Next Meetups & Dinners
Dubai - GITEX Meetup - Join our group
Bucharest - Netopia Event - Join our Group
Cairo
London

In Partnership with Edesk

eDesk is built for commerce. eDesk is reshaping customer service for online retailers with an AI-first approach built for eCommerce. From their Smart Inbox to an eCommerce-focused chatbot and AI Assist, they help brands deliver faster, more personal support across the buying journey. Trusted by thousands of businesses, eDesk enables teams to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time creating real customer experiences.

Our ecosystem carries strong logos, but what matters most is the community behind them.

How Adyen Turned Trust into a Global Advantage

Jean Christian Mies, former President of Adyen LATAM, shared how a Dutch startup conquered Latin America not through capital, but through culture.

When Jean Christian Mies joined Adyen, the company had fewer than 30 employees.
A small Dutch team with a clear mission: to fix what was broken in the payments world.

They weren’t chasing unicorn status or the next funding round.
Their goal was to solve real problems to build infrastructure that actually worked, with transparency, precision, and purpose.

And that mindset changed everything.

Culture before capital

Jean spoke about Adyen’s early days in Latin America, when nobody could even pronounce the company’s name.

A Dutch payments firm entering Brazil: Green logo, strange name, no local track record trying to compete with established banks and fintechs that were already deeply entrenched.

Instead of overpromising, Jean and his team chose to show, not sell.
They opened dashboards in live demos, walked clients through real data, and admitted when something wasn’t ready. No slides, just proof.

In a market where overselling is common practice, that honesty became their edge.

Trust, he said, is where Dutch culture meets Latin reality.

The Dutch advantage

Adyen’s roots are Dutch and Jean believes that culture shaped everything.
He described it as trust-based leadership. Once trust is earned, autonomy follows.

In Dutch culture, leaders don’t micromanage. They expect responsibility.
That mindset gave Jean freedom to build the Latin American operation from scratch one hire, one client, one product tweak at a time.

There was no blank check. No inflated targets.
Just a long-term vision and the confidence to execute.

That’s the kind of mandate that separates short-term growth from lasting impact.

Evolve for Senior Leaders

From payments to people

What made this session powerful wasn’t just what Jean built — but how he built it.
He spoke about growing up between two worlds: a German father, a Colombian mother.
Precision and passion. Logic and warmth.

That duality shaped how he led.

When Adyen entered Latin America, Jean didn’t replicate a European model. He adapted it.
He called it “tropicalization” building a business that fit the rhythms, expectations, and realities of the region.

He knew that success would depend less on product specs and more on human understanding.

Building trust, one hire at a time

Hiring the first local team was, in Jean’s words, “the hardest and most defining challenge.”

Convincing top talent to leave established Brazilian players for a foreign company no one had heard of required more than a job description.
It required belief.

He didn’t sell stock options or big promises.
He sold purpose the idea of building something meaningful from the ground up.

And that belief system was reinforced by Adyen’s culture.

Every employee, regardless of location, spent time at the Amsterdam HQ.
Not to learn the rules, but to feel the company’s rhythm, to meet colleagues, to see how decisions were made, to understand the “why.”

It wasn’t about perks or slogans on the wall.
It was about belonging.

The long game

Jean’s perspective on growth was refreshingly patient.
He warned against the obsession with short-term metrics — “we want to be a unicorn,” “we want to IPO.”

Adyen’s founders never set those as goals.
They focused on solving fundamental problems — making payments simpler, faster, and more transparent for both merchants and consumers.

The financial success that followed wasn’t the mission. It was the consequence.

The power of corporate culture

When one of our members asked whether culture really determines a company’s success, Jean didn’t hesitate.
“Yes,” he said. “It defines whether a company survives or fades away.”

He broke it down into four principles shared by every company that endures:

1. A clear purpose — a North Star that connects people beyond financial targets.

2. Decentralized decision-making — trust people close to the action to make the call.

3. Hiring for personality, not just skills — you can teach expertise, not integrity.

4. Embracing failure — treating mistakes as learning, not blame.

It’s simple on paper, but rare in practice.
Especially in a world obsessed with scale, speed, and shareholder value.

Beyond fintech

The session ended with a reflection on the broader landscape.
When asked if every company will eventually become a fintech, Jean paused.
He acknowledged the trend, financial services embedded everywhere but warned that regulation, trust, and transparency would be the deciding factors.

The next wave of fintech, he said, won’t just be about access. It’ll be about responsibility.

And that’s where Latin America stands out.
He sees the region as the next frontier a place where innovation, inclusion, and technology collide to solve real problems.

What we learned

Every EVOLVE session brings its own kind of wisdom.
From Jean, the lessons were human, grounded, and long-term:

• Culture compounds faster than capital.

• Honesty can be your strongest differentiator.

• Localization is respect in action.

• Purpose-driven leadership outlasts market cycles.

He reminded us that building something global isn’t about translating a mode, it’s about translating intent.

A closing note

At EVOLVE, we talk a lot about proximity, about the value of real, unfiltered conversations among leaders who’ve actually done the work.
This session with Jean was a perfect example.
No theory. No playbook. Just truth.

Because in the end, the story of Adyen in Latin America wasn’t about payments.
It was about trust, culture, and the quiet confidence to build something meaningful one market, one team, one conversation at a time.

Grateful to Jean Christian Mies for sharing his journey, and to our members who continue to ask the questions that matter most.

Curated. Personable. Global.
That’s EVOLVE.

Our community partners

Podcasts We Sponsor & Support