Seriously Don't Hire a Distributor and Call Latin America "Covered" with Franklin J. Perez

So, most founders think Latin America is one market with one playbook. It's not. And the part that surprises people most? The first move isn't picking a country — it's picking a channel strategy.

In this episode, Dan sits down with Franklin J. Perez — 25+ years of commercial leadership across LATAM and the Caribbean at Medtronic, Edwards Lifesciences, and Abbott — to unpack what companies get catastrophically wrong when they enter the Latin American MedTech market. The short version: they hire a distributor, disconnect, and treat the region as covered. Then they spend eighteen months wondering why the revenue never came. The product, as Franklin puts it, dies in the warehouse.

Franklin lays out his Three Parallel Channels framework — distributor alignment, physician adoption, and payer access, all running simultaneously from day one — and makes the contrarian case for Puerto Rico as the lowest-risk, highest-speed launch pad into the region: FDA-regulated, commercially Latin American, and small enough to let you make your mistakes cheaply before you scale into a 50-million-person Colombia or a 200-million-person Brazil. If you're a founder eyeing LATAM in the next 12 months, this one's a map.

Key Topics Covered

• Why treating LATAM as one homogeneous market is the fastest way to lose 18 months
• The distributor trap: why signing a distributor is step one, not the strategy
• The Three Parallel Channels framework — distributor alignment, physician adoption, and payer access run at the same time, not in sequence
• Why the payer landscape in LATAM is more varied than founders assume (Brazil's 65M private-insurance market vs. Chile's single-payer system vs. Colombia's US-style mix)
• The Puerto Rico launch pad: FDA-regulated, commercially Latin American, and built for cheap, fast validation
• The 30-year-old perception problem — and why Europeans and Asians already have a head start
• Building a three-year LATAM plan instead of a three-month one

Memorable Quotes (timestamps approximate — pending guest approval)

• "If it works in Mexico, it should work here… that is not the case." — on the myth of one homogeneous LATAM market (~02:10)
• "The companies that are successful in Latin America work the three channels in parallel." (~06:40)
• "Puerto Rico affords you the luxury of making mistakes and correcting them without a high ticket cost." (~17:30)
• "The Latin American market is like a chess game. If you learn how to move every piece on the board, you're going to be very successful." (~29:15)
• "We're leaving money on the table by not going after these countries that are neighbors." (~26:00)

Resources & Companies Mentioned

• LATAM MedTech Growth Partners — Franklin's firm
• Medtronic, Edwards Lifesciences, Abbott — Franklin's commercial-leadership background
• Concepts referenced: 3PL (third-party logistics coordinator), formulary systems, GPO (group purchasing organization), Colombia's former "tutela" appeals system

Timestamps (Major Segments)

• 00:00 — Welcome + Franklin's background
• 04:00 — The distributor trap: the #1 first-90-days mistake
• 11:00 — The Three Parallel Channels framework
• 19:00 — Puerto Rico as the LATAM launch pad
• 27:00 — The 30-year-old perception problem
• 35:00 — When LATAM stops being a side bet
• 40:00 — Three things to do this week + close

Call-to-Action
If you're thinking about the Latin American market — even if you're a year or two out — it's worth a conversation with Franklin now, before you sign anything. Connect with him on LinkedIn (link below) and tell him you heard him on Seriously Don't Do That. And if you're a founder eyeing the U.S. market, that's our home turf — reach out to us at Greater Gain Group. Either way, subscribe so you don't miss what's next

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