Rodrigo Teijeiro

Rodrigo Teijeiro is an Argentine technology entrepreneur who is the founder and chief executive officer of RecargaPay, a leading mobile payments company in Brazil.[1][2][3][4]

Rodrigo Teijeiro
Born
Buenos Aires, Argentina
NationalityArgentine
Education
OccupationEntrepreneur
Years active2002–present
Known for

Early life and education

Teijeiro was born in Buenos Aires. When he was four years old he moved with his parents to the U.S. and they lived there for five years.[5]

Teijeiro began his entrepreneurial journey when he was in school, earning money by buying and selling stuff there. He then used the funds to open his first E-Trade account in 1997. From there, he started day trading and, in one year and a half, his valuation went from $5,000 to $100,000.[6]

At the age of 18 he started studying Economics at the University of San Andrés (Argentina).[5]

At the age of 20 he raised $300,000 and launched a website for Latin American indie bands to promote themselves online. The company grew to the point where it had 25 people working in it. In 2001, due to NASDAQ's collapse and the impossibility to raise more capital, he had to close the company.[7]

In 2001 he decided to continue his education in the U.S. enrolling at the University of Southern California to pursue a bachelor's degree in Business Administration.[7][8]

Career

In 2002 Teijeiro founded Fnbox, a Latin American company builder organized as a holding company that launched and managed various online businesses.[9][8]

Fnbox's first subsidiary, TarjetasTelefonicas.com (known as Cloncom.com in the US market), was launched by Rodrigo in September 2002. TarjetasTelefonicas is a telecommunications company that offers a wide range of products such as prepaid calling cards, pinless and rechargeable cards, PC to phone services and prepaid wireless cards.[10][11]

With the purpose of growing its global audience, between 2003 and 2007, Fnbox launched Cumplealerta.com (a birthdate alert service), Tarjetasbubba.com and TuPostal.com (two E-card services) and Flodeo.com (an image hosting service).[12]

In July 2007 Fnbox launched Sonico.com, a free-access social networking website oriented toward the Latin American audiences. As an early mover in the Latin American social space, Sonico registered 4.4 million users in its first year.[13] Fnbox immediately raised $4.3 million in financing from venture capital and angel investors and brought Sonico to Brazil, the largest consumer market in Latin America.[14][15][16][17]

One year after its foundation, Sonico had a staff of 88 people and claimed to be adding some 110,000 new users every day with more than 20 million registered users in total.[18][19][20]

In 2010 Fnbox bought Cupónica.com, a coupon site to offer daily deals to its customers, and launched Datam.com, an online advertising service to help businesses reach targeted audiences, and Winkal.com, an entertainment platform.[21]

In August 2014, after reaching 55 million registered users, Sonico was sold to Match.com.[9]

RecargaPay, also founded by Rodrigo Teijeiro and incubated by Fnbox, was launched on February 1, 2010, as a mobile payment platform that allows its users to pay digital services such as prepaid mobile top-ups, bill payments, gift cards, public transport cards and peer-to-peer payments without needing a bank account.[22][23][24][25] As of February 22, 2018, RecargaPay received a total funding of $33,153,334 from various investors such as Martín Varsavsky, Fabrice Grinda and the International Finance Corporation.[26][27][3]

References
  1. "Rodrigo Teijeiro's profile at the World Economic Forum"
  2. IRIS.xyz, "The State of FinTech in Latin America: Ten Fintech Startups Worth Watching", Equities.com, August 24, 2018. Retrieved August 27, 2018.
  3. Kate Fitzgerald, "RecargaPay raises $22 million to grow mobile payments base in Brazil", PaymentsSource, March 05, 2018. Retrieved August 31, 2018.
  4. Steven Anderson, "Is This Brazil’s New Apple Wallet?", Paymentweek, July 05, 2017. Retrieved August 31, 2018.
  5. Sramana Mitra, "Bootstrapping A Latin American Social Networking Powerhouse With 50 Million Users: Sonico CEO Rodrigo Teijeiro (Part 1)", One Million by One Million Blog, June 10, 2011. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  6. Sramana Mitra, "Not Just Tango in Argentina, Business", Small Business Trends, April 9, 2013. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  7. Sramana Mitra, "Bootstrapping A Latin American Social Networking Powerhouse With 50 Million Users: Sonico CEO Rodrigo Teijeiro (Part 2)", One Million by One Million Blog, June 10, 2011. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  8. "Rodrigo Teijeiro: es una lástima que se haya apretado tanto a los argentinos durante años", La Nación, November 30, 2015. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
  9. Rodrigo Teijeiro, "The great unbundling of Fnbox, and how it became RecargaPay.", Medium, August 20, 2015. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
  10. "Cloncom's about-us page"
  11. Sramana Mitra, "Bootstrapping A Latin American Social Networking Powerhouse With 50 Million Users: Sonico CEO Rodrigo Teijeiro (Part 3)", One Million by One Million Blog, June 10, 2011. Retrieved August 22, 2018.
  12. "Un argentino creó una red social de Internet en la región", La Nación, January 18, 2008. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  13. Duncan Riley (February 16, 2008). "Sonico: The Biggest Social Networking Site You've Probably Never Heard Of". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  14. Mark Hendrickson (June 3, 2008). "Latin American Social Network Sonico Raises $4.3 Million". TechCrunch. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  15. PRNewswire (December 16, 2008). "Sonico Receives $1.7 Million in Additional Investment and Closes a Year of Significant Achievements". PR Newswire. Retrieved September 12, 2012.
  16. Pablo Martín Fernandez, "Sonico más allá de las fronteras", La Nación, January 30, 2009. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
  17. "Un argentino armó la red social más importante de Latinoamérica", Clarín, January 3, 2008. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
  18. Glazowski, Paul (2008-05-21). "Sonico: The Largest Social Network In Latin America?". Mashable. Archived from the original on 2008-05-25. Retrieved May 28, 2008.
  19. Social networking page Sonico counts 15 mln users (Telecom Paper)
  20. "El fantasma de una burbuja 2.0", El Cronista, April 19, 2011. Retrieved September 20, 2018.
  21. Editorial Staff, "Argentina: Fnbox Acquires Cupónica", Portada Online, August 10, 2011. Retrieved September 1, 2018.
  22. Kemmer Cernev, Adrian (March–April 2017). "O futuro do dinheiro eletrônico". Gvexecutivo. 16 (2): 44. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
  23. Nick Hastreiter, "Mobile Wallets: How They Are Democratizing Financial Services", HuffPost News, 02/28/2017
  24. Julian Mitchell, "This Mobile Payment Platform Has Become The Apple Wallet Of Brazil", Forbes, 06/29/2017
  25. "RecargaPay's company profile at Crunchbase"
  26. Samantha Hurst, "Brazilian Mobile Payments Platform RecargaPay Secures $22 million Through Series B Investment Round", CROWDFUND INSIDER, 02/23/2018
  27. "RecargaPay profile at AngelList"
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