BayBrazil conference 2016: Brazilian founders: Romero Rodrigues, Buscape’; Fred Aslan; Danilo Leao

I think the name of the panel was how entrepreneurs are navigating the crisis. And in the crisis, all the crisis that Roger mentioned that we faced every year, one in Brazil helped puscate a lot. We as many digital businesses, many, many of them, we have a negative correlation crisis because when the economy is booming, the family guy, he forgets to go to the PC or the phone and compare prices. So every crisis benefited Pus cape but also benefited Mercado Ivre and all the e commerce companies because they create change of culture. But the truth is I'm not navigating buscape during this crisis. So I thought it would be interesting to get an opinion from two entrepreneurs. So, Matt and Danilo, if you could join me here really fast, I would like you to just in one sentence or less than one minute, describe what your company does and how you're navigating the crisis of Brazil.

Thanks. And also, I never heard Humerus story before. It's an awesome story to hear. Really impressive. So our company helps large brands have complex sales and marketing funnels that have to do marketing online and they have a phone interaction to acquire a customer. Oftentimes those companies are not very efficient at doing online marketing, at actually closing the final sale or using data to integrate across that full funnel. So we actually run the whole process for them. We do the online marketing, we have our own sales team that closes sales over the phone and we get paid for acquiring customers for Those big brands, 100% on performance for each customer that we acquire for them. We did that for a couple of big brands in Brazil like Netch and Collateral. And how we're navigating crisis in Brazil, I mean, for us, honestly, it's kind of been similar. We honestly have been like bracing for the crisis and bracing more embracing and we haven't really felt it hit us. I think overall, I mean, it's been fairly good for us in a few ways. One, we have a very large sales center, a lot of televindis, so telephone sales. And for us, a lot of those companies, traditional companies, are cutting back on their costs and it has enabled us to acquire great sales talent onto our team much easier. And so that's helped us in one aspect. On the other side also, a lot of these big brands have had to reduce their marketing costs in order to be a little bit more conservative right now. And so a lot of brands have actually pursued us to try to figure out how can they expand, what are other channels where they can acquire customers without that initial capex expense. And because we Acquire customers for them, 100% performance. They're willing to take that bet with us. We take the risk and they pay us on performance for that. So it's acquired a lot of customers for us actually. So for us, it's actually been a really positive thing. We're still bracing. I don't know if it will hit us, but that's what it's been like for us so far.

Hi, my name is Danilo. I'm from BOV Control and we are tackling one of the biggest markets in the world, that is livestock. We started with the livestock ranchers, empowering them with a tool, an application that can collect an important critical mass of data in the field to disrupt the first node of this industry.

And.

And then now we are also selling to big corporations that are like processing the milk and other stuff. So we are reorganizing the information in the livestock industry worldwide. We have 60% of our customers in Brazil and 40% of the customers outside of Brazil. So about the crisis, we didn't feel the crisis.

It was.

We've been growing 3% per week. We are threefold a year of growth. So we've been in a very interesting pace. And we see the crisis as an opportunity to give more information to the ones that are worried with that, to make better decisions.

So that's it. Thank you, guys.

Why don't you guys have Rogerio come up? Wine. Because we are running late and I know everybody wants to try the wine. The only thing, I'm only going to ask you guys one question and then we'll just open it for the audience and then we'll just do this for 10 minutes and then we will wrap up. We have a number of entrepreneurs in the room, so if you could all just go around and just think about the one thing you wish you knew going into being an entrepreneur that you would just share to people that are trying to make it work in Brazil.

I think first when I started, we didn't have Endeavor Pay Brazil. We didn't have any of this. So Interact, collide, network. You need to go and meet people. Don't be afraid. I remember five years ago, six years ago, I'm tired second of the day. And I remember great entrepreneurs saying, oh, I have this beautiful idea, but I cannot tell you. So this is one too. It's all about the team you put together. I really think a great product follows a great team. So if we have a great team, we're going to have a great product in market and everything else. So build a great team. And the third one is be persistent. I did 25 angel investments before joining Redpoint. I wasn't going after the investments, and I'm pretty sure all of them had to knock on my door pretty much three or four times before. Not because I'm a douchebag, but because I was too busy, I didn't have time, and only the persistent ones pictured me in the end. So be persistent. Don't take the no back home.

I agree with Romero. The inspiration is the best way to start a business in Brazil. When we want to be, when we are entrepreneur, we don't have money. We start without money, without help. So when you have a good plan, when you have a good project, and we believe a lot in your eyes, have a light. We aspiring another guy. And we can divide this dream with the new employees in the future, maybe the new partners. So when you inspiration, true inspiration, we can find the correct way.

And then, you know, my advice would be it's related to persistence, but not just in the fundraising. But I think you heard in Homero's story, like, his company almost died two times. You know, my company almost died three times. I think when you speak to entrepreneurs, a lot of times they explain what they've done, and it looks like a linear trajectory where everything worked beautifully until the beautiful exit. But it's not like that. There are days when you go home and you say, I hope this day ends very quickly and you just have to suck it up and wake up the next day and you'll find the solution. So this persistence and not giving up is really the one characteristic that I've seen in every entrepreneur I know that has been very successful. So with that, let's open up to the audience for questions. Questions there in the back.

Hello.

Hi.

Thanks for sharing with us. I'd like to know if you guys, if you're. What do you think about the accelerator program in Brazil? We've been. I've been following this during the last three years. We have a lot of companies doing that over there. And this year, if you could suggest one of that, you believe that is a good program.

Yeah, I can start. So I think the accelerators, they play.

A very important.

Role in the ecosystem. And we were discussing before how the level of the deal flow improved in the recent years. And I think a big reason for that is the good job of the accelerators in Brazil. They can really polish the entrepreneur. If it's a good entrepreneur, it's a good entrepreneur. But a polished rock looks way better. So they do a great Job on helping the entrepreneur navigate not only product, but also navigating fundraising for Series A. So from a venture capital perspective, typical Series A, I think it's fantastic. Danilo, you are celebrated, right?

I passed through two accelerations, one in Brazil and one in Boston in the United States, Whyda and MassChallenge, and both of them were very important for us. And I saw lots of entrepreneurs that passed through all of these acceleration programs and I see that they don't understand very well. Like at wada, we saw lots of companies that died because it was clear that they were not lean enough. They were spending the money in the few months. So being accelerated, having investment is very interesting and you can accelerate your project. But it's also important to understand that we really need to be lean. So that's one important point. And being in MassChallenge, for example, it was very important to get in touch with the ecosystem, to really talk with the strategical partners and so on. So I had we as BotControl took an important value from both programs.

From ome.com you received an investment from Peninsula, I think was around $30 million. Correct. For 5 million re two months ago.

Peninsula.

Yes.

Keep trying. Pretty sure to get there. But sorry, this is quite an uncommon investment in Brazil in terms of companies that are here or are, how can I say, position themselves still companies, still startups. I have in fact two questions for you. Do you feel that wine.com is still a startup or is it a startup spirit? You can maintain this spirit even in the business with a revenue of nearly $100 million, if I'm not wrong. And second, what are the next steps regarding fundraising and investments? Do you think about growing organically? Do you think to do an IPO at this level? Maybe in a few years you could do MVC or here. Do you feel looking for a strategic investor or your financial financial investor? What are the next steps and how are you preparing to this challenge of growth from a startup model to maybe a consolidator in the region or who knows, I hope so globally in this business, you are already top three in the world, if I'm not wrong. Thank you.

Let me help Roger with this one. I sit in the board of and I'm a big advisor of Rogerio. Wine is this tool of very, very small startup. When you look at some of the big startups here in the US we were thrilled that Peninsula actually came in, but there were over 40 different investors that have looked at the investment and more than half of them obviously from the US it was great to have Peninsula because they have a lot of expertise in this space. $100 million is nothing. I spend a lot of time with this guy because I want to see a couple billion in revenue coming out of it and then do see an IPO in, in New York. And that is the plan. Actually that was the whole plan for the investment is to prepare for an IPO in a few years in the stock market in the US Answer as part of the board, I will not let him say anything different than that.

I pay him to answer for me.

Since he made an intervention. I would like a reply. So we can expect that maybe1.com will be the first Brazilian unicorn.

Why not?

Okay, one more.

Just two quick questions. One is for new entrepreneurs, should they have NTA to reach out to people for advice and the second thing is related with a board composition when it's the ideal time for early stage business to create a board.

So to start on the NDA question, I mean, if you're going to require an NDA, you're going to just reduce the number of people who are willing to help you. It just creates unneeded bureaucracy. If you're really concerned about a particular person, maybe you shouldn't be talking to them at all. But other than that situation, I would just talk openly and freely. Most people truly want to be helpful to you and there's so many ideas. Everyone's so busy with their own ideas, it's very unlikely they're going to take yours and go execute on it. And the hard part is the actual execution bit. So that's on the NDA side on creating a board. I mean, I think I've had like an unofficial board of advisors for me my entire life in every single state I go through. You know, I think it's super helpful to constantly have people who admire and who inspire you to be helping you in every context that you have. And so I don't think it's too early to be thinking about getting an unofficial board of advisors to be helping you. As you start talking about, okay, giving out equity into your business, that's a different type of discussion. And if it's that, and we can talk afterwards to understand your stage in particular. But yeah, that perhaps comes at a certain phase in your company. But in terms of trying to mount advisors to help you inspire you, I would do it now and keep evolving that base too.

Regarding the nej, I agree with Matt that it's a kind of bureaucracy that can be an obstacle to talk with some people. And another point that is very important is that the business changed so much in the beginning that it's not a big deal to share the phase that you were exploring in the early stages. And regarding the board, we are now building board of advisors. Being an American company automatically ink company starts with a board of directors and we have that structure. But having and that's good for the compliance and the governance of the company. And now we are having the support of endeavor to build a board to help us with the finance structures for due diligence and future rounds of investments. So that's seems to be a very interesting thing. But I'm also with Max that.

I'm.

Always with advisors that informally helps our company to make important decisions.

Okay, I think it's wine time. Thank you so much you guys for your.

Thank you so much, guys. Congratulations. Oh my gosh, what a great day. You helped us to put together. Thank you for sticking around despite being so late. Before we journey, we have some cheese and wine waiting for us. I just want to one more minute to thank everyone that was involved in the organization of this conference. I would like for our teammates please come up here. Our staff, Ivanessa Lima, Carol Romancini Gomez, Maria Tamelini, please come here. Vinicius, David, please come right here. Felipe, Adriana Carini, Legioni. Anna, Paola, Evelyn, come up here. We have a band of angels here. Come up here. And Fred Nelson, please come up here. All Bay Brazil team. All bay Brazil team involved.

Camera.

Thank you guys. Thank you for being members and supporters of Bay Brazil. Thank you. One time.

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