Luiz Cent 🪙

Hire the top 1% of talent in LatAm in less than 21 days

I'm Luiz Cent, and it's great to meet you. 

If you landed here, I invite you to pause. LinkedIn is full of people trying to sell you something, and I am one of them, but only if you are buying. 

For over a decade I've been hiring talent internationally, as a hiring manager, as a business owner and as a consultant. Building top performing teams, fully remote has been a passion of mine for years and now it's our business. 

If you are looking to hire top talent, consider LatamCent, a nearshore staffing agency I founded helping USA-based companies discover the top 1% of talent in Latin America. We've helped VC backed, PE backed, and bootstrapped b2b companies find top talent in less than 21 days at 50-70% less than prices in the USA.

Taking the learnings from thousands of hires, our talent partners understand your business and goals. We've helped over 17 b2b tech companies hire Go to Market (Sales, CS, Marketing) and Engineering Talent in LatAm.

Previously, I led sales at Quolum, as a player-coach in the SDR/AE function. In less than 3 months we tripled our conversations and pipeline with half the resources. Through those conversations we re-positioned ourselves in the market, testing pricing strategies, and eventually pivoted from selling fintech to the CFO to selling cybersecurity to CISO. 

The 6 months at Quolum was a mini MBA, from board reports to Nexus/Sequoia, to selling ideas internally, it was as fast-paced as it could be taking early morning calls with India and late night calls with Australia. At Quolum I learned I never want to be a VP of sales again lol. 

Before joining Quolum, I led and grew the customer success and sales team at Mailshake, a product-led sales org that achieved over 100% YoY growth and 5+ million ARR. 

I also have a background in e-commerce growth, conversion rate optimization, SEO, and behavioral email marketing, having worked with 30+ eTailers and leading CRO programs for Optimizely's enterprise clients.

But my passion is entrepreneurship, having built eCommerce agencies, eCommerce stores, and hundreds of websites, keep shipping until one of them hits Product Market Fit. 

If you're in Miami Beach, come co work.

VP of Sales

Quolum is on a mission to save companies BILLIONS of dollars in unused SaaS applications.

Quolum is a full-stack SaaS Procurement product. We have created something out of thin air that sits at the intersection of Finance + IT + Procurement. 

To achieve responsible SaaS buying, we:

* Track feature-level utilization of SaaS apps
* Tame long tail spend via our own SaaS Card and accounting systems integrations
* Reduce FinOps drudgery by aggregating contracts and invoices
* Apply AI, Fintech, and IT workflow to reduce organizational friction.

Luiz Cent 🦉

Everyone says AI engineers are impossible to hire right now.

The real problem isn’t supply.

It’s misidentification.

We recently helped a company hire an AI engineer in LATAM, and the outcome came down to how he was evaluated, not where he was located.

He wasn’t hired because he “knew AI.”

He was hired because he had shipped models into production.

• He could explain tradeoffs in plain English.
• He cared about data quality more than model hype.
• He understood how ML fits into a real product, not just notebooks.

Most AI hires fail because teams optimize for signals instead of outcomes.

• Degrees don’t deploy models.
• Benchmarks don’t solve edge cases.
• And a flashy GitHub doesn’t guarantee product judgment.

The best AI engineers I see behave like product engineers who happen to be great at ML.

If you’re hiring AI or ML engineers this year, screen for:
• production experience
• communication
• business context
• willingness to push back when the model is the wrong answer

Filtering is the bottleneck, not geography.

DM me if you’re planning an AI hire and want a quick sanity check before you start.

#LatamCent #AiHiring #AI #SaaS #Nearshore

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Founder & CEO

Executive Member

President

I help VC backed SaaS orgs build nearshore teams in Latin America

English

Portuguese

Most founders ask the wrong question when hiring in LATAM.

They ask:

“What’s the best country to hire from?”

The better question is:

“What problem am I trying to solve with this hire?”

Because country choice doesn’t fail teams.

Misaligned expectations do.

If you’re hiring engineers but optimizing only for cost, you’ll struggle at the senior level.

If you’re hiring GTM talent without prioritizing English and US-market exposure, deals will stall.

If you’re hiring support or finance without thinking about process maturity and compliance, quality drops fast.

I’ve seen teams hire in the “right” country and still miss targets.
Not because the talent wasn’t there.

But because the hiring model didn’t match the outcome they needed.

Nearshoring works best when you start with:

• the outcome you need in 6–12 months
• the roles that actually move the needle
• the level of risk your company can absorb

Country selection comes last, not first.

If you’re planning your next LATAM hire and want to pressure-test the model before you commit, my DMs are open.

#LatamCent #NearShore #Hiring #SaaS

Despite everyone saying developers are going to be replaced by AI, the most popular engineering role we hired for in 2025 was full stack devs!

Closely followed by AI/ML engineers, full stack devs are still in hot demand. 

Candidates who weren't AI curious, were definitely disqualified, and the candidates who stuck out are those that are vibe coding apps on their free time and weekends, and learning how to be more productive with AI.

If you are looking to build in 2026, slide in the DMs and we can share some profiles of top devs in market.

#NearShore #FullStackDev #LatamCent #Hiring

Every week, a SaaS founder asks me:

“What country should we scale in Latin America?”

The honest answer:

It depends.

It depends on the function.

Engineering, GTM, customer support, and finance all optimize for different things.

It depends on your goal.

Speed, cost efficiency, seniority, timezone overlap, or long-term leadership bench.

It depends on your model.
• Fully remote?
• One country hub?
• Building an office?
• Or starting distributed and centralizing later?

There is no “best country in LATAM.”
There is only the right country for what you are trying to build next. 

The top 3 countries we are hiring from are Colombia 🇨🇴, Brazil 🇧🇷 and Argentina 🇦🇷

Most hiring mistakes in nearshore come from choosing a country first and a strategy second.

Flip that order.

If you want a clear, practical nearshore plan based on your roadmap and roles,
DM me.

I help founders get this right before they make expensive hiring bets.

#LatamCent #GlobalHiring #HiringStrategy #Nearshore

Every week, a founder comes to us asking for a “Senior” hire.

And almost every time, what they actually want is something else.

This week’s call was with a fast-growing consumer app with millions of users.

They thought they needed:
• A Senior Product Designer
• 7+ years of experience
• Strategic design leadership

After 30 minutes of asking hard questions, the truth came out.

What they really needed was:
• Someone fully dedicated (not splitting time with side projects)
• Strong UI execution, not abstract UX theory
• Taste aligned with modern consumer apps 
• Zero micromanagement
• High autonomy and ownership
• Hunger to learn from other apps and trends

Seniority wasn’t the problem.

Titles weren’t the problem.

The gap was delivery + autonomy.

One line from the call stuck with me:
“We don’t need someone to make it look pretty. Millions of people actually use this product.”

This is where most hiring goes wrong:
Founders optimize for resumes instead of outcomes.

If you’re hiring designers (or engineers, or GTM roles), ask yourself:
• Do I need strategy, or do I need execution?
• Do I want leadership, or do I want ownership?
• Do I want years of experience, or current taste?

Clarity here saves months of mis-hires.

If you’re scaling a product team and unsure who you actually need, DM me.
Happy to help you pressure-test the role before you hire the wrong “senior” again.

#Hiring #Designers #LatamCent #Nearshore

A talent leader at a $100M+ organization said something on a call last week that more companies need to hear:

“I’m not willing to make a decision on one role. We have to think about the bigger strategy.”

That one sentence changed the entire conversation.

Because this was never about “what country has engineers.”

It was about how to build a long-term talent hub without creating risk.

She wasn’t trying to fill seats.

She was trying to build a brain trust. A team with depth that compounds over time.

And when we started talking about location, the nuance mattered.
Some countries can support junior and mid-level roles well, but senior talent in regulated fields like security gets much harder to find.

Not impossible. Just harder, and more expensive, faster.

Then compliance entered the picture.

When you serve government or regulated customers, cost alone does not get a vote.

Certifications, contractual language, audit requirements, and entity structure all shape where you can actually hire.

This is where most teams go wrong.

They treat country selection like a sourcing problem.

In reality, it’s a risk, compliance, and operating model decision.

The simplest framework I’ve seen looks like this:

• Why do we want a hub at all?
• What does success look like in 12 to 24 months?
• Which roles move first, and which roles should never move?
• What constraints does compliance introduce?
• At what seniority level do costs start to compress versus the US?

If you are looking at LATAM after trying India, or after building in India without a clear transition plan, you’re not alone.

The companies that get this right define the endgame before they hire the first person.

If you want a country-by-country breakdown for engineering and security-adjacent roles, including where costs start to spike at senior levels, DM me and I’ll share it.

#LatamCent #Nearshore #Hiring #Cybersecurity #Talent

Most hiring mistakes don’t come from bad interviews.

They come from skipping the hard thinking upfront.

In WHO, Geoff Smart says the best teams start with one thing:

A clear scorecard.

Not a job description.
Not a wishlist.
A definition of success.

Yet most founders still hire like this:
“Smart.”
“Culture fit.”
“Has done this before.”

That’s how you end up with impressive resumes and disappointing outcomes.

The teams that win do this instead:
• Define the mission of the role
• Lock 5–7 measurable outcomes
• Interview only to that scorecard

When someone fails, it’s usually not because they lied.
It’s because the company never agreed on what winning looked like.

Hiring isn’t about finding great people.
It’s about being precise about the job.

The clearer the scorecard, the fewer regrets you’ll have later.

#LatamCent #WHO #FindYourWHO #Hiring

Chairman and Founder at ghSMART

Most hiring problems aren’t talent problems.

They’re clarity problems.

Founders come to us saying:

“We need a senior engineer.”

“We need someone who can just own it.”

“We need them yesterday.”

But when we slow it down, the real gap is usually this:

• What outcomes does this role actually own in the next 6–12 months?
• What decisions should this person make without permission?
• What would failure look like after 90 days?

Until that’s clear, resumes don’t matter.
Countries don’t matter.
Even seniority doesn’t matter.

Great hires happen when the role is designed around outcomes, not titles.

If you’re struggling to hire right now, don’t ask:
“Where can we find this person?”

Ask:
“What do we actually need this person to change?”

That answer fixes more than any sourcing strategy ever will.

#LatamCent #Nearshore #Hiring

Hiring locally feels safe. It's comfortable. It's what everyone tells you to do. 

But if you want to scale globally, it's a trap. 

Local hiring is often rooted in familiarity, trust, and speed. But it can hold you back. 

What works in one market doesn't always work in others. 

Your customers are in different time zones, cultures, and business environments. 

Hiring locally might delay your growth, limit your talent pool, and inflate costs. 

I've seen founders spend months trying to find the "perfect local candidate" only to realize they're stuck on a small pond. 

Meanwhile, competitors who embrace remote teams across borders move faster, adapt quicker, and save money. 

Scaling globally isn't about finding the best candidate in your backyard. 

It's about finding the right talent, wherever they are. 

It's about building diverse teams that speak your customers' languages, understand their pain, and move at their pace. 

Don't limit yourself to local talent if you want to conquer the world. 

Think bigger. Act smarter. 

Your next hire could come from anywhere 🌎, and that's what will truly make or break your growth. 

Are you ready to stop playing small? Or will you keep chasing the myth of local perfection? 

The choice is yours. 

#LatamCent #Hiring #SaaS

I love seeing Wade Foster waste no time in applying Claire Vo's feedback to his AI interview agents. 

In addition to evaluating candidates based on meeting notes and AI prompts, now they will give feedback to the interviewer as well on how they can improve their interview process. 

This is all gold. 

If you haven't invested time binge watching How I Ai w/ Claire you are missing out on generational wealth.

#HowIAI #AI #ClaireVo #Zapier #Hiring #InterviewTips

Co-founder & CEO at Zapier, YC & Mizzou Alum

Building ChatPRD.ai | 3x CPTO | Startups, Leadership, Product x Engineering, and AI | clairevo on X | chiefproductofficer on TikTok

Private Family Office

• Oversee the day-to-day operations of multiple private estates and 20 commercial properties, including maintaining a Yacht. Manage maintenance and repairs for estate grounds and commercial buildings. Coordinate house staff, groundskeepers, shipmates, and events/functions.

• Serve as the primary liaison with the principal/owner, preparing daily and weekly status reports detailing completed tasks and ongoing projects.

• Oversee all projects and work related to the residence and commercial properties (indoor and outdoor) ensure that the estate's business ventures generate profit. Coordinated and help design an Oxygen Chamber, Custom Home Sauna and New pool.

• Schedule and oversee all 3rd party service vendors (pool, landscaper, plumber, electrician, contractor, exterminator, art handlers, etc)

• Conduct thorough inspections of the household systems and facilities. Utilize Crestron and Lutron home automation platforms to monitor and control devices. Schedule necessary maintenance and repairs in a timely manner. Recognize equipment failures and substandard maintenance, and take appropriate corrective action. Led the hiring process for a new automation programmer.

• Plan and coordinate private and social events, private dinners. Assist with set up and take down when needed. 

• Keep agendas and diaries, organizing meetings and appointments with Microsoft Outlook. 

• Arrange travel plans, both international and domestic. Including Private Aviation.

• Keep track and remind principal of important deadlines.

• Research areas of interest or concern for the principal’s business or personal needs.

• Management of inventory for the main residence.

• Knowledge of luxury items including jewelry, antiques and fine art. Manage ongoing item list and update with insurance. 

• Drive principle “Rolls Royce” as needed.  

• Organized successful 40 Year Certifications for commercial businesses.

• Shipping and receiving including running errands for the principal and family.

UHNW Multi-Estate Manager | Private Family Assistant

JDP Invest llc

• Responsible for building and managing a fleet of 35+ luxury vehicles.
• Professional Chauffeur/Driver.
• Vigorous calendar and flight management.
• Provided personal curbside delivery service from Miami to West Palm Beach airports.
• Provided stellar and professional service. Achieved over 4,000 five star positive reviews.
• Managed maintenance records for entire fleet. Ensured each vehicle was properly serviced.
• Skilled at identifying and resolving maintenance problems.
• Completed training on enhanced cleaning and disinfection practices.
• Monitored market conditions for setting accurate pricing structures.
• Maintained inventory.
• Orchestrated new purchases skilled and recognized when to buy, sell, or trade.
• Acted as a single point of contact for customers.
• Problem solving and quick decision making for any unexpected challenges during a reservation.
• Tracked Fleet movements.
• Tracked expenses and accounting responsibilities.

Managing Owner

Confidential Family-Private

House Manager/Executive Private Assistant
• Personal Driver/Chauffeur.
• Helped create House Manual for housekeeping.
• Overlooked three properties.
• On call around the clock to run errands and carried out tasks as requested.
• Calendar management.
• Phone answering with proper note taking and message relaying.
• Travel planning and implementation.
• Assisted with luggage packing and unpacking.
• Personal shopper: Grocery, Supplies, and Luxury Clothing.
• Assisted with childcare as needed.
• Assisted with Pet care as needed.
• Maintained attention to detail with household matters.
• Vehicle Maintenance and cleaning as needed.
• Housekeeping assistance.
• Inspected all cleaning and household tasks to quality standards.
• Vendor Management.
• Event Planning.
• Served and Bartended for private parties.
• Butler duties.
• Plant/Flower care.
• Maintained security and privacy of principle and residence.
• Ability to adjust, accommodate and maintain composure under changing circumstances.
• Helped coordinate family schedules and travel arrangements. Including accompanying assistance with private plane travel back to Philadelphia.
• Top Fun task helped create looks for upscale events and galas in South Florida.
• Acted as a role model and became close with children exuding positivity, motivation and enthusiasm any child would love. Was able to turn the switch like a unicorn when I was helping the principle or attending child needs.

— Due to Covid family decided to sell Miami home. Helped family move and prepare home. Still assist presently when I can as a personal driver or any need when they visit South Florida twice a year.

House Manager | Private Assistant UHNWI

ORMA at Caribe Hilton

• Experienced buyer representative of top brands such as Moschino, Valentino, Jean Paul Gautier.
• Strong negotiator facilitating in successful trade show transactions.
• Responsible for Visual Merchandising, display windows, and overall design of store.
• Managed Inventory. Ensured store functional maintenance.
• Ensured focused and professional customer service daily.
• Maintained and built a strong Amazon store and social media presence.
• Coordinated special events for exceptional clients to maintain retention.
• Responsible for Payroll and new hires. Supervised a staff of 4 sales associates.
• Managed and Promoted business on social media platforms.
• Personal shopper for high end clients.
• Accounting.

Co-Owner | Fashion Buyer

The Forge Restaurant

• Served meals for UHNWI. Including private events, banquets, and owner estate with special attention to detail.
• Focused team player. Trained new staff.
• Utilized French style service table side.
• Delivered exceptional service anticipating the needs of guests in a professional and attentive
manner.
• Had great wine knowledge to enhance guest experience with suggested pairings.
• Maintained knowledge of current menu items, ingredients and new daily preparation methods
from Chef.
• Polished silverware, proper cleanup, and maintained care with closing duty checklists.
• Passion to service always with an extreme eye for detail.

Server Trainer | Private Estate Events

Bova Prime

VIP server for private UHNWI.
Trained new staff.
Confidentiality NDA

VIP Lead Server Captain

Blue Moon Fish Company

• Fine dining server. Trainer of new staff. 
• Prepared, Catered, and Organized UHNW private Yacht and Estate functions at various locations.
• Built relationships and maintained repeat clients and guests.

Server Trainer | Private Events

One Eleven Chophouse-Worcester Restaurant Groups

• Award winning fine dining restaurant. Worked evenings and weekends.
• Achieved Top Wine sales for four years in a row. Averaged over 600 bottles a year. 
• Trained new service staff and new managers.
• Used Aloha computer system to communicate orders to the kitchen and bar.
• Managed Gift Certificate program.
• Helped create a new function program and outline.
• Consistently enhanced guests experience with outgoing personality, top quality service, and teamwork.

Server Trainer

New England Financial, A MetLife Company

• Maintained multiple calendars for upper management and executives.
• Schedule meetings and prepared conference rooms as needed.
• Presentation preparation.
• Managed and generated multiple reports. Including expenses, purchase orders, and invoices.
• Inventory management.
• Created confidential correspondence.
• Prepared and organized all department domestic and international travel.
• Setup and organized department training programs.
• Worked outside normal hours to be available when needed.

Administrative Assisatant | Learning Admistrator

• Highly dependable, discreet, and punctual.
• Proactive self-starter with the ability to motivate others.
• Trained in service for private and hotel environment.
• Up to date on the use of all relevant technology.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Outlook, knowledge of Excel and Word.
• High level of personal experience with individuals celebrities and private families.
• Entrepreneurial. 

——————————————————————————

Be a James Bond:

* You don’t STOP when you’re tired. You STOP when you’re done.

* You get used to REJECTION and you don’t take it personally. 

* Talk too much and they think you are a FOOL. Be SILENT and they become CURIOUS. 

* If you’re not willing to RISK it all, you don’t want it bad enough.

* If you are going to do it, do it with PASSION.

When you think you know everything, you are wrong. The mind is like a parachute. Keep it open and always KEEP GROWING and remember this, PRESSURE makes Diamonds 💎

taplio

The Battle

Luiz Cent 🦉

Jonathan David P.

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taplio

The Battle

Luiz Cent 🦉

Jonathan David P.

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Luiz Cent 🦉's LinkedIn Performance

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