Enthusiast

About Enthusiast

"Entrepreneurial Talent is Global" - On The Enthusiast, Host Pat Alex chats with some of the most fascinating Founders, Operators and Investors Beyond Silicon Valley. Every two weeks, he sits down with the likes of Arjuna Costa (Flourish), Paulo Passoni, Jeffrey Paine (Golden Gate Ventures), Gerry Giacoman (Clara) and Monica Brand Engel (Quona) to dissect their challenges around scaling, fundraising, managing boards and company leadership. Taken together, the guests have raised venture capital in the hundreds of millions and are behind their regions' biggest business and venture successes paving the way towards a more equitable and diverse future. Follow the newsletter to always stay up to date with the latest episodes: https://linktr.ee/Patalex

Publisher

Pat Alex

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

7 Nov 2020

Latest episode

11 Nov 2025

Latest episodes

1 of 100 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   11 Nov 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Pedro Vallenilla (Cashea) on bringing consumer credit back to Venezuela, scaling to 10M customers in 3 years and becoming Kaspi

   On this episode Pat sits down with Pedro Vallenilla (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pedrovallenilla/), Co-Founder & CEO of Cashea, Venezuela's leading BNPL and Fintech platform in the country that is reinstalling access to credit for millions of Venezuelans. Pedro is a true serial entrepreneur with Cashea as his fourth venture, he has shown incredible grit and is now bringing consumer credit back to his home country. We chat about: - What happens to an economy if you remove access to credit - How Cashea is fixing it - Putting the flywheel together and why Cashea won't stop with BNPL - The early days of Cashea, getting the first customers in and building the product Want to stay up-to-date on latest episodes? Follow The Enthusiast wherever you are getting your podcasts and make sure to check out our newsletter on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6898991816637526017/) to stay up to date on our latest episodes with founders and investors beyond the Valley. Follow Pat on LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickalex1/).

2. 

   16 Sept 2025

   Bernardo Garcia (Félix) on doing things that don’t scale, the power of your first 20 customers and getting the flywheel going

   Host Pat interviews Bernardo Garcia, Co-Founder of Felix Pago, discussing how to find product-market fit by doing things that don’t scale and leveraging early customers for growth.

3. 

   18 Aug 2025

   Puren Ucar (fmr. Head of Talent @Earlybird) on why founders need to spend 40% of their time on hiring, the unequal impact of AI on startup roles and revenue / employee as a metric

   Host Pat interviews Puren Ucar, former Head of Talent at Earlybird, discussing founders dedicating 40% of their time to hiring and AI's unequal impact on startup roles.

Inside a recent episode

Pedro Vallenilla (Cashea) on bringing consumer credit back to Venezuela, scaling to 10M customers in 3 years and becoming Kaspi

Published 11 Nov 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] And basically, you are the ones who are going to be providing the credit, but a cashier will be as authentic as a service and credit for almost an insurance provider for every loan that goes that. So merchants at first didn't talk to this proposal, but we started with one merchant that said yes. And now we have worth of 20 ,000 locations, nationwide. And primarily, primarily is the merchant who is providing the financing. And cashier is that backstop that buys back every loan that goes bad. And that's the way that we have relaunched consumer credit in a country where we're doing north of to buying up a liter credits per second. […]

Who has been a guest on Enthusiast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Bernardo Garcia
• Puren Ucar
• Gaurav Biswas
• Lucas Vargas
• Pedro Arnt

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Spotify

4.8 / 5

13 ratings

Questions about Enthusiast