Andrés Bilbao, co-founder of Rappi, invests in Hashi

Good! I'm Gonza, co-founder and CEO of Hashi. Before we get into today's blog, I want to briefly tell you what we do at Hashi: we help companies in Latin America to acquire and withhold users through contents and Gamification.

How did it happen?

As some of you know, 3 years ago I came to Miami on a scholarship from the University of Miami. One Tuesday afternoon, while I was studying, an entrepreneur friend named Tomas Iakub wrote to me (tomi, if you're reading this, thank you for everything). His message was very direct: “Gonza, how are you? Can I call you? I have something BIG”. The second time I am an Instagram addict and like any excuse to leave the studio, it worked for me. So I said to him: “if obvious, call me”.

Tomi proceeds to call me and tells me that Andres Bilbao was in Miami and that he wanted to meet young entrepreneurs with “drive”. Tomi's crack thought of me and was about to tell me that the next day at 8 AM I had a face-to-face breakfast in Brickell with the founder of Rappi.

Spoiler: I didn't sleep a shit that night.

I can't explain to you how many times my 19-year-old scoundy-ass had dreamt of something like that. A one-on-one encounter with the founder of a company that changed the culture of Latin America.

Although I was excited, stress and despair came. I only had eight hours to think about what to say and sound interesting. I was just a prick who had a project to sell crypto courses.

In those eight hours I devised the most ambitious plan my head could imagine, I stayed in the common room of the university dorm on the university campus. It was me, a giant blackboard, a marker without much ink and nothing else.

In those hours, the idea of being a kind of “Netflix of the crypto world for Latam” came to the ground (in the end it didn't work and we pivoted) but it sounded super cool, damn it. And most importantly, it wasn't just an idea, there were 3,500 people who had already trusted the MVP version, a couple of angel investors and the SouthXchange investment.

What seemed like a quiet chat meeting the founder of Rappi, quickly turned into a pitch by Hashi with the idea that Andrés would join as the leading investor in the round. (family and friends round in 2022, where we raised 125k).

I sincerely didn't expect it, but it would be unfair to say that it was purely “luck”. Before going into “investment round mode”, I made sure that everyone I had coffee with or had a Zoom/Meet knows that we were lifting. All my contacts on Whatsapp, LinkedIn and some on Instagram had a Hashi onepager. So if you're looking to lift your first round, it's something I highly recommend. There's no downside and you make people keep in mind the fact that you're looking for investment.

I went completely into shark mode, I didn't stop talking for a second. I left EVERYTHING on the court. There were clearly a lot of unfinished things in my speech, but I think I was able to communicate the passion and desire well. That's not negotiable, ever.

What followed next?

43 days of great stress, uncertainty and anxiety. The moment they confirm your investment, don't tell anyone, don't celebrate, don't count on that money until you finally see it in your bank account. That's advice I learned over time. Many investments that are confirmed by word of mouth end up falling. I went from having SAFE signed (a document that we use and that is commonly used in startups to raise investment) and that investment falls.

In those 43 days, we underwent a due diligence process on the part of Andrés's team. This process is very common when receiving investment funds. In the case of angel investment, the most common thing is to send a “data room” that contains important documents such as historical billing, cash flow, expenses and salaries, equipment information and cap table. But in this case, it was a diligence process that covered 6 or 7 different points. In addition to all of the above, it was necessary to send letters of recommendation from other founders who had previously worked with us.

It was super stressful since it was the first time we went through such a process and I, like a scoundy-manger, had already told half the world about Andrés's investment and I would die if the deal fell through.

What's Hashi up today?

Today Hashi is something totally different, you know very little about us, since now we sell to companies (an excuse that has ceased to be valid), which is why the hashineta growth team forced me to spend 1 hour a day of my time writing to them and recording myself for reels/TikTok.

We lead a lot of the content and loyalty programs you see in companies like Banco Nación, Macro, Remax, Lulubit, Brandon, Decrypto, N1U and 50 other cases from Latin America. Obviously, the Hashi logo doesn't appear anywhere, because we are 100% white-label and customizable.

Today, Hashi operates in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, Panama and the United States. At the moment we have teams in Argentina and Peru.

If you made it this far, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you really liked this format and want us to keep doing it, let me know.

See you next time, Gonza.