Figueiredo - Vice-president of client operations at Pipo Saúde
Previous Role: Vice-president of operations at Pipo Saúde
Previous Experience: Ex-Head of Digital Operations & Partner at Stone, Post-Graduate degree in Neuroscience from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul.
Headquarters: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Time in Current Position: 2 months
📖 Recent Reads
My quick takes on interesting articles, news and data that I’ve come across recently.
In this podcast, a16z partner Martin Casado discusses where the value is going in AI. The conversation was published in a special week for the VC firm, as two of its portfolio companies just closed landmark deals: Cursor was acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion and OpenRouter by Stripe for over $7 billion. Here are some of his takes:
This era in venture is very different from any of the previous ones. Small teams can now put billions of dollars to work, which puts the ability to raise at the forefront of competitive advantages, at least at the model layer. He even mentions that one of the most-used models today was built by a team of around 20 people using over $2 billion to train it, a level of capital intensity unseen in prior waves.
The strategic value of the business could matter more than business metrics. Margins, churn and revenue quality are all things early-stage investors look into, but whether a company will be an important part of the new stack being formed and what control points it will eventually hold is probably the most important aspect now. This was likely the philosophy behind their early bets on Cursor and OpenRouter.
It is difficult to predict whether the frontier labs will capture all or most of the market in the long term. Right now, they have the data moat, the capital, and the ability to self-improve (models building better versions of themselves). But AI is touching more industries now, compute supply constraints are expected to ease in the coming years, and apps are capturing more margin as we go, which could mean a more even distribution of the market compared to the concentration we see today around OpenAI and Anthropic.
This interview with OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman gives good perspective on his personal views of the current AI market, as well as on his profile as a CEO.
He mentions he is still not using as much AI as he wishes he was. For instance, he still doesn’t use Codex or ChatGPT to go through his inbox or his to-do list, even though he could. This is mostly a product failure in his opinion, as the tech to automate most of his work is already there. We essentially have not had an “iPhone moment” in AI yet.
He spent a large part of his career in investing before building OpenAI, an unusual path that helped him become a better entrepreneur. Not only was he exposed to a lot of business decisions that worked and didn’t work, but he also had a higher risk tolerance and wasn’t afraid of contrarian bets. Many of the early OpenAI bets, like large language models and the goal of achieving AGI, were heavily criticized by AI researchers at the time.
When confronted with important strategic decisions, Sam often goes to Peter Thiel and Paul Graham, as they provide the most contrarian but productive points of view. This was the case when he decided to shut down Sora, their video app, and when they decided to focus solely on ChatGPT right after its successful launch instead of working on other products right away.
🤫 Talents Entering Stealth
Talents with relevant experiences who have just entered stealth mode.
Raffaella B. – Building at Stealth Startup
Founder Highlights: Top University, Ex-Big Tech, Ex-Corporate, Marketing Tech
Signals: Sales leader who left AppsFlyer in Oct 2025 and has been building a stealth startup since Mar 2026, after six years at Google and Credit Suisse. Holds FGV and Harvard/Stanford executive education.
Headquarters: São Paulo, Brazil
Time in Current Position: 5 months
Ask for an Intro: Click here
+8 more Stealth Founders this week with Pro, including:
Ex-Head of Growth then Country Manager Brazil at a US-backed LatAm fintech data startup, with investment banking roots at a top Brazilian bank. Now CEO of a stealth tax venture.
Edge AI and distributed systems engineering manager at a Brazilian scaleup, plus his own home-automation hardware company. Deep firmware and embedded background.
Left a Head of Technology seat at a well-known Brazilian consumer brand last month, kept only the advisory chair. Before that, three years building at an agro-fintech.
First sales hire at a Brazilian workflow-automation SaaS, later sales director at two more. Now a stealth founder and part-time postgraduate professor, IE Business School MBA.