In our latest interview, we feature Daniel, who shares his remarkable entrepreneurial journey from building his first digital agency in China 20 years ago to scaling United Virtualities from a small team extension service to a 170-person enterprise technology consultancy serving major US clients. Daniel offers candid insights on the challenges of nearshoring, the M&A process from both sides of the table, and his advice for the next generation of Latin American entrepreneurs.
Q&A
Tell us about your background and how you ended up in the founder's seat to begin with.
I was born in Argentina, but I spent many years living in various different countries. I lived in the US for a while and graduated from school there. Then I decided to pack my suitcases and move to China for a while - I spent over four years living there. That's where I took my first steps as an entrepreneur after dropping out of the academic world. I was thinking about pursuing a PhD at one point in the US, but decided not to. I packed my suitcases, dreamed big, and moved to China. This was about 20 years ago.
I spent about four years there, had the time of my life, built a company, lost it all. That was my first taste of entrepreneurship. I tried to build a digital company for the local market in Chinese and Mandarin Chinese. Just a wonderful story that has a very entrepreneurship flavor - foreign country, language barriers, cultural barriers, as a LatAm founder in China doing digital work 20 years ago.
I gained a lot of experience from those four or five years, then spent a few years in Mexico, built one company there, sold it. That was my first taste of a small scale exit. I wasn't really sure what an exit was until that point. Then in about 2015, I started United Virtualities with my brother.
About United Virtualities
How did United Virtualities evolve from its initial concept?
We started off basically as a team extension service because we were coming from the digital advertising world. That was my background - what I did in China was trying to build the first foreign-owned digital agency in China. We had a ton of contacts and decided to break out from that original thesis and build a technology company servicing digital agencies in the US.
We contracted with some major digital agencies and started selling Latin American resources when that was a new thing 10 years ago. Globant was doing that with a different target, and there were a few others, but not much other than that.
We did that for a few years, but we realized there were challenges to the model. Digital agencies were constantly evolving, building their own teams, acquiring tech shops that had in-house development. It wasn't really scaling at the speed we wanted. It was profitable - even more profitable than it is now because there was the ability to acquire talent for a more efficient cost than today in the market. The spreads were larger, but the scale was smaller.
Near-shoring wasn't really a term then. We were always struggling with introducing near-shoring as a benefit and explaining why it was an additional positive way of enhancing delivery teams in the US.
How did you pivot the business model?
We started shifting away from that particular angle and began trying to get direct clients. We kept basically the same stack for a while and then shifted again to a more corporate tech or what we call enterprise tech stacks, especially around the Salesforce industry. By that time, we were about 160-170 people. Then the pandemic came. We were growing rapidly with no plan to exit at the moment, and then we met some guys who said they were interested. We said, "Let's hear what you're interested about." That's how things turned out. It was about a six to seven year ride total from beginning to end.
Scaling Challenges
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced as you were growing and scaling the company?
You face challenges every day as an entrepreneur - it's never ending. If you're not being challenged, then you're doing something wrong. If things seem easy, something's got to be wrong because by design, you have to be challenged continually.
Some of those challenges included that we weren't growing initially the way we wanted to grow at the speed we thought we should grow. It was a go-to-market decision - we had to shift our go-to-market strategy.
We also had geographical challenges because we had most of our team originally in Argentina, and Argentina was a fluctuating market due to FX situations. We were facing continuous instability. Now things are much better - whether they're more expensive or not is another matter, but it's more stable. We ended up with offices in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, all over Latin America. Although we speak the same languages, each comes with its own set of challenges - financial, cultural, and legal.
Also, we were one of the early entrants who entered first to the market, and near-shoring wasn't as popular as it is now. We faced an uphill battle just trying to sell the positive aspects of working with Latin America at that point in time.
Lessons from M&A
What have you learned from the M&A process, both sitting as a seller and sitting as a buyer?
First is you're not worth what you think you're worth. You're worth what somebody's willing to pay for your company. I've had conversations with entrepreneurs where most P&Ls in startups are off - they don't use the right methodology to build P&L. There's a big deficiency in the startup world with the financials of business and the correct methodology of how to assess the value of your company.
People think they're worth whatever they think they're worth by some kind of formula that doesn't necessarily apply in the real world. Once you hit the real world and go to market, you realize there are variances to your assumptions, and those variances are meaningful. You're going to be faced with a dilemma that not everybody's prepared for - you're not worth maybe what you think you're worth.
Being on the buying side for a few years and having experience in integration, I think the second moment of truth for entrepreneurs is how challenging and difficult integration is as a whole process. I call it similar to marriage. You're going to be day in, day out with the person you're married to, so you have to make a smart choice about who you're marrying.
Due diligence is not just a one-way street - it's a two-way street. You're doing it to them as well. Do your due diligence. You're getting married, you're cashing in, but there's a cost and you're getting married. Integration is hard culturally. It can be hard for you and your employees, and your employees are your friends. They built a company with you for the last 10 years, worked weekends and nights, and suddenly you throw them into this different culture. You have to be smart about it.
For companies evaluating buy versus build expansion strategies in Latin America, what's your advice?
It's hard to buy scale in Latin America. There just simply aren't that many large companies in Latin America. I always say it's not buy versus build - it's more of buy and build. Are you going to find a company that has 400 people already working with the revenues? It's hard. There are not that many and most of them have been acquired.
If you find a smaller partner and they're really good and they can help you, buy them and build through them. That's what I always advise. Which is what they did with us - we were the first company in our group that had footprint in Latin America. Now we're up to about 600 employees in Latin America through subsequent acquisitions.
I recommend laying the foundations first with a really solid partner, buy through that, and build. You could do it organically, but I would fast track it if you can.
Building Enterprise Relationships
What's your approach to building long-term relationships with large enterprises?
It's a great and complicated question. It's very personal. I don't know if there's a formula that works for everybody that you can just rinse and repeat.
For myself, being Latin American was challenging to build those relationships in the beginning - having to travel to the US continually to build the relationship. The perception of a Latin American provider back in the day was challenging.
How did we overcome that? Just through hard work, honestly. Reliability, showing that we were there whenever it was needed, that the quality of work was really good. I'm a big sponsor overall of Latin America. I think the quality - now everybody knows it's not a surprise. Everybody knows how great Latin America is.
I believe in work. I don't think there's any shortcuts. You have to build a quality team. There's no shortcuts to that. Don't cut corners ever, because I've seen unfortunately some entrepreneurs cut corners in service to build scale, and I think it impacts the image of what we're trying to build as a whole. Don't cut corners. Don't sacrifice quality ever, reliability ever, and make sure that you deliver what you promise. If not, just be transparent about it.
We made so many mistakes in so many projects, but so does everybody else. Don't hide them. Just be transparent. That's how you build reliability and relationships.
When I moved to a US-based corporate role after the acquisition, I wouldn't say it's easier, but there's a level of relationship that gets built and leverage that I just didn't have on my own. Finding the right partner to fast track your own growth and your ability to get through to some clients that before seemed impossible - it's a real thing. We grew a lot after the acquisition.
Current Market Observations
What differences do you see from when you were building to today's entrepreneurial ecosystem?
The young entrepreneurs I'm meeting now are miles ahead of where I was when I started. They have exponentially more tools, resources, and technical understanding at their disposal. When I moved to China, I did it purely on gut feeling without any business plan or analysis - I was jumping in completely blind.
Today's founders are incredibly well-prepared and have access to AI, mentorship, and information that gets synthesized instantly. But there's a trade-off: they may be missing that emotional, gut-feeling component that's critical for entrepreneurship. They need to balance all their tools and knowledge with that instinct about seizing opportunities urgently. The technical abilities come naturally to them, which I had to build from scratch, but they need to develop their emotional resilience more.
Revenue Focus
Was your client split between the US and Latin America when you sold your company?
I would say 100% to zero. We had no Latin American clients. That was a decision from day one. In my previous digital agency business, my clients were multinational companies, but it was always the Latin American office of multinational companies that we were serving - whether Argentina, Mexico, mostly.
When we built United Virtualities, decision one was US market. That was the first decision. We didn't even know what to sell from a tech perspective yet, but we knew we wanted to focus on the US market. That was the right decision for us all the way through because it's hard to grow with Latin American clients for many different reasons, and it's risky. My experience is to focus on the US market.
Parting Advice
Any parting thoughts or words of encouragement for LATAM entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurship is the best thing in the world. I wouldn't trade my history for anything. The success wasn't even the best part of the journey - I still miss my early days in China and those first 10 years of building.
For anyone going through challenges in scaling their company, know that there's a way to overcome it. I failed countless times - 10 years ago I didn't know how I was going to survive the next month. It's a wonderful journey where you never know what's going to happen.
Trust your gut. Gut feeling is critical for entrepreneurs. And if anyone ever needs advice or wants to talk, I'm always available to help other entrepreneurs in our network.
Connect33 is a full-service consulting firm specializing in market entry, expansion, and software engineering team building in Latin America. With extensive experience in the region, we help companies scale efficiently by providing experience-based insights and services with on-the-ground experts.
Our list of companies we’ve scaled with includes mid-to-large enterprises such as Apexon, Atrium, Bain, Braze, C3 AI, EPAM, phdata, Terminal, and more.
Additionally, we help buyers find top software development partners that match their project needs through our Latam Partners platform.
