We are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are, an Uruguayan wrote, and even though time’s irony has turned his sentence into a mainstream cliché, today we feel that it’s depth is the only one that can represent our truth. Before iteration became the patrimony of technology, it was the essence of nature. Cambia, todo cambia. Truth be told, we have iterated, not so much for being members of the lean congregation but for survival instinct, and yet we have not survived.
Prometeo’s fire has a Phoenix soul. It is born every day from its own ashes. It is reborn without dying. That is how we get to today. When we look back, we see that we have changed too much in these years to assume that we are the same. Ultimately, what has remained are our foundations, the breath that ignited Prometeo, everything we believe in, which is still intact three years later. That is our manifesto.
We believe in Latin America. Latin America is not an opportunity. It is our land. It is the ground that our parents stepped on. It is the air that our children breathe. We live here. The scent of America crept up our roots. We have seen the snow-capped peaks of Tierra del Fuego and the traffic jams of Ciudad de México. We drank mezcal, rum, pisco, caipirinha, fernet and tannat. We say yapo and órale, we love the saudade in bossa nova’s rhythm, we know to say bo, but we prefer ta. We know poverty, inequality, economic crises, changes of government: we have lived through all the torments.
But we have seen progress: we are here to tell the story. We know what the cable car means for Medellín’s recovery, the impact fiber optics have had in Uruguay, what One Laptop per Child will do for the future. We know that to speak of infrastructure in Latin America is to speak of access and we are convinced that Latin America needs new foundations. That is why we understand the opportunity that Open Banking represents here, not in #Latam, but in our corner of the world and even the thinnest line of code not yet born from our hands.
We believe in hacking. Because each word says what it says and also more and something else. We are the underdogs, the underestimated, the contrarians. We are the unexpected, the unseen, the overlooked. Those who slip through the grid of a malfunctioning system. We are not Ivy League, we are not former Twitter or Google, we do not work at McKenzie or Goldman Sachs. We did not make it in YC. We do not speak fancy English and we are not elite. We were born with little pedigree and a lot of talent. What we have lacked in networking we have overcome with genius.
During these years, knowing how to hack has built us; hacking is social for us. It is finding the opportunity, looking for a way around it, finding its jeito, analyzing the system and seeing the gap, it is working outside the productivity frontier. It is imagining, inventing fire and giving birth in code to another reality. It is not speech, it is an act. It is an act that is a speech. Because hacking is also languaging: where they say vacuum, we say opportunity; where they see lack, we see growth. That is how the spark of Prometeo flourished. That is how we have become the leading Open Banking platform in Latam.
We believe in community. We did not appear out of thin air, we are part of everyone. We are made of the mud that others created. That is why we decided to build here. We sprout on the seeds that others planted. That is why we decided to grow here. We grew up in the future that others dreamt for us. That is why we decided to dream here.
We are part of a boundless realm of haunted men and historic women, whose unending obstinacy blurs into legend. From the tenacity of our people to change their present, their deeds are born.
Since you’re safe from nothing, try yourself to be something’s salvation, or as a criollo said: We cannot expect anything but from ourselves, and a country grew under his shadow. We believe that talent needs new features, genders, logos and labels because talent looks many different ways and speaks many different languages. We are those faces, those features, those languages. We are the generation that shows the world that Latin America can give birth to itself. That is why we are here.
We believe in the power of technology. Then, around the fire, men found warmth, illuminated by its light they celebrated their festivities, and sheltered from its flames they built a home. In the beginning of the world, Prometeo gave men their first piece of technology, and with it men created a civilization. Using the fire of the gods to illuminate everyone’s world was the call of Prometeo and it is his rebellious spirit that inspires us. We believe that to be the deep purpose of technology.
The world is a naked call, a voice not a name, a voice carrying its own echo. We carry the world we want to build and on our way we are igniting future.
