Building Enduring Companies Outside Silicon Valley | Santiago Suárez of Addi
a16z Deep Dives · 2026-06-17 · 48 min
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7616Z13Q6pMVideo summary
Addi serves 3 million consumers with 200+ AI agents while scaling financial inclusion from Bogotá.
Addi founder and CEO Santiago Suárez explains how the Colombian fintech grew from buy now, pay later into a commerce, payments, logistics, and banking platform serving more than 3 million consumers and 50,000 merchants. He credits Colombia’s 75% smartphone penetration, installment-payment culture, and poor banking UX for the opportunity. Addi’s early technology choices—a monorepo, event sourcing, and more than 10 million daily events—created an AI-ready foundation. Its agents now handle 100% of customer-service requests and resolve nearly 80%, while merchant onboarding improves conversion by over 20%. Suárez says Addi began AI automation with legal claims because Colombian lawsuits can require responses within 48 hours, then expanded into customer service and engineering. He also shares lessons from Kaspi: obsess over customers, sequence the roadmap, and ignore conventional wisdom. Addi operates in English, remains remote-first, and uses a few North Star metrics rather than sprawling OKRs. Looking ahead, Suárez envisions an AI-native company driving financial inclusion across more countries while keeping its team small, efficient, and ambitious.
Chapters
- 0:00From Yale to JPMorgan: Santiago Suárez’s Path from Navia to Jamie Dimon
- 6:42Why Colombia: 75% Smartphone Adoption, Installments, and Broken Banking UX
- 12:11Lessons from Kaspi: NPS, Sequenced Roadmaps, and Focused Conviction
- 17:00Monorepo, Event Sourcing, and Addi’s AI-Ready Foundation
- 22:55Starting with Legal: Colombia’s 48-Hour Tutelas and 60% AI Resolution
- 29:55Getting an Organization AI-Pilled from Bogotá: Four AI Pillars and 200 Production Agents
- 37:13North Star Metrics, Written Culture & Running 150 Heads Under Budget: From OKRs to EBITDA
- 41:45North Star Metrics, Written Culture & Running 150 Heads Under Budget: 150 Heads Below Budget
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