About
Brian Requarth is an American‑born, Latin‑America‑obsessed tech founder and investor. He first made headlines by launching VivaReal, an online real‑estate marketplace that grew across Brazil and eventually merged with rival ZAP Imóveis before being sold to OLX Brasil in a deal valued at more than US $600 million. Today, he co‑runs Latitud, a pre‑seed fund and community that coaches and finances early‑stage start‑ups across the region, and he recently started Camu, an AI‑driven tax‑automation company in Brazil. Alongside investing in 150‑plus start‑ups, he hosts the Latitud podcast, wrote the best‑seller Viva the Entrepreneur, and even sat in the investor’s chair on Shark Tank México, bringing a Silicon‑Valley‑meets‑São‑Paulo perspective to the hit TV show.
Before Fame
Born and raised in Sebastopol, a small California town, Brian was born into a family where it was normal to run a business—his father owned a paving business, and his mother had a private therapy practice. That spirit rubbed off early. He studied Spanish language and literature (with a Portuguese minor) at San Diego State University, then packed a beat‑up car and drove through Mexico and Central America. A planned backpacking adventure became a seven‑year stay in Bogotá, Colombia, where he scraped by teaching English, hiring other tutors when demand outpaced his own classroom skills. Those years sharpened both his Spanish and his appetite for building something bigger.
By 2009 he had spotted a gap in Brazil’s online property market: the big portals focused on news or autos, not housing. Brian moved to São Paulo, learned Portuguese on the fly, and bootstrapped VivaReal from a living‑room operation into a platform visited by millions of home‑hunters every month. Venture capital eventually followed—more than US $70 million—yet he still jokes that the company’s earliest “office” was a rented apartment with Ikea desks and balky Wi‑Fi..
Trivia
- Serial angel: Brian’s personal portfolio tops 150 Latin American start‑ups, ranging from fintech apps to tortilla‑making robots. He often writes that investing is “tuition”—a way to keep learning while betting on the next wave of founders.
- Book in a pandemic: He drafted Viva the Entrepreneur during 2020’s lockdowns, turning diary notes about fundraising missteps and culture hacks into a plain‑spoken handbook for first‑time founders. The self-published book landed on Amazon’s entrepreneur bestseller lists within a week.
- Polyglot podcaster: Speaking fluent English, Spanish, and Portuguese, he produces most Latitud episodes in whichever language his guest happens to favor, lending the show a bilingual character unusually rare in tech podcasts.
- Shark in the Tank: While most famous for B2B SaaS transactions, he still made consumer-goods investments on Shark Tank México including shares in a water-filter firm and an eco-friendly-shoe brand—showing his interest extends wider than software.
- Runway surfer: Between exits, Brian took a sabbatical living in Florianópolis, Brazil, where dawn surf sessions replaced 5 a.m. investor calls. He claims the habit “keeps cap tables and cortisol in check.”
Family Life
Brian is married to Andrea Palacios, whom he first dated during those Bogotá teaching days. Their cross‑border family now splits time between Northern California’s wine country, Mexico City, and the occasional stint in São Paulo. The couple has two children, and Brian often posts about trying to raise bilingual kids who feel at home ordering tacos and açaí. Andrea runs her own interior‑design studio, a fact Brian cites as proof that entrepreneurship is the family sport.
Despite frequent flights, he carves out “no‑laptop Sundays” for hikes among Sonoma County’s redwoods or bike rides along Chapultepec Park. He says those unplugged days remind him why he started building companies in the first place: to design a life, not just a balance sheet.
Associated With
- Latitud co‑founders: He built Latitud alongside Ecuadorian entrepreneur Paula Giraldo and Brazilian engineer Yuri Danilchenko, blending fundraising savvy with product chops to run what many founders call “Y Combinator for LatAm.”
- Fellow Sharks: On Shark Tank México he shared the stage with investors such as Marcus Dantus and Rodrigo Herrera, swapping banter and occasionally teaming up for joint offers. The camaraderie, he says, “felt like group chat, only with cameras rolling and pesos on the line.”
- Prop-tech peers: After VivaReal, he consults founders at Loft, QuintoAndar, and other real-estate sites, looking to take shortcuts on lessons learned the hard way—such as why listings quality trumps design polish.
- Global mentors: Brian credits U.S. investor Keith Rabois and Brazilian venture capitalist Patricia Elias as sounding boards who encouraged him to grow responsibly instead of pursuing vanity metrics.
