This content was created by Tim Draper. This content was uploaded by Tim Draper. This is a YouTube talk titled "Culture and Execution | CEO of Handson.tv Rodrigo Barros" (uploaded June 15, 2015) featuring Rodrigo Barros speaking about entrepreneurship, company culture and execution. Rodrigo — identified as CEO of Hands-On TV — discusses his business experience in Brazil (including Salad Creations and turning down a Quiznos partnership), explains why depth and purpose drive growth, contrasts sprint vs. marathon approaches to startups, describes market saturation in Silicon Valley, and outlines his strategy of building a "100-year startup" and expanding into Europe (Pitch It / Web Startup Tour). The talk emphasizes resilience, long-term vision, and executing a clear mission to achieve outsized growth.
Chapters
Well, here is like way more difficult. Okay? Here is way more difficult. Because in Brazil, the bureaucracy is for everybody. It's not for you or for me. It's for everybody. So that's a good thing, right? It makes everybody equal, right? And I don't think in Brazil people go deep enough in what they do. In what they do. So once they don't go deep enough and you are willing to go deep enough, You win the game. And that's why I think I win the game in Brazil. That's why I think my companies are doing very well. Like, I don't know if you guys know Quiznos. You know Quiznos? Yeah. OK. So Quiznos in Brazil have like 62 stores. They are doing well. They came to us and they tried to give us the master franchisee from Brazil. But in their business, French fries is a huge revenue. For us, our purpose as Salad Creations, we are a healthy food chain. We cannot change our purpose now. We cannot change the purpose in the middle of the way because that's the culture we're bringing to the company. That's what we believe. We believe a trend is the healthy food chain. And we believe with the healthy food chain, we will change people's behavior about eating food. So then with this belief, with this purpose, we cannot be partner of Quiznos. And we told them, no, thank you, but we don't want to be here with you. So they were like, OK. And then since we did that, we grow for 25 to 33 restaurants. And this year we go to 40 restaurants. So we're having growth on, let's say, 40% to 50% on revenues. And the average of the food chains in Brazil are growing like 5%. Why are we growing like 50% and they're growing 5%? Because we are executing our purpose. We are executing our message. And I think that's the point in not only in Brazil, but all over the world. People are not deep enough. People are here. People are wide. Okay? People are not deep enough. And another lesson from it is life is a marathon. Life is not like a 100-meter running. Life is a marathon. How much you're willing to live the marathon? How much are you willing to run the marathon? Or you just want to run like this sprint of 100 meters and then finish and then go to the beach? Okay? So that's the first thing. The second thing here is for every Facebook or every Instagram, there are maybe 1 million Insta-shits, okay? Yeah. I mean, let's do an account here. Look for Silicon Valley. Look for the Bay Area. We have 3 million people living here. Let's assume that 1.5 million of those people are trying to build something, okay? Maybe 1 million, okay? Just 1 million. So 3 million, 1 million are building something. From this 1 million, Let's say that they have 2 co-founders each. So we're talking about 500,000 people that are living here today, and maybe 300,000 are going back from wherever they are in 2 years without doing anything. The other 200,000 that are going to stay are going to try for 1 more year. And then from that number, 190,000 are going back. So we only have 10,000 now for the third year, okay? Those 10,000, maybe 9,000 are going back on the third year and then we only have 1,000. And like every year in Silicon Valley, we have 1 to 5 companies that succeed, guys. It's nothing. It's nothing. I'm not discouraging you to do— I'm not discouraging you to build. But the difference on the company that I decided to build, and I got this from Phil from Evernote, he said that he was building like a 100-year startup. I love that. I was like, yeah, I'm going to build a 100-year startup for Hands-On TV. We know we need to evangelize the market. We know we need to go after markets that need more structure. So that's why— oh, I didn't tell you guys. Last year I started doing an event here in Silicon Valley called Pitch It. It was a startup competition. We start in SGSV. We did March and April, and then we took this event to Europe. We did the Web Startup Tour. We did 4 countries and then the finals in Paris. And at the finals, we had 2,500 people watching us. Okay. And I was there with my Brazilian jersey. In front of those, you know, 2,500 Europeans. So, but why am I telling you this? Because it was my strength, okay? And this is part of the strategy of Hands-On TV, going for the European market. Why? Because I can go to more countries and I'm going to change their mindset there more than I'm going to do it here, okay? So I think Hands-On will be better there. But I decided Not— and this, I mean, I have no problem on saying that. I decided not to build a 3-month traction startup. I decided to build a 100-year startup. OK? So for that, I know I have to have more resilience. I know I have to give a lot of effort. I know I have to invest on it. And I'm willing to do it. But in Brazil? It's much easier to succeed once you go deep. Nowhere I think people is deep enough. And right now, like let's say 20, 50 years ago, people didn't need to be really deep because there was like a lot of demand, okay? A lot of demand. Right now, we have more companies being built than the demand. If you don't go deep enough, you're not gonna make it. Thank you.
