Brazil Summer 2018 Blog

One of the most interesting moments in the week was the one when we deeply got to know the business model from our main competitors, by recreating their value capture framework. After benchmarking in details, in our own groups, the solutions that other companies provide to the problem we are tackling, such as what is the most important costs inherent to the business model, the pricing tactics, from whom they are creating value and so on, we could validate our beliefs, discover our competitive advantage and eventually pivot to truly fill a gap in the market.

That experience was very connected with another one that we had in the same day. One of the guest speakers, CEO of JusBrasil, after describing the development of his startup and how he scaled the product to the market, he gave us good insight on how he came up with tactics to price some features that he offered on the platform, based on the behavior and need of the people that most was getting much out of the platform’s content.

The business model development was a really hard job, it is the time that you see how your idea can really work in the market and day by day of companies. Actually, it was a really hard time that some teams had to pivot a lot and change our expectations and the way that our ideas could work into the real world.

At Tuesday, we went to the MIT Alumni angels & Anjos do Brasil event that was awesome. It is always a good experience to see some high level pitches and also make connection with successful entrepreneurs and investors. Also, it is really impressive how people from MIT alumni want to help each other, by giving feedback or contacts to help them. Then, after the pitches we went into a networking area, where we were able to pitch our ideas to investors.

We went into a tour in inovaBra Habitat, the place that hosted the event with Edison Zenatti (Zena), a really cool director of the place, who showed us how the place works, where the startups stay and how the contact with big companies happen. Also, we saw the studios, places where people use to create content for their startup ads and podcasts, the offices,VIP room and rooftop, it was insane.

Friday after class we went to Cubo, an Itau accelerator, to watch pitches from B-Abroad (A startup focused on connecting young talents and enterprises) students. It was nice because as the MIT Alumni angels event, we had the opportunity to learn from them, investors and other entrepreneurs.

GSL Brazil has been an amazing experience. Since the first day we were encouraged to know each other through different activities and meetings on and off course, for example, some of us went to the beach in Bertioga with Michal and Sarah this weekend. All this incentive was really nice because led us to make friends quickly and not only with the people in our teams, but with the other groups as well.

“The sum of parts” 

 By: Diego Sevilha Nassif (participant), Naiara Andrade (participant), Matheus Ferreira (participant)

This week was more free in the entrepreneurship part, the groups had more freedom to do what they needed to do to move forward with their respective projects. Also, this week covered heavily the feedback part of the 24 steps, it felt like this was a deadline, a good chance to be sure that the project you want to do is possible, both in the technical sense, in the market sense and by the speakers experience.

I guess because of this underlying pressure the week felt urgent and stressful, some of the groups were dealing with negative feedback, pivoting left and right, discussing topics that could very well lead to the break of their ideas, and as much as this is an important step in this whole process, it’s never an easy one.

Daniel Barzilay, a venture capital partner from Verus who came as a guest speaker, did warned us though, entrepreneurs, specially start up entrepreneurs, fail way more than they succeed. But in fact, this may be the hardest yet the most important step and lesson from this whole course (so far, at least).

Speaking of Daniel, we had three memorable speakers this week, Daniel, Renee and Lucas, all of them with incredible and impactful presentations.

Daniel’s presentation was harsh, yet it was probably the most useful of the whole week and perhaps even of the whole course. It really showed us what Danilo said in the first presentation ever: We will fail and people will disagree with you till the end.

It surely put everyone out of their comfort zone, and maybe he was even more aggressive than he should, but I suspect that that was his intention, to show that the world of start-up it’s not that sea of roses the media sometimes make it to be, it’s more of a gray miserable sea that only the crazy, the fool or the brave jump in. And his perception was really important to bring back to reality all groups ideas, with his feedback most groups learned new things and looked over some unseen weakness in their pitch.

In a more practical sense, it was also really nice to see the perspective of the funds and investors that… well… invest in start-ups. Understand their mindset, how and why they think the way they do, and what some of them are looking for in those companies.

    Renee’s presentation was impactful as any of the other three we are mentioning here, but for a very different reason. In many ways, it acted as the opposite force to Daniel’s presentation.

They showed us how hard the way can be, how sometimes, as we walk in this road, we will feel as if the whole world is against us. Renee, she showed us that even if that is true, it’s still possible to not only find success in this path but it’s also possible to be happy walking it, but for that, you need to walk with passion, with a true love for what you do and an unshakable belief in what you are doing. Then, and only then, you can beat this path.

Talking with them was very inspirational, because they had a very bad scenario for entrepreneurship and with the power of will they managed to succeed, curiosity and effort, among other qualities, made what they have today, and they started from nothing. So what we could learn was that you only need will to start a business and chase a dream.

Lucas, from MIT lab was amazing, the work he does is simply… Incredible, it really shows how well the mind can work when given total freedom, when you think about the idea first and the utility second. Or, as a wise woman put it, how amazing it is when the dreaming mind of a 12 year old is not lost to adulthood. He was able to open our minds and help us to get out of the relation between startups and APP’s and also that startups must emerge by a problem solution, he showed that you can come up with an idea, a dream, and then see how this idea can fit in the market, maybe it will need to create its own market, or adapt an existing one.

The major lesson of this week was that you will (probably) fail and that that’s ok. As the saying goes, the master had failed more times than the pupil has even tried, and that might as well be true for entrepreneurship, in its own way. And much like a pupil, we can learn from the people ahead of us, learn from their mistakes and successes, and probably more important, that it’s ok to fail.

By: Bruna Gunther (participant), Daniel de Paula(participant), Katherine Vescovi (participant)

In our second week we started to work on our final groups to define what problem and what solution we would focus on. It was a week dedicated to develop and to improve the team. We dedicated a long time to understand our possible market and define what would be our final customer. 

During our entrepreneur classes we focus on how to work in teams, learning about feedbacks, and to learn more about customer behavior, studying personas. After that the process flows to gather team resources and narrow them on the end user. Later than we used market opportunities to increase exposure, fail faster and learn at higher rates. The entrepreneur's goal for this second week was to define if our market is a real market and to find well-defined and homogenous opportunities.

At this week in our programming lessons we learned more about API and how important - and difficult - that is to connect each segment of our future platforms. We also learned more about html and how it can help to create a website, solving some exercises during classes.

As an outside activity we visited the government transportation lab - MOBILAB. Our entire group went to São Paulo’s downtown, where we had a class, with Daniela Swiatek, about some city mobility problems, such as overcrowding metros. That experience gave us an opportunity to, in the future, present new startups ideas and solutions for São Paulo’s mobility problems. Also they showed us two government programs which aim to foster entrepreneurship and innovative ideas for transportation and mobility in the city.

After this morning session at Mobilab, we walked a little around the city center, with our dear “Ms. Ju” (in portuguese: tia Ju) or Ms. Mary Poppins, the responsible for the GSL Brazil course 2018 -Juliana Mitkiewicz. Over there we had the opportunity to check some buildings such as the Brazilian Stock Exchange (Bolsa Brasil;B^3) and the Farol Santander Building. To close that morning session, we went to a restaurant near by, which, besides the hurry and all the uber’s requests to come back to Insper— where course is happening, and to don’t miss the next guest speaker—, was really appetizing and tasty Brazilian food. 

That was a great experience where we learned about mobility in theory and in practice, for example: how to across São Paulo in 20 minutes to arrive at Insper on time.

It was an important and decisive week, when we developed even more our business and also learned about the final customer. As a good practice we started to draw each step of our business on board. What helped us to share our plannings and, as we are used to say, leave everyone at the same page!