Startup Interview with Antonio Peláez, Dapp CEO & Cofounder

HackerNoon Reporter: Please tell us briefly about your background.

MKT, family guy, salesman who worked in Kellog 7 years and has his own advertising agency.

I am the current CEO and Co-founder of Dapp. 13 years ago, I founded my own advertising agency, combining my two top passions in the world: making marketing and founding companies.

What's your startup called? And in a sentence or two, what does it do?

Dapp. We are a Mexican technology company that enables interoperability in mobile payments all the while improve safety and operating costs.

What is the origin story?

We started as a wallet but we discovered that there was a huge need to develop a “railway”. So we now connect those wallets, merchants and users in order to improve financial inclusion in Mexico by digitalization.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

That we are passionate, we pursue our dreams and we know Dapp is the means to an end (achieving our own dreams).

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

Definitely building another startup.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your core metrics?

Success is the ability to do with your time exactly what you want do with it. Never pursue money, only your dreams. So if you reached your dream, you would be successful and ready to set yourself a new goal.

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

That we are connecting some of the most important financial companies in Mexico and we are just getting started. Our 12-month goal is to reach 240,000 merchants. To achieve that goal, we have started strategic alliances with Asia-based WeChat and UnionPay, connected with a wallet developer in Europe, and also in talks with South American companies so non-Mexicans can make their payments through our technology.

What technologies are you currently most excited about, and most worried about? And why?

We’re excited about technologies that connect different languages and that allow operability between different players.

What drew you to get published on HackerNoon? What do you like most about our platform?

Hackernoon is a highly recognized publication in the region so being on the site is an honor for us.

What advice would you give to the 21-year-old version of yourself?

Follow your dreams, time is the most precious thing in the world! Do with it what you love and find the correct soulmate because an entrepreneur with the wrong soulmate is worth shit.

What is something surprising you've learned this year that your contemporaries would benefit from knowing?

Every day is perfect how it is. No matter if its good or bad…it’s perfect.