There is a corner shop in almost every Argentinian neighborhood that has been there for decades: the Lottery Agency. For most of the 20th century, these lottery agencies were social infrastructure: places where people lined up to buy a ticket, check a number, share a moment.
They operated with state licenses, fixed margins and almost no competition. Then came the smartphone, the digital wallet and the online betting platform. None of those advantages mattered anymore.
More than 200 lottery agencies closed across Argentina in 2024 alone, according to the Cámara de Agencias Oficiales de Lotería de Buenos Aires (CAOLBA), a crisis the sector's representatives described as the worst in 130 years of existence. The reason is straightforward: online platforms offer faster access, better bonuses and zero friction. You don't have to leave your home.
The lottery agency did not die because it was poorly managed. It died because the logic that sustained it (physical presence, institutional trust, geographic proximity) was rendered obsolete by a new generation of companies that understood distribution differently.
The boom that wasn't built to last
The fintech and gaming tech wave that swept Latin America between 2019 and 2022 was, in retrospect, a product of a very specific set of conditions: near-zero interest rates, abundant venture capital and a pandemic that forced millions of people to conduct their financial lives from home. In Argentina, companies like Lemon Cash, Ualá, Tiendanube and Buenbit raised significant rounds and expanded headcount at a pace that assumed the tailwinds would hold.
They didn't. By late 2022, as the Federal Reserve raised rates and global venture funding contracted sharply, the correction arrived quickly. In the span of a few weeks in November and December 2022, Argentinian tech companies collectively shed more than 450 jobs. Lemon Cash cut 38% of its staff. Tiendanube let 50 people go. Etermax reduced its headcount by 7%. Globally, the numbers were starker: layoffs.fyi tracked more than 150,000 tech workers laid off worldwide in 2022, a figure that roughly doubled in 2023.
This was not a uniquely Argentinian problem. The same pattern played out across India, Southeast Asia, Europe and the US. What was notable in Argentina was the speed of the reversal: companies that had publicly discussed unicorn ambitions and appeared in Forbes were restructuring within 18 months of their peak funding rounds.
When founders become surplus
The layoffs were the visible part of the story, but what happened to the people who built these companies?
Borja Martel Seward co-founded Lemon Cash in 2019 alongside Marcelo Cavazzoli. By the time he was 25, Martel Seward was running one of the most visible crypto fintech companies in Argentina, having raised over $44m in combined funding. In 2022, as the company restructured, after the layoffs, he stepped away from day-to-day operations. By mid-2024, he had launched Roxom, a new Bitcoin-focused financial infrastructure company, alongside Nick Damico, former CTO of Bitpatagonia. An outsider to his own creation.
That trajectory is not unusual. It follows a pattern that has repeated itself throughout the history of technology companies, with Jack Dorsey and Steve Jobs as high-profile examples. Gaming and fintech are no exception.
The monarchy analogy is uncomfortable but accurate. In the early stage, the founder is sovereign: their vision, their network, their resilience are the company. But sovereignty in a private-equity-backed or venture-backed company is conditional
Even the industry's largest players have entered the same cycle. IGT announced 700 layoffs worldwide during the restructuring process surrounding Apollo’s acquisition of its gaming business. For decades, IGT represented stability and scale within the gaming sector, growing through successive mergers and acquisitions into one of the industry's dominant technology suppliers.
Yet the logic proved identical: when markets tighten or ownership changes, headcount becomes variable cost. In gaming and tech alike, layoffs are increasingly treated as a standard restructuring measure rather than a sign of collapse.
A logic that consumes its own architects
There is something structurally self-defeating about fast-growth companies. The founder's job is to create something from nothing: to convince investors, recruit talent, build product and generate momentum before the market closes. But the same urgency that makes founders effective in the early stage, the willingness to move fast, raise aggressively and expand before the model is proven, tends to create exactly the conditions that make them vulnerable later.
The post-pandemic correction in fintech and gaming tech was not a failure of vision. In most cases, the founders had correctly identified real markets. Crypto adoption in Latin America was genuine. Online gaming was displacing traditional channels, as those lottery agencies can attest. The problem was structural: companies had hired for a trajectory that could not be sustained when the capital conditions changed.
What followed was a familiar sequence. Headcount was cut. Co-founders stepped aside or were eased out. Outside executives were brought in to manage the contraction. The founder, who had been the company's public face and internal engine, became a complicating factor: too identified with the growth phase to credibly lead the correction.
The monarchy analogy is uncomfortable but accurate. In the early stage, the founder is sovereign: their vision, network and resilience are the company. But sovereignty in a private-equity- or venture-backed company is conditional. The board, the investors and the market always hold a veto. And when the bill comes due, the founder is rarely the one who survives to sign it.
What is striking, looking across this wave of fintech and gaming tech companies, is how consistent the paradox is. The people who created value are among the first to be separated from it. The institutions they built continue: restructured, rebranded, under new leadership, while the founders move on to the next idea. Sometimes that next idea is also worth building. Sometimes it becomes the next cycle's cautionary tale.
The lottery agencies, at least, don't have to worry about being ousted by their founders. They just have to survive the companies those founders built.
New research has shown examples of gambling as far back as 12,000 years ago
