All Episodes

April 8, 2025 • 59 mins

Welcome to Season 4 of The J Curve 🎙️

This week, I sit down with Gustavo Mapeli, co-founder and CEO of Kanastra — one of the fastest-growing fintech infrastructure companies in Latin America. Gustavo started out building a traditional asset manager focused on private credit and wealth outside of Brazil’s core markets. But after feeling the pain of operating in a fragmented, manual, and outdated system, he made the bold decision to build the infrastructure he wished existed — and Kanastra was born.

Today, Kanastra powers over R$13B in assets across 150+ credit and securitization facilities — and has raised capital from top investors like Kaszek and QED.

Here’s what we cover:

♢ How Brazil became fertile ground for fintech infra – Why regulation, wealth decentralization, and embedded finance created the perfect storm.

♢ The contrarian decision to go multi-product from day one – And why Gustavo believes they had no other choice.

♢ How Kanastra is winning in a concentrated, low-tech market – Tactics for building trust, reputation, and distribution in a system built on inertia.

♢ Hiring and culture in high-performance teams – Why Gustavo believes the best cultures are the most exclusive.

♢ Founding with conviction – The story of Gustavo and his co-founder’s 15-year friendship, and how they’ve built what he calls an “unbreakable” partnership.

More from us: 

Mark as Played

Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist

It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

Š 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.