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: