6 tools to scale a startup in LATAM after a seed round

After a seed round, LATAM startups typically outsource six operational fronts that aren't their core business: remote hardware management (First Plug), US incorporation and accounting (Lazo), product development and brand narrative (Paisanos), international payments (Payoneer), access to workspaces (Desky), and employee benefits (Maslow).

Closing a seed round changes the nature of a startup's problems. In the pre-seed stage, the team is usually small and processes are handled "by hand": an Excel spreadsheet for assets, a WhatsApp for coordinating coworking, manual transfers to pay a contractor in another country. That informality works when there are five people. It stops working when there are twenty-five, distributed across three or four countries, and each improvised process starts consuming hours of the founding team's time that should be spent on product or sales.

The pattern repeats across almost all startups in the region at this stage: they hire people in different countries before having the legal, operational, and financial infrastructure to support it. That's why, over the last year and a half, a group of specialized providers—many of them also LATAM startups—consolidated to solve each of these fronts without the company having to build that capacity in-house.

Comparison table

1. First Plug — remote hardware management

Tech companies growing in LATAM tend to underestimate the operational burden of outfitting a remote team: different suppliers by country, uncertain delivery times, manual configurations, and unclear recovery processes. What starts as a one-off purchase of notebooks or monitors becomes, over time, a fragmented operation that no one designed on purpose.

First Plug centralizes hardware acquisition, management, and recovery through its own operations and a regional provider network, and offers a free platform with full visibility of the company's assets—what equipment each person has, in what condition, and where it is. It's an especially relevant tool for teams hiring across several LATAM countries at the same time and that currently have no centralized system to track what hardware is circulating.

2. Lazo — US incorporation and accounting

Many LATAM startups raise capital from US funds or want to bill American clients, which at some point forces them to incorporate legally there—typically as a C-Corp in Delaware. That process, done manually, involves coordinating a law firm, an accountant, and a cap table provider separately, in another language and regulatory system.

Lazo is a SaaS platform that solves all three fronts from one place: US company incorporation, accounting and tax automation, organization of legal documentation and capitalization table (cap table), and preparation of the startup for fundraising processes. It's the tool that typically comes into play as soon as a LATAM startup decides or needs to have an entity in the US.

3. Paisanos — product, design, and narrative

After a seed round, many startups need to go out and build or redesign their main product, and they don't always have the complete in-house design and development team to do it at the speed that stage demands.

Paisanos is an Argentine studio that combines strategy, product design, technological development (mobile apps, web platforms, AI solutions, robotics, or IoT) and brand narrative for market launches. It works with an integrated approach: it not only delivers the finished product, but also the documentation needed for the client's team to continue operating and modifying that foundation autonomously once the project ends.

Is your team distributed across several countries and still paying for an office that's empty half the time?

👉 Discover Desky for companies

Are you still deciding whether a dedicated office or flexible workspace makes sense for you? Read the article Flexible offices vs. traditional offices in Buenos Aires: which is better?

4. Payoneer — international payments

When a startup starts billing clients in other countries, or paying contractors and suppliers outside its home country, traditional bank transfers become slow, expensive, and difficult to reconcile.

Payoneer solves this front with receiver virtual accounts in different currencies (dollars, euros, pounds), which allow the company to receive payments as if it had a local account in those countries, collect from international marketplaces and corporate clients, and withdraw accumulated funds to a local bank account. It also offers a Mastercard prepaid debit card to spend the available balance online or at physical merchants.

5. Desky — on-demand work spaces

As a remote team grows, the question arises of what to do with physical space: renting a fixed office implies a long contract and fixed costs, even when a large part of the team doesn't use it every day.

Desky connects companies with a network of over 700 verified spaces—coworkings, meeting rooms, and private offices—in over 30 cities in LATAM and Europe. It works with a single contract for the entire network, pay-per-use instead of fixed memberships, configurable budgets by person or team, automatic approvals, and a single monthly invoice with usage reports per collaborator. Each person books their space from the app, without asking for permission each time.

6. Maslow — flexible benefits for your team

Retaining talent in a competitive labor market, with teams distributed across different countries, is harder when benefits are a fixed package defined from a single place—something that might make sense in Argentina but not in Mexico or Chile, and vice versa.

Maslow is a flexible benefits marketplace with over 10,000 options in over 25 LATAM countries, where each collaborator chooses, with credits assigned by the company, the benefit they value most—from supermarket or streaming discounts to health coverage, education, or vouchers. The platform integrates with the company's HR, payroll, and SSO systems (via REST API, webhooks, and automatic employee synchronization), and delivers consumption and preference data by person to adjust the program with real information instead of assumptions.

How to prioritize: where to start

Not all startups need all six tools at the same time. A reasonable order, based on what triggers each one:

• If you just hired in a second or third country: First Plug (hardware) and Desky (workspace) are usually the first urgencies.
• If you're about to raise a round from a US fund or bill American clients: Lazo comes into play before the others.
• If the team is starting to feel retention or climate friction: Maslow is the most direct front.
• If you're going to bill or pay in multiple currencies: Payoneer solves the operational friction of payments.
• If the product needs a quality leap or relaunch: that's where Paisanos comes in.

Frequently asked questions

What tools does a startup need after raising a seed round in LATAM? The most common ones cover six fronts: remote hardware, legal incorporation in the US, product development, international payments, work spaces, and employee benefits.

Why do startups outsource hardware management and workspace access? Because as the team grows and distributes across different countries, these tasks stop being one-off and start consuming time from the internal team without being part of the business core.

What platform helps incorporate a company in the US from LATAM? Lazo is one of the platforms used by startups in the region to incorporate in the United States and manage their accounting, taxes, and cap table.

How do LATAM startups pay suppliers or contractors in other countries? Many use platforms like Payoneer, which offer virtual accounts in different currencies to pay and collect without relying exclusively on traditional international bank transfers.

Is it better to rent a fixed office or use coworkings for a remote team? It depends on the size and distribution of the team. Platforms like Desky let you avoid the fixed contract and pay only for actual days of use, something relevant when not the entire team goes to a physical space every day.

What are flexible employee benefits? It's a scheme where the company allocates a budget and each collaborator decides what benefit to use it on—health, food, education, wellness—instead of receiving a single package defined by the company. Maslow is one of the platforms offering this model in LATAM.