Marcos Galperin is the co-founder of Mercado Livre, the largest e-commerce site in Latin America and, in addition, one of the largest in the world. He served as the company's CEO until August 2020 when he passed the role to partner Stelleo Tolda.
Galperin was born in October 1971 in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires. At the time, his parents owned one of the largest tanneries in the world, Sadesa. In effect, this guaranteed him a good education.
He began his studies at Saint Andrew's Scots, a school of Scottish origin founded in 1838 in Argentina. In the 1990s, however, he moved to the US, Pennsylvania, where he enrolled at the Wharton School.
Later, in 1994, Marcos Galperin graduated in Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1997, he earned an MBA in Business Administration, but this time at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
In the professional area, before founding MercadoLivre, Galperin worked as a fixed income sales and trading intern at JPMorgan. In addition, he worked at the Argentine oil company YPF for three years.
MARCOS GALPERIN AND HIS TRAJECTORY IN THE FREE MARKET
Marcos Galperin idealized Mercado Livre while studying at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, still in the 1990s. At the time, he realized that the internet would have a great impact on people's lives in the medium and long term.
The entrepreneur then thought that it would be possible to make sales via the internet through platforms. In 1999, he pitched the idea to others and thus obtained the first funding for the business, which came from the creator of HM Capital Partners, John Muse. The Free Market was born.
As the project evolved, other investors such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Banco Santander entered the business, which began to grow rapidly. As a result, in 2007, Mercado Livre went public on Nasdaq.
THE POWER OF THE FREE MARKET TODAY
Today, MercadoLivre operates in 19 countries, including Argentina, Chile, Peru and Brazil. It has about 4 employees. It is the most popular and most visited e-commerce site in Latin America.
It is estimated that around 500 thousand companies are part of the e-commerce founded by Galperin. Of these, 270 are Brazilian companies, with 93 Tupiniquin SMEs joining the aforementioned site in 2020, according to Exam website data.
With the success of Mercado Livre, Galperin amassed a fortune. Today, he has a net worth of $3,9 billion according to Forbes information. In 2022, he was listed among the 800 richest people on the planet.
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