Raymond Shayo

Raymond Shayo is the co-founder and CFO of Cayena, a B2B marketplace for the wholesale food industry in Latin America. The company allows restaurants, bars, bakeries, hotels, and dark kitchens to procure their inventory from multiple suppliers with next-day delivery and a comprehensive suite of add-on services. He leads all financial areas, including the fintech product (CayenaPay), fundraising strategy, and investor relations. Originally from Argentina, he moved to Brazil to study business administration at Insper University. After graduation, he started his career in investment banking, working at J.P. Morgan for four years before transitioning into private equity at Brookfield Asset Management. Raymond founded Cayena in 2019 alongside two long-time friends from his college years, Pedro Carvalho and Gabriel Sendacz, who shared a passion for entrepreneurship. In the early days, facing the typical marketplace "chicken and egg" problem, all three founders went door to door connecting buyers and sellers, offering discount flyers, purchasing products, and making deliveries on their own. Over time, the team’s resilience paid off, and Cayena gained a loyal customer base of 50 restaurants, enough to attract the company’s first suppliers. Fast forward to 2024, Cayena has established a completely digitized marketplace with 5,000 food-service buyers, along with a network of 100 qualified suppliers, and has raised a total of USD 34 million in four venture rounds.