Building the System He Once Played In

Juan Cruz Gotta left home at twelve. By fifteen, he had left Argentina for Europe. Alone. He moved across seven countries chasing one goal. Professional football. The kind of path that looks glamorous from a distance and brutal from the inside. Losing. Competing. Trying to carve a place among thousands of talented players who want the same thing.

“I went through all the stages in my career since youth to becoming a professional,” he says. “I left my home when I was 12. I went from Argentina to Europe when I was 15 alone. And I lived in seven countries playing football.”

Entrepreneurship did not arrive through a business class or a startup book. It formed early, inside that pursuit. “I think the entrepreneurship came to my life in this early age when I was trying to find my purpose to become a professional football player. The difficulties of losing and trying to have your own path competing with a lot of talented players.” Sport teaches you repetition. It teaches you discipline. It teaches you how to wake up after a loss and do it again the next day. Those habits do not disappear when the career ends.

What eventually pushed him to build LIBRODEPASES came from something deeper than competition. “It's more about the purpose. I wanted to create something to help football players, to connect with opportunities.” He had seen both sides. He had visibility. He had access. Not everyone did. “I had a lot of opportunities and I want to help the people maybe doesn’t have the visibility.”

The trigger was simple but urgent. Football players struggle to show themselves. Clubs struggle with structure. Scouting processes often rely on fragmented tools. When he came back to Argentina after playing in the UK, he noticed something that did not sit right. “Even if I wanted to help football players, if clubs still working with zero tools and zero structure in terms of scouting, there are no true opportunities.” Helping players meant fixing the system around them.

LIBRODEPASES, or LDP, became that attempt. “We created a platform that works with AI. We create AI models that take all the statistical and performance data, and we add to that the business data. Basically, the platform generates the best recommendations in terms of opportunities to bring players to the club or to sell players.” LDP is a transfer assistant. The customers are clubs, agents, and federations. Players are users. They can build profiles, but the revenue model is built around subscriptions from institutions.

Over time, the business evolved. They added what they call “transfer success,” participating more directly in the transfer market. “Eighty-four percent of the international transfer market is not getting any transfer fee. So clubs and agents are losing money.” Inefficiency is expensive. LDP aims to make that market more efficient.

The team now includes twenty-four people. It did not start that way. “In the very beginning, you are on your own doing everything and trying to understand how to make things work.” The most important early hire was technological. “The most important person to bring was the CTO because he had the capacity to build what I had in my mind.” Vision without execution stalls. Execution without vision drifts. He needed someone who could translate imagination into infrastructure. As customers arrived, learning accelerated. “You realize that maybe you need to change some things and you need to learn from them.”

The hardest part of the early days was geographic. They started in Argentina during the pandemic. “Sport tech is not developed in Latin America.” Convincing investors to back a sport tech company in that context required belief before proof. “It was difficult trying to sell the dream to people that are not used to investing in sport tech companies.” Eventually, the company moved to the United States. Investors and capital followed. But those early conversations were uphill.

Then came the internal challenges. “Everything that you thought was the thing that they needed maybe is the opposite.” Rebuilding from scratch after conviction is not comfortable. “You need to be open to break everything and start from scratch again.” Scaling brought a new kind of pressure. “The most difficult thing is trying to hire the best people and after that trying to give them the north star, the path to go, and then trying to release your time and put your confidence in them.” Letting go is a skill. Trust is a skill. Delegation is a skill.

There was a moment, though, when none of that felt theoretical. “I was two weeks away from crashing the thing because I had no money.” He had been negotiating with an investor for three months. The investor had said he would close the round. The runway was nearly gone. “With two weeks left in the bank account, we decided we didn’t want to go with him.” Walking away from capital with fourteen days left requires something deeper than optimism. “I think you need to let your emotions away and try to be focused on what you’re building and why you’re building.” At that moment, there was no revenue. “I was selling the dream.”

Two days after walking away, two professional football players approached him and said they wanted to invest. They helped bring others in. “It went well.” That was three years ago. The outside world often sees funding announcements. Team growth. Product launches. It does not see the two weeks.

When asked what people misunderstand about founders, he does not talk about stress or hours. “They think this is a job. Like any job.” For him, it is not. “This is kind of my life, my purpose.” He feels the pressure directly. The responsibility sits on his shoulders. “I am the one who takes all the pressure.” And yet he loves it. “If you know what you are doing and you trust yourself, you trust the path and you trust that it’s going to happen.” That trust is not blind confidence. It is learned.

When he was starting, someone told him entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. He understood that intellectually at first. Later, he understood it physically. “When you are a professional athlete, you learn to develop with injuries, with bad days.” Building a company mirrors that. “You need to allow yourself to enjoy even when the things are not going the way you want.” Even when expectations collapse. Even when the timeline shifts.

His advice to someone starting today is direct. “Trust yourself because it’s not going to be easy.” If you feel called to it, do it. “If you feel it, whatever is going to happen, you need to be proud of yourself that you take the risk.” Risk does not guarantee outcome. It guarantees growth.

The best piece of advice he ever received came from his father. “There are no second opportunities when you have a good introduction.” You get one first impression. “Don’t think about the second opportunity. Use the first one.” That mindset shaped his playing career. It shapes his leadership now. This is the moment. Do not wait for another one.

LIBRODEPASES exists because he understands both sides of the market. He has lived the uncertainty of a player. He has felt the invisibility. He has seen talent go unnoticed. He also understands pressure. Leaving home at twelve does something to you. Living alone at fifteen does something to you. Competing in seven countries does something to you.

Now he is building something that sits between talent and opportunity. The transfer market is complex. It is emotional. It is political. It is global. And it is inefficient. Eighty-four percent of international transfers do not generate a fee. There is room for improvement. There is room for structure. There is room for fairness.

He has already walked away from money with two weeks left. He has already rebuilt assumptions from scratch. He has already shifted countries and investor bases. If the journey mirrors his football career, it will not be linear. It will demand endurance. He knows what endurance feels like.

And this time, he is not just playing in the system. He is building it.

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