Hernán Kazah

Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Kaszek Ventures · Joined 2011

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Biography

Hernán Kazah spent 12 years building MercadoLibre from scratch as a co-founder and COO before its 2007 Nasdaq IPO, giving him a genuinely rare credential when he and Nicolás Szekasy founded Kaszek Ventures in 2011: he'd already built the exact kind of category-defining Latin American technology company he was now trying to back in others. That operating experience shaped Kaszek's founder-first approach from day one - offering hands-on strategic guidance and local network access, not just capital, at a time when institutional venture capital had largely written off the region. His early conviction in Nubank, when it was still just founder David Vélez and a slide deck, became one of the clearest validations of that thesis once the Brazilian neobank went public in 2021.

Previous Experience

Notable Investments

Nubank NUQuintoAndarKavakCovaltoMadeiraMadeiraValoreoDigital HouseCamino EducacaoLa HausSallve

Career Timeline

1999
Co-founds MercadoLibre, Latin America's largest ecommerce and fintech company, from scratch.
2007
Serves as COO as MercadoLibre completes its Nasdaq IPO.
2011
Leaves MercadoLibre with Nicolás Szekasy to found Kaszek Ventures.
2021
Nubank, one of Kaszek's earliest fintech bets, goes public on the NYSE.

Sources & References

AS/COA ↗Americas Quarterly ↗