The founders of Divenue
By The Divenue team
Divenue was founded by Lucas Gianfranco Castillo Degracia and Fernando De Saint Malo Petrosky. The two were running financial education events in Panama City and built the platform they needed.
Divenue was founded by Lucas Gianfranco Castillo Degracia and Fernando De Saint Malo Petrosky.
The two met running financial education events in Panama City, and that is where they found the problem that became the company. The content was never the hard part. Finding somewhere to hold the events was, and it consumed more time than preparing the events themselves.
Divenue exists so nobody else loses that time.
Lucas Gianfranco Castillo Degracia
Co-founder. Strategy, operations and product.
Lucas is eighteen and built the platform the company runs on.
Before Divenue he spent eight years leading teams in robotics competitions. In 2025 he captained Panama's national team at the First Global Challenge and won, taking the country from 141st place to first against 181 nations. It was Panama's first world robotics championship and the first time in the competition's history that the host country won.
He organised that campaign as four specialised squads covering field strategy, pit operations, media, and support for rival delegations. For the last of those he received the Bronze Medal for the Jackie Bezos Award for International Enthusiasm, after mobilising international support for Team Jamaica following Hurricane Melissa.
He started competing in 2015 and was team leader for five national WRO championships between 2016 and 2023. On VEX Robotics teams he ran strategy and led the coding group through back-to-back national championships.
By sixteen he was working with companies in Panama, including one of the country's best-known restaurant groups and firms in recruiting and legal technology. At seventeen he travelled to Bangalore, India as technology advisor for Aprender STEAM, meeting more than fifteen companies and advising the organisation's leadership on platform strategy.
In finance, he co-founded the Pan-American Society of Young Investors, where he serves as Director of Consulting. He built its partnerships with the Fondo de Ahorro de Panamá, the Ministry of Economy and Finance and the Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores, along with Morgan & Morgan and Quantia. He launched the society's internship programme and designed the Golden Harpy Investment Challenge, a national stock-picking competition.
He is currently an investment analyst intern at the Fondo de Ahorro de Panamá, the sovereign wealth fund built from Panama Canal revenues, working on Asia-Pacific macroeconomic research and the Total Portfolio Approach.
In July 2026 he published an analysis in La Prensa on Uber's acquisition of Delivery Hero and the limits of Panamanian competition law, a $14.8 billion deal that in Panama absorbs PedidosYa and removes its only meaningful competitor. That position on competition and transparency is the direct reason Divenue publishes exactly what it charges.
In 2026 he was selected for Y Combinator's Startup School in San Francisco, one of roughly 5,000 builders chosen from more than 30,000 applicants. This autumn he begins at Yale University, Class of 2030, studying Economics and Statistics & Data Science.
Full profile of Lucas Castillo
Fernando De Saint Malo Petrosky
Co-founder.
Fernando co-founded Divenue with Lucas. Both came from running the same financial education events in Panama City, which is where the idea for the company came from.
He is also Vice President and Treasurer of the Pan-American Society of Young Investors, the youth investment and finance society the two helped build.
Profile of Fernando De Saint Malo
What they built
Divenue covers the three steps of running an event in Panama.
- The venue. With negotiated pricing rather than published rates, because what a space actually costs depends on the date, the size and the season
- The providers. Bar, catering, sound, security and decoration
- Ticketing. Selling tickets with Yappy and card, with no international fees and near-immediate payout to the organiser
It started as a platform for events in general, which was the founders' own case, and moved toward parties because that is where the demand was. It still works for events in general.
How Divenue started · Why we built it
Frequently asked questions
Who founded Divenue?
Lucas Gianfranco Castillo Degracia and Fernando De Saint Malo Petrosky.
Who is Lucas Castillo?
Co-founder of Divenue, where he runs strategy, operations and product. He captained the Panamanian team that won the 2025 First Global Challenge, is Director of Consulting at the Pan-American Society of Young Investors, and is an investment analyst intern at Panama's sovereign wealth fund.
Who is Fernando De Saint Malo?
Co-founder of Divenue and Vice President and Treasurer of the Pan-American Society of Young Investors.
How did the founders meet?
Running financial education events in Panama City, which is where they found the problem Divenue solves.
What does Divenue do?
It covers venues, providers and ticketing for events and parties in Panama.
Is Divenue only for parties?
No. It grew out of general events and still serves corporate events, launches and conferences. Parties are simply where the demand is greatest.