How Mercado Libre built Latin America's most valuable company: 18k engineers, 30k deploys a day, and their own fleet of planes | Sebastian Barrios
Sebastian Barrios was the longtime head of product and engineering at Mercado Libre, the largest company in Latin America—valued at over $100 billion and home to more than 100,000 employees. There, he led a team of more than 18,000 engineers across 18 countries and oversaw an astonishing 30,000 code deployments a day. Before Mercado Libre, he founded multiple startups, including a ridesharing company that competed directly with Uber in Latin America. And at just 17, he got a personal phone call from Steve Jobs asking him to take his app off the App Store. Today, Sebastian is the SVP of Engineering at Roblox.
What you’ll learn:
- Why Mercado Libre operates with 95% fewer PMs than typical tech companies (and how it actually works)
- How to maintain product quality with 30,000 daily deployments and distributed ownership
- The weekly email system Sebastian uses to maintain alignment with leadership
- How to build a culture of radical candor and direct feedback in a traditionally hierarchical region
- The counterintuitive approach to product reviews that keeps 18,000 engineers aligned
- How to evaluate hype cycles (crypto, AI) pragmatically while staying innovative
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Where to find Sebastian Barrios:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zebas/
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Where to find Lenny:
- Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
- X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
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In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Sebastian Barrios and Mercado Libre
(05:03) Mercado Libre’s scale and unique ways of operating
(14:48) AI’s impact on operations
(19:19) Empowering teams and reducing fear of failure
(34:20) The importance of radical candor
(38:26) Weekly updates
(41:03) Avoiding hype cycles
(44:24) When Steve Jobs personally called 17-year-old Sebastian
(49:00) Building successful app businesses
(55:33) Unique personal habits
(01:04:00) Raising independent children
(01:07:15) Lightning round and final thoughts
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Referenced:
- Mercado Libre: https://www.mercadolibre.com/
- Claude: https://claude.ai/
- Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/
- Nvidia: https://www.nvidia.com/
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/
- Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/
- Uber: https://www.uber.com/
- OpenAI: https://openai.com/
- Marcos Galperin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcosgalperin/
- Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/
- Windsurf: https://windsurf.com/
- Which companies produce the best product managers: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/which-companies-produce-the-best
- Which companies accelerate PM careers most: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/which-companies-accelerate-your-pm
- How Revolut trains world-class product managers: The “local CEO” model, raw intellect over experience, and a cultural obsession with building wow products | Dmitry Zlokazov (Head of Product): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-revolut-trains-world-class-product-managers
- Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/
- Atlassian: https://www.atlassian.com/
- Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/radical-candor-from-theory-to-practice
- Managing up: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/managing-up
- Steve Jobs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs
- Tobi Lütke’s leadership playbook: Playing infinite games, operating from first principles, and maximizing human potential (founder and CEO of Shopify): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/tobi-lutkes-leadership-playbook
- Everything Everywhere All at Once: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6710474/
- Dune on Max: https://www.max.com/movies/dune/e7dc7b3a-a494-4ef1-8107-f4308aa6bbf7
- Blu
