The Next Wave of AI Companies in Latin America | Tako Founder on The a16z Show

Video summary

Tako founder Sebastian Mejia is using AI to tackle Brazil’s $20–30 billion labor and tax complexity.

Sebastian Mejia recounts leaving Cali, Colombia, for Europe and New York before cofounding Rappi in 2015. The delivery company expanded across Latin America, reaching nine countries and building complex logistics, payments, and fraud systems from scratch. After leaving Rappi, he started Tako, which uses AI agents and a proprietary dataset of Brazilian labor rules to help companies stay compliant and automate hiring, onboarding, payroll, and other workforce operations. Mejia estimates Brazil’s tax and labor complexity costs $20–30 billion and argues that solving it can unlock work companies could not previously do. He also points to Brazil’s digital infrastructure, including PIX and eSocial, which records employment events for about 10 million companies and nearly 60 million workers. For Latin America to produce global AI leaders, he urges founders to tackle difficult, defensible problems, invest in local AI infrastructure and research, recruit globally, and build companies to a high standard.

Chapters

1. 0:00Intro: Sebas’s Rappi scaled across nine countries before Tako
2. 1:24Growing Up in Colombia: Cali upbringing led Sebas to Barcelona at 17
3. 5:50From Europe to New York: iPod music business, then Mumbai’s mobile boom
4. 10:02Building Rappi: October 2015 Bogota launch and rapid Mexico expansion
5. 17:49Starting Tako: AI agents tackle Brazil’s $20–30 billion labor and tax burden
6. 22:53Recruiting World-Class Talent: Tako’s four-part hiring rubric and San Francisco link
7. 27:34Recruiting World-Class Talent: 25 DoorDash hires helped Rappi build
8. 32:11Recruiting World-Class Talent: Tako’s four product pillars and transparent enterprise agents
9. 36:37The AI Opportunity in Latin America: AI can replace low-value services and tackle Brazil’s labor complexity
10. 41:37The AI Opportunity in Latin America: Local AI infrastructure, PIX, and Brazil’s eSocial repository
11. 46:13The AI Opportunity in Latin America: eSocial speeds onboarding as AI targets low-trust business costs
12. 50:45The AI Opportunity in Latin America: A 650-million-person bloc, AI sovereignty, and regional integration
13. 56:28Advice for Future Founders: Build authentically and make hard problems defensible