Unknown

aahah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] t [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] n [Music] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] d [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] if there is one thing that I would like uh parents to teach their children teach them to fail because this is how they're going to discover what makes them happy when you focus on the

problem you know you have a North star that uh that guides you that to towards the direction and you're also going to tell way more compelling story when your customer care they want you to be successful and they will help you you to become successful now the advice for every hiring manager is that every time that you hire someone new what you really want to do is mark your calendar for 30 days down the road so one month and ask yourself one question knowing what I know today would I hire this [Music] person for for

thank you really happy to be here thank you so muchi um on this podcast idea is to go through your story uh but uh Focus mainly on your uh learnings so we can share with us uh key principles to business success and maybe our mistakes also I took some prints of a lecture I watch it uh earlier of you and I asked some questions uh of these later but thank you so much uh first question do do you consider yourself someone who made uh more mistakes than the opposite of course yes you know at the

end of the day building a startup is a journey of failures right so so you know you go into this journey and you believe that you know everything but the reality is that you try something new and no one knows right and so you try you try one thing and it doesn't work you try another thing and it doesn't work you keep on trying multiple things until you find the one thing that does work this journey of failure is so dramatic there are so many mistakes so many failures that you're are making throughout the journey

and the most important part is that you get up right every time that you fall every time that you make a mistake you go back and fix it and move forward yeah and uh if you realize that um building a startup is a journey of failures then there are two immediate conclusion right first one is that if you're afraid to fail in reality you already failed because you're not going to try Albert einin used to say that if you haven't fail that because you haven't tried new things before if you're going to try new things

you will fail the second one is that you want to fail fast because the faster that you fail you still have plenty of time to try another attempt another version of the the product another goto Market approach another attempt to make it successful and the more attempts that you have you simply increased the likelihood of being successful because you only need it to work once once you figure that out then it's done until you get there a lot of mistakes M but when you when you talk about failures and I had a plenty of failures

also in my life what can you say uh that is deeper and maybe more technical about failures because do you think we we should expose ourselves to all kinds of failures or are there some of the failures we must be like very afraid and should not go close to these kind of failures that maybe takes us out of the game is there any measurement of risk you use when you are thinking about trying something new even though you can fail on that so um you know people will go into the entrepreneurship Journey when their passion

for change is greater than the fear of failure and the alternative cost whatever the alternative cost is right and this is really important because um you want to be passionate about what you're doing you need you want to fall in love with uh with the idea with the value that you're are going to create um and then you are less afraid then you are actually going to do that now if there is one thing that I would like uh parents to teach their children teach them to fail because this is how they're going to discover

what makes them happy at the end of the day parents want only one thing for their children to be happy to be happy if they're not selfish right yeah because if they're selfish the idea is not to make the kids happy but to be close you know but thank you so much for sharing this uh and you when you're talking about how old are you right now 59 59 so whe when did you start your entrepreneurship Journey um in year 2000 when I was 35 but I started ways when I was 42 um and you

know my first startup that I was part of was doing mobile email back in year 2000 2000 and turns out to be unsuccessful because of the timing maybe or because of the because um you know we thought that we had the right approach but then um um Blackberry came out and uh had a completely different approach and their approach was better than us mhm understood so you but you started uh on your entrepreneurship with 30 35 with 30 and what did did you do from the 30s to the 42 so um in the early phase

of my career I was a software development software developer engineer software engineer and I was doing that um um mostly at the company called Converse technology so um you might not remember but long time ago we used to have voicemail that uh um when you get a call that was answering the call in your behalf and commerce was the leading uh of that space um and um um and I started my career there I as a software developer and then I moved to marketing and product and business and so forth M and then you created

ways on 42 right yeah I started uh in 2007 when I was and how the idea came up when the idea came up the ways was already as it is today or it started as something very different and it started to evolve during the time so um the main thing remains exactly the same right so the vision that we had is is of crowdsourcing traffic information right so so the most important part is that the driver ahead of you on the road they know something that is really really important for you and for them it

doesn't matter anymore right they stuck in traffic you want to know that right and I my Eureka moment was somewhere in 2006 that I realized that really what I need is someone to be ahead of me on the road to tell me what's going on but it was only in 2007 that I met my other to co-founders that we decided that this is what we're going to do um and and the interesting part where is crowd CR Source everything not just traffic information and speed cams but the map data itself so that was the magic

of ways we crowdsource everything um and we started in 2007 we built the first prototype running on a PDA remember a long long long time ago like a kind of cell phone um it was before the cell phones right it was like it was like a um um you know a a very engin tablet um that uh was was before the smartphones even and um and we built the first version on that and we two second when you say we build it was like you were one of theing I even though that I used to

be sof engineer my last line of code was checked in somewhere in 1996 right so in 2007 I already forgot most of it ah understood but the other two co-founders they were um the technical people and they were the one that actually built but a question quick question here do you think our background on uh studying uh coding and all of that when you were younger helped you to at least manage the gym or it was irrelevant so the experience that you gain is always relevant whether or not the experiences in the technological side or

not doesn't make any difference right so I would imagine that you don't have software engineer background and you still built your company then it seems to be very successful right so so it's not necessarily that the technological background is the one that uh that helps you to become successful but the overall experience does right whatever the overall experience is um this is a lot okay so you started way and one thing you you told me is very important because the crowdsource information is the core and remain the core through the development of the application yes

but what what is the the journey like I mean you started uh thinking big or you started with this little idea that had some excitement for you did you imagine it was supposed to be so big is as it is today so we did right because we we knew that we trying to solve a very big problem right traffic jams is a big problem and it's a big problem everywhere right and um usually startup that starts in Israel they think Global from the first day right because Israel is a small place and um one of

the challenges of the ecosystem here in Brazil is that uh you don't think Global from the first day you think about the Brazilian Market which is big and then you end up with limited ability to growth once you utilize the entire once you capture become a market leader in the Brazilian Market growing outside of the market is then become harder so you don't see a lot of um global leaders coming out of Brazil but you do see global leaders coming out of Israel or other small places right so small place have an advantage of uh

thinking Global from the first day um and so we think we thought that this is what we're going to do but the vision that we had initially is that we're going to help people to avoid traffic gyms this is not the most significant value of waste today if you would ask people they will tell you the creating certainty is the most significant value you know how long it's going to take you to get there that's it mhm the fact that there is no faster way doesn't make any difference you know how long yeah I this

applies to myself when I enter in the car even though I know the way I need to put the address in the ways if I don't I I started to become anxious yeah I agree yes you know it's funny when I was here to launchways in Brazil in 2010 I was scheduling multiple meetings and everyone would ask me okay where do you stay we will come to your hotel because there is no way that you can come to our office and then I would ask them when and they will tell me in the morning because

you're unable to plan and to know exactly how long it's going to take you one of the most important features of ways is to actually the ability to ask ways how long will it take me to get there or find me the best route not right now later on in the afternoon or tomorrow or Monday morning or whatever and then you can plan and the funny part is that um you know martiel my my publisher from Citadel is here and he didn't know about this feature I only told him about it yesterday right and so

it turns out to be what I believe one of the most important features in Brazil because the ability to plan and and know how long it's going to take you on a Future ride is uh adds a lot to the business community and if there are people that don't know that then they should sure now they do now now they do and a quick question uh you you started ways and it was a very successful Journey um because we we know already what happened uh in the end of your journey on ways so it's a

very successful uh Journey but when you started this journey and a lot of people here that watches me uh is are you usually starting a journey or they are during a journey some of them most more successful some of them uh facing some tough situations but did you have something like a business plan when you started did you have like the the the business model uh known before starting what did you have before and what changed during the journey so I knew everything before and everything changed ah okay that's really easy look this is this

is really important to understand I can Define the Journey of building a startup into three dimensions right so one of them we spoke about the Journey of failur right it's also a roller coaster Journey with ups and downs and ups and downs and if you will tell me that all the businesses in the world have ups and downs I agree but the frequency of those when you are building startup way more could be few times a day right I think that I heard the best quote on that from Ben horvitz Ben horvitz is one of

the founders of ADR hor Venture Capital firm and before that he used to be a CEO of a startup and he was asked whether or not he was sleeping well at night as a CEO of a startup said oh yeah I slept like a baby I woke up every two hours and cried right and so this is the reality of the roller coaster Journey but it's also very long journey and the longest part is until you figure out product Market fit and product Market feed is really simple that means that you create value to your

customers mhm if you don't figure out product Market Feit you will die that's the most important part of all the businesses in the world that you need to create value to your customers if you don't you will die so we Define and by the way product Market feed have one metric retention that's really simple if you create value they will come back that's it if they are not coming back that means that you are not creating value so for a second I want us to think of maybe all the applications that you're using everywhere right

so ways and WhatsApp and Uber and Netflix and searching Google and whatever it is and ask yourself what is the difference between any of those today in the first time that you have used that and the answer is that there is no difference we are using ways today the same way that we used ways for the first time in our life we are searching Google the same way that we search Google for the first time in our life so once a company figure out their product Market Feit they don't change that anymore that's the value

that they bring to their customers they don't change that anymore what we don't know is how long did it take them right because beforehand we never heard about it MH for ways it was four years people in Brazil started to use ways in 2011 we started in 2007 four years until we became good enough that people would actually use ways right for Microsoft it was 5 years right for Netflix it was 10 years now if you'll tell me today everything is different because of AI and chat GPT just started no they're almost 8 years old

already right so it took them six years until we heard the name for the first time in our life creating value figuring out product Market fit because it's a roller coaster Journey long journey and journey of failer takes time for all the successful companies and those that did not they simply died that's it we started as I told you in 2007 then we tried to raise Capital that took us N9 months now you'll say say okay wait a minute but Israel have a lot of venture capital firm yeah and still was 9 months right just

a second here it was your first time uh getting money from Venture Capital um not really I actually had money before on on a previous startup uh what what can you share with us uh on knowledge about uh fundraising startups and businesses because you probably met a lot of different people and so tried to sell and yeah yeah you know if we say that building startup is a roller coaster Journey then I want us to think of raising Capital as roller coaster journey in the dark you don't even know what's coming right because this is

a different ball game it's really different ball game but one of the interesting and and maybe three conclusions that are really really important um the first one is that after I sold ways I spoke with many of the Venture Capital firms and I asked him one very interesting question question how after selling the WIS after selling way so I'm already very successful entrepreneur with you know the credibility of building a unicorn and so forth so the dialogue was quite open right and and I remember one of them that I was asking that we were sitting

in a small room like this one right and I was asking the partner at the VC um how long does it take you to decide if you like the entrepreneur or not so we're sitting in a small room right the guy is looking at me looking at the door looking at me again and says before they sit down right so this is how fast it takes us to establish the first impression now if you say no no it doesn't make sense okay how long does it take you to decide if you like a new candidate

or not second you go on a date how long does it take you to decide if you like the date or not second and then you might allow yourself few more minutes to either let the first impression solidifies or to change that now if this is the case and you are going to Peach then you need to start with the strongest point at the beginning whatever it is and I don't care what it is if this is about the team then start with that if this is about the size of the problem start with that

if this is about I don't know whatever it is start with that because by the time you'll get there it might be irrelevant anymore they already made up their mind so this is the first one the second one is that I spoke with many investors that uh made seed investment right so the first investment into a company and asked him why did you decide to say yes and I did that with multiple Venture Capital firms and what I heard was always the same I like the CEO I like the story that's it I like the

CEO I like the story nothing else then you said okay two things that I will tell you here one Co goes alone to raise Capital alone not alone not with the team you need to shy to shine if you want to shine then you have to be there by yourself no no other people no no one else right just you and the other one is learn how to tell a good story and good story is about creating emotional engagement right so you want people to believe or they you want them that they would think or

they would feel that they want to be part of the story and if you don't know how to tell a good story then go and learn how to tell a good story because if you don't then they are not going to like either you or the story and that's it end of story they're not going to invest the most important part it's a different ball game right so um so just imagine that um well Brazil is not that great these days but uh we play football against the US right if this is Brazilian football then

we're going to win if this is American football we're going to lose it's a different ball game right mhm when you realize that this is a different ball game um and and you know and I actually have two chapters about fundraising right in my book there are two chapters 5 a and 5B because it's so complex um then you have to to understand that uh you are going to hear a 100 times no and it's not that they know better than you the simply this is this is the model right this is the model a

venture capital um venture capitalist partner in a firm is likely to see one or 200 companies per year and invest in one or two 1% one out of 100 so that immediately means that on your side you need to plan for meeting 100 investors right and one of them is going to say yes it's not necessarily that correlation but you you will get used to hear no and no and no and no and trust me it's U frustrating and discouraging and you need to keep on doing that yeah you know something I learned very recently

is that the more nose you get the higher the profits because for example I'm selling through my phone and I I make 100 calls a day and then I increase the price by 100% for example I'll probably hear maros but I probably won't sell 50% less probably not for sure but probably so the more NOS the more profits and when you're pitching the more pitches more yes you have um agree so so and this is really you know you take the examples of you selling a product right the conversion ratio of a phone call when

you are selling a product should be about anywhere between 25 to 35% right so this is good sales speech good sales spe good sales person would have this conversion m in fundraising it's 1% 1% this is something new to everyone right because just imagine you know think of the following right so so you go on 100 dates and everyone tells you no right if this is the ratio then that will be end of humanity right because we we'll simply stop right but entrepreneur the most important behavior of an entrepreneur is never give up never give

up no matter what happens you keep on fighting uphill downhill under severe condition you never give up you know but here's a question uh when you think about never giving up uh my reflection is it may depend on the direction you are aiming for because if I don't give up but I'm I'm I'm on this direction and I have uh this wall doesn't matter if I don't give up because there's a wall in front of me then what you're saying is that you will die yes yes so do think how how know for sure we

are in the right direction for Having the courage and resilience of not saying no I don't stop so so two things one is it's hard it's it's super hard right and um people ask because maybe crazy for example you made something nobody heard of before you made so how do you know it can be a and and so the first thing is that um you know you look at the um the top 10 companies of the war today and all of them started recently right so so the oldest one is Microsoft and it's almost 50

years old less than 50 years old right so so and this is really important right entrepreneurs are the one that are creating the change um and part of it is that they never give up and part of it some some might have died during the their their try right but I think that there are two factors here one is the journey about value creation mhm by the way the name of the book fall in love with the problem not the solution MH it's coming from the value creation the simplest way to create value is solve

a problem so if you want to start your journey I would say start with a problem think of a problem a big problem something that is worth solving something that the world will become a better place if you solve it and then you ask yourself so who has this problem now if you happen to be the only person on the planet with this problem you know what I can recommend you a therapist way faster and cheaper than building a startup but if a lot of people actually have this problem what you really want to do

next is go and speak with those people and understand their perception of the problem and only then start to think about the solution when you focus on the problem then you know you have a North star that uh that guides you that to towards the direction and you also going to tell way more compelling story if I would be here in 2007 and I will tell you that I'm going to build an AI crowdsource based navigation system then you're going to say oh yeah very interesting but you don't care if I will tell you I'm

going to help you to avoid traffic jems then you do care when your customer care they want you to be successful and they will help you to become successful so this is the the fall in love with the problem not the solution Theory but the important part is that you actually qualify the problem before you even start your journey and then you try to solve that the most important the most important progress that you can make is when you listen to your customers in particular until you figure out product Market fit so to a certain

extent I would say look we Define that as a journey of failures and there are so many iterations that you're going to make the biggest enemy of good enough is perfect you don't need to be perfect you need to be good enough in order to win the market and the way that you're are going to become good enough and this is really scary for most entrepreneurs is that you're going to start not good enough and listen to the feedbacks that you get from your customers and then you improve and improve and improve based on the

feedback only in order to make it good enough so just imagine that there are two twin sister companies Right company a and Company B that they're doing exactly the same thing right and they have you know twin brothers and sister teams or they have exactly the same teams and they're making exactly the same progress until one day company a says our product is really bad we we need to keep on building that right and Company B is saying our com our product is really bad but we are going to go to the market with it

from this point on Company B is making way faster progress than company a and way more likely to win the market now when I tell that to entrepreneurs occasionally they will tell me oh you don't understand our product is really bad it's it's embarrassing right we going to lose all of our customers and I will tell them wait a minute you don't have customers we going to hurt our brand name no you don't have a brand name you will have a brand name once you become successful and the way to do that is with starting

with not good enough and iterate and iterate and iterate so how do you know that you are not against the wall you go to the users and you speak with them that's it that's a good advice and you know that's a very good advice and you know you talked about uh not being perfect but being good enough this is in my opinion the mindset of a good entrepreneur for example uh here in Brazil I talk to tons of people I have uh more than 20 million subscribers on all my my channels and here in our

company we talk to more than 40 million people people every month but even though my English is not perfect I started a channel called Rich cousin so I I started to prod discounted in English even though my English is not perfect but it's a better way to start because I'll improve every day focusing on the same thing this is the idea of the good enough you know or maybe the not so bad all it's to start and I think this is um this is critical Behavior right and because what what follows this behavior is part

of the culture of the of the company right so we realize that we are not perfect and therefore we allow mistakes and we allow failures and when we when this happens then we try to figure out what went wrong and not whom to blame right that's the key right when something happens not who but what what we can improve whom so you're going to fire someone and the result is other people will be afraid to make mistakes and when they're afraid to make mistakes they're not going to try something new and therefore you prevent Innovation

right no one is going to try something new if they know that the risk is that they're going to lose their job so the idea is to focus on the what not on the whom because if we do it maybe people will be so afraid that they will they will stop innovating exactly the company may die during on long term okay and two things I didn't understand about your story um first when you're talking about fall in love with the problem and you're you you are telling us about the traffic problem on back on the

days ways was created H how how did you manage to know this problem this may be empiric but did you make any research did you talk to any customers like on the streets or the friends did you make something more scientific I don't know so um the scientific approach is go and speak with 100 people that's the ific approach and the reason that I say that is that uh if I'll tell you go and speak with people then you're going to speak with your wife and best friends and you'll tell me oh they said go

and do that right and so you go and do that right I want you to get out of your comfort zone speak with people that you don't know so when you think about 100 people then you start to speak about to speak with people that you don't know and that allows you to qualify you don't really need to speak with 100 people because after 10 or 20 you will have either the conviction that this is not into the right directions and or this is the right direction and by the way I can help you out

to sort those answers right so if you tell someone okay this is the problem I would like to address what do you think about this problem and they will tell you oh I know someone that has this problem this is not good but if he'll tell you no no no no no this is not the problem the problem is and they will give you their version of the problem this is good so the qualification is about listen listening to what they tell you right and um and in most cases what you will see is that

it will allow you to understand the problem better and what is it that you need to solve hopefully it will allow you to figure out the nature of the Beast right so what is really the problem and not what is the perception of the problem the second one is that will allow you to understand which type of people what target audience you actually have right some people that you thought that might have this problem they actually don't right and uh so if you if I would ask someone so who has this problem and they will

tell me everyone then the the next thing that comes to my mind is wait a minute I don't have this problem so it's not everyone right I'm not part of it right and so the qualifications of the relevant of the segments is really really critical and this happens when you actually doing your qualification and dialogues before you even go and try to solve something then the next phase I will say think of the fastest way to demonstrate the value now in the case of ways because we needed real-time traffic then we had to build an

app and the server and everything but in many cases you don't need to build anything you can do manual work and provide them the value that you supposed to provide them right so do that and see if the value is Meaningful for them because when you speak about futuristic solution then everyone will tell you yeah that's a good idea that doesn't say that they're going to use it right mhm um no if I will ask you okay um imagine that in your next car instead of having a stero wield they're going to be a joystick

right do you like that and and you know best you're going to tell me let's try right let's try mhm the let's try is really really important because then what we really needed is I don't need to build all the technology what I need to do is make sure that I'm able to deliver you the value okay and the second question is um what exactly was Way's business model because when we talk about business model we usually think about the acquisition and sales the revenue but I'm not sure but way was and maybe still like

free to use so what was the business model of ways so when we started we thought that because we crowdsource everything then we are going to sell traffic information to authorities to logistics companies and so forth um eventually we ended up with an advertisement model and way has the right you know in The Right Use case to build U advertisement model right for advertisement model what you need is a lot of users high frequency of use and long de ation of use way has all of them MH so it's the right for advertisement if you

have if you don't have all those ingredients then advertisement is not the right model for you but we when we started we didn't think that this is going to be the model we only figured it out later um and I think today there is not there is no advertisement anymore I don't know what happened but you know I left ways 2013 so 11 years ago just after the acquisition so I can build more startups and this is what I was doing since then um and um and I think this is um um you know this

business model was working beautifully for ways it was um not in 2013 but over the years it turns out to be very profitable okay um look you have to have business model in mind right you cannot go and say I don't know I'll figure that out um because you will not be able to raise Capital they want they want want to think of you as someone that think about the business as well now to a certain extent I would say if you create a lot of value you will figure out a business model mhm okay

do you have any wisdom to share with us about uh being D diluted as a Founder because when you start a startup I see some people doing it wrongly because they start being uh diluted very early and then they have La little Equity left to dilute a little more do you have some knowledge on that topic for us so we were heavily diluted right um from the start from this throughout the journey right so we raised Capital multiple times and we got diluted multiple times and in the end result is that um at the day

of the acquisition I had less than 3% of the company um and then by the way and then you pay taxes and then you get divorce and then you end up with way less than what people would like to think that you actually have but um the important part is um in most cases what will happen is that if you get severely diluted into a certain below a certain level then you will get re reup of options or equity in order to compensate for that so if there is an assumptions that you are going not

going to be diluted then you are wrong you need the cash in order to make it successful the most important part is making it successful the dilution will come anyhow and if you will get diluted be below a certain level then hopefully your board will make sure that you're being compensated and if not then you will negotiate that MH yes I have some friends that when they saw the companies they had like less than 3% less than 5% 1% and what they say is they kind of regret it but on the other hand they say

they wouldn't be able to uh make the business G grew as it grew so it's kind of I don't know at least you you you developed a brand now you have like a good brand you are the founder of a very successful company a billionaire company and I'm talking to you as someone who is a positioned as a student so I'm loving to uh to uh develop myself hearing from you but you got a lot of positive things and you wrot book also and I I want to ask something about this book because it's called

Uh fall in love with the problem and another solution and you told us a little about what you mean by that but how's the book like uh divided do do this have some parts different parts do we talk about the problem only how to find the problem or how is it divided so um so I'm an entrepreneur right no doubt about it I built multiple companies but I'm also a teacher so I feel equally rewarded if I build stuff myself or I guide someone to build it and when I wrote the book um that was

fulfilling my destiny as a teacher sharing my knowhow of how to build unicorns how to build successful companies Steve wnia co-founder of apple called that the Bible for entrepreneurs because it deals with all the aspects of building a startups right from the introduction is from Steve wak right yeah the the the forward is from Steve wnac and you know when I sent him the first chapter to read he told me I wish I had that when I started um so uh so it actually in that sense it's the Bible right it's the whole process from

thinking of ideas qualifying ideas into um understanding user fundraising product Market feed finding business model um growth um going global selling the company so all the different phases are covered in the book and for me this is like um you know sharing the knowhow and at the end of the day there are not a lot of people that build unicorns there are only 64 people that have built two unicorns 60 64 yeah congrat congratulations and you're building your third one I'm building my third one and hopefully the fourth one and so forth I'll speak about

that in a second but very few of those are also teachers so what I what I share in the book is the knowhow and not just a theory right this is how you do it and and what I had in my mind is to help entrepreneurs to become successful and to help business people to become successful to help everyone to become successful right so for a second I would say um an interestes in feedback that I got someone told me okay I am an entrepreneur I bought the book this is absolutely amazing and then my

mom took the book and she is a principal at school and she told me this is the best education book she ever read right so that was not meant to be an education but it turns out to be very very empowering um and I'll tell you you know a very simple example right one of the chapters in the book called firing and hiring now the inspiration to write this chapter there was um when I spoke with many entrepreneurs that their startup fail I asked them why what happened right and about half told me the team

was not right and I kept on asking okay what do you mean the team was not right and what I heard the most is you know we had this guy not good enough and this guy not good enough so not good enough was the main reason another reason that I heard is that we had a communication issues right something that actually called ego management issues and then I asked them the most interesting question when did you know that the team is not right and all of them told me within the first month within the first

month then he said wait a minute if you knew within the first month that the team is not right and you didn't do anything the problem was not that the team was not right the problem was that the CEO did not make hard decision making hard decisions is hard making easy decisions is easy when I wrote the this book and I send the book proposal to some of the publisher many of them came back and say oh it shouldn't be firing and hiring it should be hiring and firing and I said no firing is hard

decision hiring is easy decision first of all you have to learn how to make these hard decisions because at the end of the day if you are a great hiring manager you still going to have hires that you don't like and so you will need to deal with those that you don't like for the following reason if you know within a month that someone that you hired is not the right person everyone knows everyone knows and the co doesn't do anything that's the nature of the Beast the the result is always the same the top

performing people they would leave and they would leave because they don't want to be in an organization that is unable to make hard decisions and they would leave because they have a choice now the advice for every hiring manager is that every time that you hire someone new what you really want to do is mark your calendar for 30 days down the road so one month and ask yourself one question knowing what I know today would I hire this person now if the answer is yes go to this person and tell them that you are

really excited that they've joined they're exceeding your expectation and if this is a startup then give them more Equity but if the answer is no fire them immediately they're already set on a trajectory of not being successful and they create damage not just to themselves and to you but also to the rest of the organization making hard decisions is hard making easy decisions is easy now you'll tell me this is for startup absolutely this is for startup this is perhaps the second most important behavior of successful steo for startup the first one is resilience right

so never give up the second one is make hard decision with conviction but this is true for each and every business this is true for every hire this is true for everything in your life today is the first day of the rest of your life and you have the ability to decide what is it going to be right then make those hard decisions otherwise you live in the past and not in the future and that's very kind of you to share with us of that as a teacher because we don't learn is at school I

agree oh there are so many things that we don't learn at school we don't learn about entrepreneurship about money about scale and even mindset and all all those things we need to make money on the we also don't learn how to raise children we don't learn how to um build relationships so so you know there are many things that they don't teach us at school and how's the day you sold ways I mean you woke up it was a regular day or did you wake up differently how is it so um I think that the

most important part the the most significant memory that I have is thinking of all the employees ways was the the acquisition of ways was life-changing event for me but it was life-changing event for all the 107 employees of w and I always thought that you know I brought these people to join my journey and and I'm happy for that and I'm really happy that I was able to change their life and that was perhaps the most significant thought that I that I had and lasted for forever right and um because at the end of the

day and and I would say you have to be very generous with your team the team is the one that is building everything right so you might be you know guiding them and coaching them and and setting the objectives and so forth but the work is being done by the team and so be extra generous with them because they are the one that are going to make you successful so you mean they had probably what equity in the company they had a lot of equity and when you sold it they made money also exactly okay

and that's good because if it was only uh for you you would be happy but they wouldn't so the company uh may have struggled you know my my uh my thesis is that you with employees you need to be extra generous with Equity right they are part of the journey mhm and you want them to feel like part of the journey and you want them to know that if this is going to be successful then they are going to be extremely rewarded yes I I think this way we have um 33 Partners here in in

our group and some of them started the journey with me and some of them uh reached high levels they would never think about it but uh I'm happy and they're happy with me that's very important also so I want all of your employees to have Equity me too but now this depends on them but we created the possibility of this happening it's culture and results if we have culture and results doesn't matter the time they become Partners y we created this partnership program I'm very happy with and ways was not the only successful startup you

created you created uh a lot of startups and B some maybe after ways how was the journey after ways so so I left the day after right in order to build more startups and um and the next unicorn that I built was a mve it and move it is the ways for public transportation but I have and created afterwards ways like the same year or um I started that we started that in beginning of 2012 right so um that was before I um and then I was you know coaching the co and mentoring the co

but but what I have since then is is a method of building startups right and uh and that method is um is very unique for me because I engage with those startups before they even start and I guide them and Mentor the CEO and that's you know using my experience as an entrepreneur and my teacher personality to Mentor them coach them and help them to become more successful so I've built a dozens of startups in s um some of them turns out to be unsuccessful some of them died during Co during covid because of uh

the challenges that we had but most of them are actually on a path of being successful one of the things that I'm doing now in Brazil is actually I'm building an investment vehicle that I called that the Double Down fund that is going to invest in my companies right in those that are going to become successful that we we are looking at them and basically say okay these are very likely to become successful I'll give you some examples um um pona is uh one of my more advanced startups and this is the one that I

started I actually left ways in order to become active at pona um and uh and what they do is they help uh American to retire Reacher now the challenge with with re retirement saving it's a global challenge right when you are young you don't care and when you become older it's too late mhm because you really need to start saving and investing into your retirement from from your first job right as early as possible and then what you need to do is actually invest in equity right so S&P 500 would be a good good way

to do that right but most of their retirement saving plans the default is not good right the default is like money market right or something that um is not going to have enough of return that will allow you to retire with enough funding and what pona does is help that right so in the US only and this is huge Market $15 trillion Doll Market and uh and so we are the bridge for better retirement in that sense um by the way we started it differently we started we call that the FX and then we focus

on financial fees and that people didn't know that they're paying them and then we evolve and evolve and evolve and this is where we at today um some more startups uh fairfly that deals with um biggest secret in travel industry what happened to airfare after you book your flight now no one knows because no one is comparing prices after they make the reservations right but the airfare is going up and down all the time it's going up and down before you're making making the reservations and keep on going up and down after so if this

is the price that you pay then this is cancellation fees when the price drops here you leaving money on the table you can actually rebook the same flight at a cheaper price now if you think about it from an individual perspective it's one thing but for a corporate we can save 10% of the travel budget and that goes directly to the bottom line so this company is very successful um and you know have the many of my companies are now exactly at the point of time that you will say okay this is where I would

like to invest right because uh product Market feied is already demonstrated $10 million of revenues profitable doubling the business year-over year exactly where companies are set to take off right and so um and this is by the way why I'm building the the Double Down Fund in order to invest in those companies today that are set on a trajectory of being successful um I'm not going to speak about all of my but I can we can do spend the whole day on doing that but let me question something um as you just told me there

are some somewhat between 60 to 64 people that uh made two unicorns right and you are one of them so uh we can say it's luck or we can say you have something different uh and when we're talking about yourself I know it's hard to talk about yourself but in your opinion or in the opinion of others close to you what usually you do different I mean what kind of mindset and habits do you have that makes you do things differently or think differently on your business because there are two unicorns and as I can

see more to come yeah you're right mindset and habits what do you have differently or not differently but what are those so you know um it's interesting because uh I remember that after movie acquisition someone came to me and say look I don't know if you have a method or you are a lucky son of the beach and I don't care I'm going to invest with you right so luck is good right and I think that what I heard one of the stories that I heard is about silver stain which is the real estate Guru

of New York today and he was building a World Trade Center and pretty much everything on the Hudson River so he's really successful as a real estate and he was asked how he become such a successful real estate uh developer and he said um tell you the truth this is 85% luck and 15% skills right and then he was ask if he can change one thing what exactly it's going to do to be and he said I'm going to replace the 15% skills with additional 15% luck so luck is always good right no one is

complaining but for me luck means that opportunity meets Readiness and readiness is something that we can work on opportunity there are many of them by the way when you're ready then you will see way more opportunities than everyone else right I think that there are few behaviors that uh that I have that uh that makes that uh uh work better right so um uh and part of it is um accepting the fact that we don't know mhm now if we don't know then what we need to do is try and when we try then we

will Discover right and so if someone will come to me okay this is my goto Market plan then I will tell you okay this is your list of experiments that you're going to make right because when you think about them as experiment then you say okay what I really want to do is qualify or disqualify I don't care if I qualify or disqualify but as long as I do it fast so moving fast is about accepting the fact that we don't know focus on the user on the customer right being always in touch with the

customers to understand what works for them and what doesn't work for them this is how you make progress mhm and so it's the method of allowing you to try and error and move fast that is increasing the likelihood of being successful and when I essentially Tak that and you know guide my mentor my cosos and help them to become successful then I can do that more than just one at the time I can do that with eight companies right um and and that's my secret Source right and and I think that part of it is

um now is is that something that um that um um that other people have oh definitely yes a lot of people have that maybe not that many but but a lot of people have the same behavior that uh that makes them successful mhm so from what I can see uh it's probably two things accepting the fact that we don't know so we try we make a list of experiments and do it fast and we stop fast because we don't know and the second is focus on the user always in contact with customers on on the

value that you create to on creating value of course on creating value but but you learn the value by having a dialogue with the user right so so the focus is on on the problem right or on the value that you create but you you realize that when you speak with the users right so if you'll tell me users are wrong then then you are wrong okay last but not not a quick question but I want to go deeper onto this one um is on key principles that should guide an entrepreneurial successful Journey we talked

a lot about this but in your opinion what are the key principles that makes a business successful for example business model sales team um a good CEO can can you list some of the key principles that comes to your mind and then we may dive deeper into some of those resilience making hard decision with conviction mhm listening to customers so by residence you mean making hard decision resilience is resilience right this is never give up right uhhuh making hard decision with conviction um listening to customers mhm or understanding your customers or your users I actually

have a very good story about that in in probably agility right because uh in particular when you're are building startup and this is really the difference between startup and and a corporate right so in a corporate you know what happens right so this is my product this is my sales the sales process or pricing model or whatever it is my business model this is my growth strategy I know everything in a startup you you know nothing right you have a vision and then you need to figure out product Market fit and then you need to

after that you need to figure out the business model and after that you need to figure out growth and all those Journeys each one of them is going to be a long roller coaster journey of failures but moving from one phase to another phase it's really challenging because everything that was important up until now is not important anymore now we focus on the next part of the journey so moving to the next part of the journey is something that is really dramatic in a startup and not that important in a corporate because we don't have

that one of the things that um as I mentioned earlier Steve wasak wrote it forward to my book I met Steve wak for the first time about 10 years ago we spoke at the conference in in Guatemala and the organizer of the conference we were both um keynote so I think that he was opening and I was closing the day or maybe it was the other way around and um the night the evening before the organizer of the conference arranged for a dinner and so I went to the dinner with Steve wosn now we have

to realize that when I grew up Steve wak was my technological Guru right he was the technological Guru of the board and also for me and that was an opportunity for me for the first time in my life to meet my Guru and you know I know that this is dinner but the only thing that was matter for me is actually to have a selfie with him so I took out my iPhone and um and I was lucky to have an iPhone and with the iPhone you know when you take pictures you can click here

uhhuh but you can also use the volume button right here and this is exactly what I did I did a selfie with him like that that and I used the volume button and he said finally and I said finally what said finally someone using it the way that I meant it to be now you think about it and you say okay what exactly is that but the iPhone was an evolution right an evolution from a PDA and smartphone and digital camera this is how we used to take pictures with digital cameras clicking right here where

the volume bottom is so it made perfect sense except that fact that people are using it differently now I do that occasionally when I have a lot of audience and this is maybe a question that you would like to ask your audience when you are using ways ways guides you to your destinations in two different ways right so it shows you on the screen which turns to make right but it also guides you via audio turn right turn left and so forth and then I ask the audience if you're watching the screen raise your hand

and about 70% of the people are going to raise their hand and ask them okay if you are listening to the audio raise your hand and then I have about 25% raising their hand and ask them to look around you you don't know that there are other people that are using it differently and to be frank you don't care and now you do know that there are people that are using it differently and you still don't care but if you're building the product and you don't know how your product is being used then you are

building the wrong product and there's only one way that you can find that out watch the users you have to be out there with the customers with the users to see not only to speak with them but to actually see what they're doing with your product and how they perceive the value because this is what going to make you successful there is a chapter here that calls sample of one right of one at the end of the day as a user I'm an excellent sample of one person that's it there are other people now if

you are building product and you don't understand that and you think that you are the user you are building the wrong product that's good yes [Music] and you you told us about hard decisions hard decisions and of course they are always hard to make but what was probably the the hardest decision you've already made the one that you fought like two three four times before making it it was scary hard to to make but it did it anyway and it kind of improved the business in a way so so number one is that um when

you choose a path you don't know what it would be like if you would choose a different path right if people would ask me whether or not it was the right decision to sell ways back in 2013 then I will tell you they are right decisions M or no no decisions because when you make a decision you don't know what it would be like if you will choose a different path if you will tell me oh was today would be worth way more than $1.1 billion absolutely R but what we don't know is whether or

not it would become what it is today without that decision back then and so this is really important there are right decisions or no decisions now in most cases we do know what is the right decisions we have our gut's feeling that tells us okay we should do it or not guts Feeling by and large taking all the experience that we have into a single moment and making the decision and in general it's accurate in about 75 to 80% of the cases so trust your gut's feeling in that sense now if you have no clue

then you don't have gut feeling and then you don't know people often ask me for tools to make hard decisions I tell them a few stories one of them is um is when I was young one day I came to my dad and I say I have these two options and I don't know which one to choose and he reached out to his pocket and got a coin out and say I'm going to flip the coin and before the coin drops you're going to make the decision so forcing the gut feeling is a good idea

right I did it recently with one of our of our children we have uh seven um and uh um and she was actually in a position that she was struggling whether or not to choose a or b and I told her imagine that there is a new coin in the ward and it has two sides one says a and that one says b and you are going to flip the coin what do you want to happen which side do you want to show up right because this is like externalizing the gut's feeling in most cases

we know what it is we're looking for confirmation in particular when it comes to building awesomeness of organization this book speaks about what kind of dialogues to have with the team right so if there is someone that you think shouldn't be there right and you're not sure go and speak with some of the key employees that work with this person and ask them the following how sorry you are going to be if this person would live right so you want to ask yes no questions in order to decide if you are asking for a scale

then scale doesn't help you oh 74% so what does it mean is that better than 73 is that significant better than 72 is that what is it right yes or no when we have those yes or no then you are able to make the hard decisions if you don't narrow it down into these questions that are only yes or no then you get stuck because then you're are undecisive and then you don't get the confirmation to what you think is the right decision yes or no yes you you just mentioned your dad uh and I

was watching your videos as I've told you uh I have like an hour and a half journey to my job every day that's why I'm moving closest to closer to here H but from the videos I I was watching you mentioned your dad two times this was the third time I saw you mention your dad the other one was something like your dad telling you when you were younger about when you don't know how much you're paying you paying too much that was by the way the trigger to launch uh pona Pont and now the

flip a coin story um did your dad had an impact on your business life anyhow of course he did yes he was like a mentor he was my mentor um and um and um um and to a certain extent I would say you know um he died some um 17 years ago right so but I still carry many of those lessons that I've learned with me and sharing that with the world so to a certain extent I would say he still lives within me and still and I'm sharing though this wisdom with uh with others

so um so in that sense uh he's still alive yeah yes because a man only dies when his name is pronounced the last time right yeah and we just to finish here uh I would like to let every everyone know about your book again your book is available in Amazon and you I'll leave a link in the description if you want to buy it and I highly recommend because we talked for an hour maybe a little more than an hour but from what I can see the book has more than 400 pages so there a

lot of content we didn't cover and do you want to say some final words about your book so look when I wrote the book what I had in my mind is that your audience when they read the book it's going to help them to become successful and for me this is fulfilling my destiny about value creation right and so and make the world a better place right if I can help more people to become more successful then the world will become a better place um as you mentioned it's really covering a lot of aspects 400

Pages um and um and some people told me oh this is like having you just next to me whispering in my ear all the time so imagine that you can bring this experience I would like to finish with a a story about experience so a very successful CEO um that was shy away from the media never gave any interview and one day um Thiago called him up and asked him uh give me two minutes and he said yes I'll give you two minutes and so the first question that he was asked is how you become

such a successful CEO and say two words right decisions okay but how you know how to make to make those right decisions one word experience okay but how do you gain this experience two words wrong decisions MH so think about my experience helping you to become more successful yes thank you for that and I wish you could Inspire more successful entrepreneurs to share their Journeys and hopefully we'll have more teachers in the future because uh we we don't learn this at school and thank you so much for your participation for coming to Brazil and to

write in this book and I hope my audience reads it and improve their business and have more success and just to finish do you use any kind of social networks um mainly LinkedIn LinkedIn LinkedIn how can we find you in LinkedIn uh U Le at linked lein yeah okay so people follow URI lein or LinkedIn thank you so much for the participation and see you next time for [Music] Mar for