Gastón Irigoyen learned that Google was hiring in Argentina when someone handed him a leaflet after class. The company was beginning to establish a presence in Latin America and had distributed printed sheets at a job fair at the University of San Andrés. The leaflet contained instructions for applying by email.
Irigoyen sent in his application and got the job. By his account, he was Google’s fifth employee in the region. He had studied International Relations and, until then, had been looking for work at consulting firms and consumer goods companies.
He later worked at YouTube, founded Guidecentral, joined Restorando and helped create Naranja X. In 2021, he founded Pomelo with Hernán Corral and Juan Fantoni. The company develops technology that enables banks, digital wallets and fintech companies to offer cards and payment services.
The early years at Google and YouTube
Irigoyen often says he entered the technology industry almost by accident. He had chosen a degree that interested him, but when looking for work, he found that many positions went to graduates in Economics or Business Administration. In several recruitment processes, he reached the final stages without getting the job.
When the opportunity at Google arose, the company was still far from having the presence it has in Buenos Aires today. He joined in late 2006, the same month the company acquired YouTube.
The Argentine office initially served Latin American clients who had previously received support from Spain and Ireland. Over time, the team also took on commercial responsibilities, first working with advertisers and later with large companies.
Irigoyen subsequently moved to Dublin to work at YouTube. The platform already had videos circulating around the world, but the company was still developing its advertising business.
His work included traveling across Europe to find people who were posting videos and beginning to build an audience. Many did not yet realize they could make a living from it. Irigoyen helped them professionalize their work and gain access to advertising revenue sharing.
He also encouraged organizations, such as football clubs, to use YouTube to show what happened behind the scenes. The platform had recording spaces in cities including London, Hollywood and Tokyo.
The decision to leave
At 27, after six years at Google, Irigoyen decided to resign. He was doing well, but wanted to see whether he could build his own company without the backing of a globally recognized business.
He had some savings and thought that, if the project failed, he could look for another job. That led him to found Guidecentral, a content platform for mobile devices and creators.
The company began in Ireland and took him to New York. Four years later, he sold it in California.
When he returned to Argentina, he joined the management team at Restorando, a restaurant reservation platform. In 2019, TripAdvisor acquired the company.
That same year, he began working on a financial project backed by Grupo Galicia. The proposal was to build a digital bank from scratch, with an operation separate from both the bank and Naranja’s traditional business in Córdoba. The project became Naranja X.
It was there that he encountered a challenge he would later address at Pomelo: the time and effort required to launch a card or develop financial services using older technology systems.
The origins of Pomelo
Before founding Pomelo, Irigoyen and Corral had worked together at Naranja X. Corral had also spent twelve years at Mercado Pago. Fantoni came from Mastercard, where he had encountered similar problems from another part of the industry.
All three saw that a company might need teams of developers and many months of work to launch a card in a market. They also knew that each country had its own rules, and that expansion meant solving some of those difficulties all over again.
For three months, they spoke with bankers, financial executives and consultants. They wanted to understand whether others faced the same problems and needed a solution. After those conversations, they founded Pomelo and began looking for investors.
The idea was to enable a bank, digital wallet or fintech company to offer payment services without developing all the necessary technology itself. To do this, they created a platform businesses could use to launch cards and operate in different countries.
When choosing the name, they wanted something short that could be pronounced in Spanish, Portuguese and English, and that sounded different from the usual names in the financial sector.
What happens behind a payment
When someone pays with a card, different systems interact to identify the account, verify the transaction and communicate with the companies involved. Pomelo works on that part of the process, which takes place behind every payment.
The company processes different types of cards. Some are linked to cryptoassets, remittances or corporate expenses. Others are used by delivery workers to pay for the purchases they deliver, or by truck drivers to buy fuel during their journeys.
Irigoyen says that, on one occasion, they managed to bring a card to market in five days. On another, a client began operating in a second country after two weeks.
Since its founding, Pomelo has raised $160 million across four investment rounds. The latest was co-led by Kaszek and Insight Partners. The company employs around 300 people, operates in eight countries and works with more than 150 corporate clients, including Santander, BBVA, Rappi and Western Union.
It also announced a global product through which it aims to compete in 150 countries. According to Irigoyen, the company’s revenue grew by more than 250% over the past two years.
The work ahead
Having experienced the growth of Google and YouTube from within, Irigoyen closely follows the changes brought by artificial intelligence. He believes companies will need engineers, mathematicians and scientists, but also people who know how to listen, work in teams and lead others.
As tasks change, he argues, both technical knowledge and interpersonal skills will be necessary. He also believes artificial intelligence could change the importance of experience when obtaining or keeping a job, while opening opportunities for those just starting out.
Among the qualities he looks for are the ability to carry out projects, learn what is needed and find solutions with the resources available. Pomelo already uses artificial intelligence for different tasks, with team members working alongside AI agents to complete them.
For Irigoyen, it is also becoming increasingly difficult to draw a line between a bank and a fintech company. Banks are adopting more technology, while digital companies are offering more financial services. What differs, in his view, is the role technology plays within each organization.
A project for the long term
In 2024, the World Economic Forum recognized him as a global innovator, and he participated in Davos. He has also received recognition from Endeavor, the entrepreneurship network to which he belongs.
When discussing his career, Irigoyen returns to the hours of work and the mistakes behind it. He advises aspiring entrepreneurs to find a specific problem and learn as they try to solve it. Mistakes, he says, will happen; what matters is recognizing and correcting them.
With Pomelo, he has a long-term project. He wants the company to grow, create jobs and develop financial services across the region. He knows that takes time and follows a different path from building a company to sell as soon as an opportunity arises.
“Nothing good comes quickly,” he often says. In his case, fifteen years separated the Google leaflet he received at university from the creation of Pomelo: years of work in technology, a company of his own and an initial experience in financial services.
