Marcos Galperín was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to a wealthy family, owners of SADESA, one of the largest leather companies in the world. He attended Colegio San Andrés in Olivos. In 1990, after graduating from high school, he traveled to the United States to study Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. There, he became friends with José Estenssoro, YPF president's son. In 1994, he joined this company when he finished college and returned to Argentina.

In 1997, he returned to the United States and he enrolled at Stanford Graduate School of Business and in 1999 he earned his M.B.A.

He is considered one of Argentina's top internet entrepreneurs. In 1999, he was selected as an Endeavor Entrepreneur and currently serves its Argentina's Board of Directors. Endeavor (non-profit) is a global non-profit that selects and supports high-impact entrepreneurs in emerging markets. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Directors at Onapsis, the leading global experts in business-critical application security, and is also an investor at COR, an intelligent project management tool that predicts and tracks profitability in real time.

Marcos began the company while still in Business school at Stanford University. Finance professor Jack McDonald had been helping Marcos to contact potential Investors and asked John Muse, an invited speaker and co-founder of the Hicks Muse private equity fund, if Marcos could drive him to his private plane. Before boarding his plane, Muse expressed his Desire to have his fund invest in the idea and soon thereafter the company started. MercadoLibre received funding from J P Morgan Partners, Flatiron Partners, Hicks Muse Tate and Furst, Goldman Sachs, GE Capital and Banco Santander Central Hispano. In September 2001 eBay acquired 19.5% of MercadoLibre in exchange for eBay's recently acquired Brazilian subsidiary of Ibazar.com.br. In this transaction, MercadoLibre also became eBay's exclusive partner for the Latin American region.