How Prosus CEO Builds Winning Tech Culture | Fabricio Bloisi

Speaker A: If you are an American, it's so easy to raise more money and you have many people making bets and taking risks. But if you look to Brazil or Europe or Africa, you don't have a lot of capital and this capability of learning fast and hiring and moving faster.

Speaker B: This week we have Brazil's 2025 Person of the Year, Fabricio Bloisi. He led one of Latin America's most valuable tech startups, ifood and is now the CEO of Prosis, the global tech group behind some of the biggest Internet businesses outside the US As a tech

Speaker A: company, we run culture, management, model and innovation globally. So we select people, we train them, we put all of them together. We share every week what's happening in all the world with all the leaders, tell all the other leaders of the companies around the world what is working and share that great companies in Brazil or even in Europe, they don't have the ecosystem that like Google or Microsoft or Meta have here in US Prosys

Speaker B: builds and scales tech platforms everywhere. Technology is growing fast. The the next wave of tech leadership isn't about copying the US but about building systems that work everywhere.

Speaker A: I think the Americans sometimes underestimate what is happening outside. The Chinese are not copying, they are innovating. To operate a big business with thousands of people and millions of orders per month, they have to be super good to do that.

Speaker B: I'm Enrique Dubourgrass and welcome to HD in hd. This episode is brought to you by Brex A ah brand I'm proud to have co founded and one that's shaped by the same journey many of you are on. Brex has everything startups and fast growing companies need to make every dollar count. From modern corporate cards, banking and treasury to accounting, automation, travel and expenses, over 25,000 companies including DoorDash, Scale, AI and Anthropic spend smarter using Brex.

Speaker C: Fabricio, thank you so much for doing this man.

Speaker A: Hello. Big pleasure to be here with you.

Speaker C: Really appreciate it. Um, I was actually trying to remember the first time we met and I think it was actually at one of Veronica's dinners. Exactly, yeah.

Speaker A: I think VERONICA JR Veronica connected us many years ago.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly. And uh, you know I remember because Ifood was just I guess kind of starting out and I remember asking him about it. It's like oh yeah, it's like one of these like seven businesses that we do and it came from this like other mobile company, you know like. And I was like oh wow, this guy can do a lot. You know this is like a real serial entrepreneur.

Speaker A: Yes. Now I'm doing like 120. So that time was just 10. So it was easy.

Speaker C: Um, but maybe take us a little bit of the story. Right? Like how did it all start out?

Speaker A: Yeah, actually I'm the founder of a company called Movili. So I'm from Bahia in Brazil. I traveled to Sao Paulo, studied computer science and created this company just when I graduated called Movili. And we are doing um, mobile content, so services in mobile phones.

Speaker C: How did that start? How do you have that idea? Like was it your first job after college?

Speaker A: Yes. I never worked in another company that was not uh, the movie and everything we did before. And uh, in Bahia I was always passionate about Bill Gates story and how he created Microsoft and computers and computer science. I'm a programmer since I was 8 years old. So I always had this dream of I'm going to create a very big global tech company. Since I was 14, 15. Then I moved to Sao Paulo to study computer science. I created my company but the idea was not uh, specifically mobile content. I started iterating and having ideas and I said I'm going to create a very big company. And uh, I think one year after everything started on mobile. But by that time it was like SMS and wap, this kind of thing.

Speaker C: So let me give us some context of what was the technology? What year is this? What was the technology going on at the time?

Speaker A: It was around 2000 mobile. By that time it was sending text message and receiving a ringtone or participating a chat or a dating app or receiving news in your, in your mobile phone.

Speaker C: Text news for those who are younger. Like maybe explain like why that happened, you know, like what was the, how were phones back then and like what were people liking these things?

Speaker A: Like phones only did one thing, talk. And then by 2000 there was this disruptive crazy technology where now you could receive some kind of text in the phone, but like 150 characters. So really a short message. And then I started the whole business of doing that.

Speaker C: It was like Twitter before Twitter.

Speaker A: Exactly. Actually Twitter was 150 because SMS was 150 characters.

Speaker C: Oh really? I didn't even know that.

Speaker A: Twitter started more or less the same time, uh, a few years later. And then Twitter started on sms. That's why Twitter has the limitation.

Speaker C: Oh, I didn't even know that.

Speaker A: So since you gave the Twitter reference, that was the idea. We send messages and content and news, everything on short messages in the phone. And uh, this company, it's funny, today the company is very big. Like I don't know, we have 40,000 people in total in prosus and ifood only is like 9,000 people. But by that time we were like five or 10 people. We started without money, without venture capital. So it was like work, sell something, get some money and create some products. And many people think, so I have an idea and I grow. That's not like that. I almost bankrupt many times. I really didn't have any money besides like keep the company running. And it took a few years, but after a few years we started to really learn how to develop and to, uh, innovate and create products. And it started to grow a lot in the mobile content.

Speaker C: What was the first product that like blew up?

Speaker A: I think it was around ringtones. Ringtones was something that by that time was super innovative. 2003 or 4 and we had ringtones and chats.

Speaker C: So how do people find out about this? How did it even work?

Speaker A: You had a website and you make marketing and people went on a website and they did some very innovative thing that is changed the ringtone of your mobile phone and put some music there.

Speaker C: But you needed to access a website to do that?

Speaker A: In the beginning, yes.

Speaker C: Oh, interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, that was.

Speaker C: And then you just put your phone number and then something showed up.

Speaker A: Something like that, yes.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker A: And also chat or news. So you subscribe to receive the daily news in your mobile.

Speaker C: And how did the billing work?

Speaker A: And then you were charged in your mobile phone bill.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, so the carrier, the mobile phone carrier, you had to do partnerships with all these carriers?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: How did that go?

Speaker A: Very difficult. Very, very difficult. Actually, the carriers used to take like 80% of the revenue.

Speaker C: What?

Speaker A: Exactly. And now actually you just described how everything happened. First, we created many products, we started to grow, but I realized I'm not going to get to my $10 billion or $100 billion company if I'm partnered with the carriers. Because it was very difficult to grow with the mobile carriers. So after a few years, the company had like 100 people. It was doing a few million dollars. But I said it's not enough. I think we are very good innovation, very good in creating products, very good in culture. But we want to create a global leader. So I need to reinvent my company. And I started to use that knowledge in terms of people, innovation, management, model, culture, to build new products where I could create my $100 billion company. And that's why when I met you, I had my first company movly and I started to create many other business to use that knowledge that we had to create business that were much bigger.

Speaker C: What were the core capabilities you think you built then?

Speaker A: Culture and management model. So we are very good in aligning people in the final direction and operating the company well as an ambidextrous company. Ambidextrous company. A company that at the same time is very innovative like uh, a startup should be. But at the same time it's very disciplined so we can manage how we are going to grow our objectives, really align the whole company but at the same time be as innovative as uh, a very young startup. So doing this at the same time m running the company well is a core capability. The second one was technology, innovation and products as a computer, uh, science. I was very focused in creating good products and evolving and testing new technologies. So we used these two capabilities and I started to create new business and I created many new business in payment, in logistics, contents for kids called Play Kids. We got like I think 50, 60 million uh, uh, uh, customers just doing this mobile content for kids called Play Kids. And one of these many companies we created was, we acquired Ifood. Actually ifood was a 20 people company doing food delivery just like in a small part of Sao Paulo.

Speaker C: So sorry before we go there because Ifood, I know I want to go super deep there. I want to understand all this part a little bit more detail. How did you say we were really good at management? How did you learn that?

Speaker A: I learned the same way we learned the things in the company today. Testing, doing it wrong, uh, not being good enough, but studying who are the benchmarks, who are the very good companies and then going there, talking to them, learning and improving our own company. So it's funny to talk about that because today we are known globally because we have a very good management model and culture. But 15 years ago we were very bad on that. Our conclusion is we have to improve a lot if you want to grow. One of my benchmarks in terms of innovation was Silicon Valley. I used to come a lot to Silicon Valley to learn and I really copied the idea of learning fast, iterating lean. But at the same time I was a big fan of uh, 3G and Giorgi, Paulo Lehman and Unbevie. So I think we could build a mix between Unbevie and a Silicon Valley company. And I think this ambidextrous combination is very powerful.

Speaker C: So what elements of each do you take?

Speaker A: Think big, uh, be ready to change completely every year. Empower people and put people, people in the center of everything. Be ready to understand that the world has technology cycles that are going to Change completely. Who are the leaders? So be really open to the new and the innovation but at the same time the discipline to set aggressive goals, monitor it in details and confront the most brutal facts. That's the way we talk internally. It's from Jim uh, Collins book. I think one of the things we do well is when things are not working. We are very direct. Brazilians are known for being a little, how can I say, soft in the way we communicate. We uh, try to be nice and polite but we confront the brutal facts when things are not working. We say it's not working, we tell people it's not working, we give very difficult feedback and also we make all the changes. We cue products, we queue, we adjust the direction, we change the people in charge of what's not working. So this discipline to say, uh, I know where I'm going and I'm going to adjust the company as much as necessary until I succeed, combine it to disruptive innovation, uh, that's what makes us started to really grow.

Speaker C: And do you think there's something about the kind of ab inbev model that doesn't work into tech companies and something that tech companies do you think if it were there, probably wouldn't work?

Speaker A: I think balancing the ambidextrous company is very challenging. Most of the uh, entrepreneurs that founded a tech company, they are much more like I'm creative and I don't like the accountants, not the finance, not the managers because they prefer to have this flexibility of keeping doing things differently. Most of people in more mature companies, they are very good in precision in planning and delivering what is planned. I think the power of what we have been doing is exactly do both. And it's difficult because you have to. Usually the people are different. They prefer one, they prefer another and usually they don't get along well. The people that are more creative, they say, do you know that manager? Too much financial accounting, I don't like it. And the more uh, results driven people, they say, uh, that guy doesn't deliver what he promised. Too creative, he's just a dreamer. I think what we could do, that's why we talk a lot about being an ambidextrous company, is that we can have both people really working together and the way we do that is reinforcing all the time. If you are very good in discipline and delivery, we are going to profit this year, maybe next year, but will be disrupted in two or three years. If you are the most creative founder you can, everyone loves your company, you can start to grow, but you are going to go out of the company because other bigger companies are going to invest more and grow through marketing, through good execution. So I try to sell to everyone that we need to be open to different and complementary skills. And I think because we have very good talents on those skills, even that they don't like, like each other, they don't think the other. They really cannot act as the other type when they really work together. We can create success for 20, 30 years. That's, that's what I'm trying to do.

Speaker C: Makes sense. Makes sense. I, I really like this like ambidextrous kind of analogy. I think it like encapsulates well the tension inside like a lot of these, these companies. Like are there any kind of like processes, rituals or you know, something that you guys do internally that like probably can make this kind of like more tangible?

Speaker A: A uh, lot I think. Exactly. You use the word we use there. The rituals of the company is what creates our competitive advantage. The way we start the year saying let's think big. And for two, three, four weeks we dream very big. We dream how can we be the best company in the world? And we set the bar very very high. Nothing is impossible. Then we spend more two, three weeks putting people together for one, two weeks where we align everyone, we align the partners and we create plans to everyone. So really create an uh, environment where everyone is working together with the same goals and the same purpose. After we do that, lots of discipline to every month check what is working, what's not working, face the brutal facts. So I think this combination of uh, environment that values people, put them together and later have the discipline to make them work well together. Even talking about what's not working and require a fast correction. These elements, first thinking big, have the discipline to cascade and then monitor with a lot of disciplined execution, create the rituals, uh, to make the company work.

Speaker C: That's awesome. So it's like uh, you have this like the dream big part is like hey, let's set the bar. What would be an example? Is it like a numeric goal? Is it like ah, something like a little bit more subjective. Give me some. What does that look in practice?

Speaker A: I guess we are in 2025 doing that in 2025 means we know the world is going to change completely. We are in the middle of a technological cycle and the company that are going to succeed in three or five years are going to be completely different. So we spend some time asking the best people in the world that talks about disruption to create a vision about the future. Our current vision includes we are going to have agentic companies, we are going to have LLMs predicting how people purchase better than they know themselves. We are going to have embodied agents, life assistants until AGI Agentic organizations until AGI. So we spend some time really dreaming about the next five years and after we do that and the whole team of managers are uh, really seeing the same future then we really break it down in how we are going to be exceptional in one year and in six months and in one month and then next week and then the team is really know each other and know the dream enough so we can work separately each one. Because we are a big company now. We have 40,000 people so we can have managers, each one going to a different country but they know what's the dream and they can really cooperate. I think one of the amazing things of this kind of ritual is to me what kill big companies are the silos and each vice president go to his place and do what he want to do because they have the budget, the company is big. So when I really put people together to dream and then to detail how we are going to get there, we kill those silos and we create a strong sense of group and that's what makes the company run faster.

Speaker C: So this is awesome. Um, so going back to the story. So okay you had these like you're generating cash flow from this core like SMS business or something like that. How big was that business when you kind of started doing these acquisitions?

Speaker A: Wow. It was very big by the time. But today I think it looks, I don't know, $20 million per year, $30 million per year in revenues.

Speaker C: Yes, but it was very profitable I imagine.

Speaker A: Yes. $3 million per year, probably four or five, something like that.

Speaker C: So how did you have the money to get and go invest in all these other businesses or buy ifood? How did you finance it?

Speaker A: We had a few investors, uh, Inova, Veronica, Josh, Paul. We have also Prozos now I'm CEO of pros. He was my first investor many years ago. But also we were being profitable and we never uh, spend first and then one, two, three, five years later we were very, how can I say we had a lot of discipline on investing. So we created many business through really technology and founders mentality of we call it jet skis today that it means have like a 3, 4 people team to test new things until we find something that work and only then we scale. So we tested many ideas, we tested many of smartphone content ideas and we tested selling tickets like Eventbrite Some kind or Ticketmaster. And we started testing, selling food m on the mobile phone. Uh, and also we started to think about what else we can sell of the real world in smartphones. It's fun that today everyone buy things on smartphones. But in 2008 or 9 or 10, this was a very different idea. People are not buying anything on their smartphones. So we said the future is buy everything today's smartphones. So we created two or three or four business. And also with 12 million dollars, we started to acquire small companies. I think the first investment was like $2 million. Then we acquired for like $5 million. It was, it was cheap by the time.

Speaker C: So how many businesses do you think you guys had at this point in time?

Speaker A: Around, um, ten business.

Speaker C: Ten businesses. And then if we look back now, ifood obviously became massively dominant. Right. How big is ifood today?

Speaker A: Selling $20 billion per year only in Brazil.

Speaker C: Yeah, $20 billion a year only in Brazil. Food. So in realities, it's like it would be like doing.

Speaker A: It's more than 100 billion.

Speaker C: Probably as a percent of GDP, it would probably be bigger than doordash here or something. Right.

Speaker A: Percent of GDP is closer to 1%. It's like 0.7, 0.8% of the Brazilian GDP.

Speaker C: Yeah. So if you were to think about that in the US, uh, it would be like a 300 billion GMV company here or something like that. Right. It's huge. Um, and then do any of the other ones kind of work or they just didn't work in comparison to ifood. You know what I mean?

Speaker A: Actually, many of them worked. The problem is that ifood so big. Exactly. It's not a problem.

Speaker C: Actually.

Speaker A: I'm very happy ifood is doing so well that many times. We don't talk about the others. But an interesting thing. Let m me tell you a very nice story about distinction on founder. I am a founder. I, uh, manage companies now. I am also. I see myself as a founder in a very big company. Today Pro has 40,000 people. But all the way I manage the companies the same as I did before. But let me tell you a little about the tension. I liked my partners. They really had to help me to run the company better. I was running Movily very well and I have 10 business. But typhoon was growing faster than everything. It was not the bigger business. And then it was not my idea. Actually, it was Prozo's idea. Now I'm Prozo. But I was not. By the time they told me, look, Movily is Very good in innovation, in culture, in people. You have the best people. You innovate more than everyone that we know. But ifood is the business growth that has more potential. So they invited me because I had 10 CEOs reporting to me, why don't you become iFood CEO? And it was not obvious to me. And I said, but, uh, things are good here. I'm happy managing all the 10 companies. Then I said, but I'm going to listen to you. Then I became CEO of Movly and Ifood. At the same time, I became CEO of both. And ifood grew a lot. The fact that ifood became so today, ifood has more than 90% market share in Brazil.

Speaker C: Nine. Zero.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, but by the time ifood became much more oriented to people, to innovation, to management model, to a culture of a tech company, became less of a foods company and more a tech company, and, uh, we started to innovate a lot in ifood. Ifood is not a food delivery company. We're a food delivery. We are a grocery business, pharmacy, pet shop, and then also fintech. We have a credit card to buy food. We have lending for restaurants. We have more five or seven business. Ifood is like ten business. And, um, we started to innovate a lot. And ifood grow from. When I invest in ifood, we were doing 20,000 orders per month. 25.

Speaker C: Uh, did you buy 100% upfront or no?

Speaker A: No, I bought 30%, then 50%, then 70%, then 100%.

Speaker C: Oh, wow.

Speaker A: But this month iFood did 160 million orders.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: So we grew from 25,000 to 160 million.

Speaker C: Do you think that ifood did anything different and better compared to the other companies in the movily portfolio? Or was it because you were more involved in the end? I remember you guys are in some pretty big categories. And ifood obviously became super dominant. The other ones, there were other players that kind of did super well. What do you think? What were the learnings?

Speaker A: I think the potential of the food delivery business executing very well was bigger than the others. This makes a difference. But actually we had a messaging business that we sold for a few billion reais. So it was a good thing. The problem is that Thai food is so big that a few.

Speaker C: What messaging business is this?

Speaker A: It was called, uh, Wavy Wave.

Speaker C: What did it do?

Speaker A: Uh, messaging, like, uh, uh, in the beginning, short message, then WhatsApp. So it connect companies to their CRM through messaging.

Speaker C: Ah, okay. So you sold that to whom?

Speaker A: Forgot not the name of the company. But we sold then first we merged and then later we sold because the company IPO became public. But it was a success story.

Speaker C: Super success. Yeah.

Speaker A: We got a lot of money. We sold. In the end we became shareholder of a public company. In the end we sold those shares like I don't know, a few years ago. But we made a lot of money there. We had a payment company called Zoop and another company called Simpla that is the number one company for events in Brazil. So if you buy, it became the number one event. Yeah, exactly. So this company, both of them Today, we merged MOV with iFood and they are part of Ifood now. We did it like last year.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: But both of them are very successful and big companies and good companies.

Speaker C: So it's just a comparison to iFood that is the ah, the hard part.

Speaker A: These two companies are super good.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And we have others. We have PlayKit with 50 million users. In the end we merged them with another company doing the same thing in us. Forgot the name too. You see the problem of the size of five foot.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: But we had like five or six of the ten companies. Five or six did well. But one became a uh, multi billion dollar business.

Speaker C: So you think it was, it was, it wasn't like an execution difference, it was just a uh, kind of like core for business quality and potential.

Speaker A: I think the execution of most of them were very good.

Speaker C: Makes sense.

Speaker A: But how I see that, I think the way that you describe it is great. There is difference in the potential for each business. But at the same time, because we executed very well 10 different bets, we also increased the chance of succeeding in many of them and increase the chance of having a real big winner. So I really believe that the quality of the execution makes the whole difference. But it's not enough. I think that's the conclusion I guess.

Speaker C: How do you trade off the traditional management idea that you need to have focus with this idea of diversifying your bets?

Speaker A: Amazing question. And I think this is part of the management model and the culture that we have. How do we talk about that when we are scaling a business to prioritize 5, 7, 10 things and the whole company should know what are the priorities. Having discipline and showing clearly the priority and showing to everyone makes like everyone work together. Many times one or ah, two of these ten goals is to innovate or uh, experiment inside this goal. The mindset is different. Let's do 100 hypothesis tests. But they are usually 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks of work. They should be cheap, fast, gets numbers Concludes something and you are open to completely change your direction. So we call it Jet Skis, like testing things fast. So we have like a boat or a big boat and it moves slower. We cannot like do crazy things. But we can always have smaller groups with like usually two, three, four people that we have hypothesis, we test, we execute and we learn. So when we describe this way, you can see that if you are in the phase of discovery, you should open your mind, test many things and learn. But the most important thing is to learn. When you learn what works, then your mind has to shift to now I have to scale. So I have to reduce the number of priorities, uh, reduce focus much more, put a different kind of people in scaling. Talk about marketing and finance at the same time that we are scaling. We always have some goals that are keep innovating and inside these goals test a hundred things very cheap, very fast and learn fast.

Speaker C: But then how do you deal with the dependencies of the uh, I guess the test because I imagine you guys are going to build some new thing to test on ifood some other team needs to coordinate for dependencies because some other systems involved and blah blah. And then that person, how do you deal with all that?

Speaker A: That's why the magic I said on balancing an ambidextrous culture. What you just described is related to a more mature company. If you need to innovate and iterate, just like a startup, you cannot have dependence. That's why we call it Jet Skis. We create a five people team. They can use the data but they cannot change or commit the main systems. They cannot change the main products. Sometimes to have the kind of flexibility, if you need to do something, uh, with the main products, we say this Jet ski is the owner of a city. So iFood has 2,000 cities, it's quite common that we take 10 of them and we say these jet skis run an app that only runs on this city and then they can do whatever they want on that city. So should be fast and innovate, kill the dependence and let people be entrepreneurs and test and make and fail until they find what works.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, very interesting. Okay, so you think about the system already. So these bets can be completely independent.

Speaker A: They are like a startup. You put five people and they can do whatever they want until they succeed. And they are going to fail 20 times before they succeed. And it's okay.

Speaker C: Yeah, very, very interesting.

Speaker A: But they cannot touch the billing system, they cannot touch the marketing systems. Because this one you need the kind of discipline in m the machine Exactly.

Speaker C: Very, very interesting.

Speaker B: This episode of HD and HD is brought to you by a brand that's close to my heart. Brex. When we started Brex, it wasn't just about creating another financial product. It was about solving the real gritty challenges that that founders and startups face every day. Building something from the ground up is hard enough without having to navigate clunky legacy banks with endless fees. That's why Brex is the financial stack that scales with you no matter where you are on your journey from maximizing Runway to earning yield on your cash. Brex was designed to make every dollar count so you can focus on what really matters, building your dream. So whether you're just getting started or you're ready to take on the next big thing, Brex has your back. Check it out and see why the world's most innovative startups like Anthropic Scale AI and Robinhood Trust.

Speaker A: Brex.

Speaker C: If you look at different industries in, um, Brazil, they kind of became like very competitive. So, for example, if you get payments, right, like you have stone, you have PAGs, you have like a bunch of different companies. And you know, E Commerce, you know, is like a bunch of different companies. How is it that Ifood was able to get such a big market share of the ecosystem?

Speaker A: There is competition there. There is two Chinese companies that just entered the market.

Speaker C: So you have 90%.

Speaker A: Yeah, they just entered like the last month. M. So there is a lot of much more competition right now.

Speaker C: But there was Rappi also, right? Like last year.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's what I'm going to say. Actually, people think food is very big for some structural reason. Actually, no, we were. When I invested in Ifood, it was very small and it was like the third or the fourth company in the country. So it's not the number one.

Speaker C: And food delivery?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: What else was there?

Speaker A: Uh, there was other three or four. What are the names? Was one name.

Speaker C: Oh, yeah, I kind of remember one

Speaker A: was, um, I forgot, but there was many others. And then we executed well. We have the entrepreneurial behavior that makes companies grow faster. Patient people, working a lot, testing a lot, learning a lot, having very big goals, sharing the benefit with everyone that are behaving really like owners. And we create this culture of innovating a lot, but have lots of discipline, being aggressive in the growth, aggressive in marketing and taking care of the customer. So we had four or five companies. We became the number one. Then Uber decided to enter in Brazil and created a lot of tension for us. Uber is a global leader, but our mindset Was we can play against Uber and we can win. And we played very well against Uber. Uber left Brazil a few years later, and when we said less, uh, players than actually Happy entered and Happy raised $2 billion. I don't know if you remember that.

Speaker C: I remember Softbank.

Speaker A: Yeah, they were like, SoftBank said $2 billion to HAPI to fight high food.

Speaker C: How did you fight that off?

Speaker A: Technology, Passionate people. I think many people raised lots of money and they started to lose the discipline of spending because it's other people money. It's VC money. We're always a company with an, uh, owner. Not only me, Nova, uh, uh, but the mindset of the owner, the mindset of, uh, we don't spend money, destroy money. We are very disciplined, and the quality of the technology and the products and the quality of the marketing, I think we really outperformed all those competitors then. We had a good position in the last few years. Now we have more competition and we are ready to move faster, take more risk, improve products, keep an amazing team. Uh, and actually, as you know, now I'm running prosuz. We just acquired, uh, just its takeaway, even the biggest one in Europe. We also have one of the biggest in ninjas, Swiggy. We have a big participation in delivery heroes. So we have now a much bigger thing than ifood. I think we have some Brazilians here listening too. Brazilians sometimes, uh, they think we are not good enough. Brazilians many times think that. But the technology we developed in ifood today is being used in many countries in the world, and I'm very excited about that.

Speaker C: That's awesome. Um, yeah, no, it's an amazing case. I had, um, you know, Will from Deliveroo on the podcast before, and, you know, it was. It was hard to fight Uber, you know, and like, fight doordash and all that. And, you know, they had some other competitors, but in Brazil you guys were able to, like, do it. But maybe like, let's talk a little bit about how was that transition from, uh, ifood to pros. Like, what happened? I remember just seeing the news. I'm like, what?

Speaker A: It's funny, people say that now you're not a founder anymore, you are an investor or you are. Nothing changed in my life. I'm still the same founder doing all the crazy innovation and moving fast and testing new things. So how was this change? It was similar when I moved from movly to ifood. Remember I told you that Movly had a better culture and execution, innovation. And I moved to Ifood and I rebuilt that then I was running ifood for, I don't know, seven or eight years. Seven years. I think ifood is doing quite a quite well. And I was very concentrated in making iFood $100 billion company. That was our goal. It is our goal for ifood, actually. And then, uh, one day, pros was calling me, the board of pros and said, what about come here and run everything. We have, like 100 companies now. We are getting closer to $15 billion in revenue. So it's a bigger company all around the world. We are a big shareholder of tencent. That is an amazing company. We have things in India, Europe. And my first reaction is I am not a portfolio manager. That's just like, put $5 million here or 10 there and wait five years. But my dream is to create the best tech, uh, company outside the U.S. a company that is all around the world and innovates a lot, as good as the best companies in California. I love this dream. And if I can do that in process, I go tomorrow. And the guys told me that, no, we are calling you because we want process to be different a little. So I confirmed. Are you sure? They said yes. Then I took an airplane and moved here a few weeks later. And it was a great experience, I think prosus. It has been a great experience for me. I'm learning a lot now. I have business in India and now around Europe and Africa and really learn about this global scenario. It's amazing. Very few, as you said, brazilians are running tech business all around the world. You have people from us, people from India, maybe, but Brazilians is very, very, very rare.

Speaker C: Very small group.

Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm learning a lot. That's why I'm here, because I can learn and do better.

Speaker C: And, uh, how would you describe what process is? I guess so.

Speaker A: This is not a picture, it's a movie. Let me explain you why, and it connects to your last question. When I arrived, pros was much more managing this portfolio with many investments around the world, little connection and worse than that, little, uh, synergies between all the companies. That was what process was. Today, pros is a tech company focusing just three regions. That is India, Europe and Latin America. And as a tech company, we run culture, management, model, and innovation globally. So we select people, we train them, we put all of them together. We share every week what's happening in all the world with all the leaders. Everything that work in a small company in India or in Romania or in London, we say, oh, my God, this is working well. Tell all the other Leaders of the companies around the world what is working and share that because we have this, I think great companies in Brazil or even in Europe, they don't have the ecosystem that like Google or Microsoft or Meta have here in us. What I changed this process to be is like a tech company that has a very big muscle in terms of development and innovation. So what we are doing in AI today is like cutting edge AI as very few companies can do that all around the world. So I transformed process from more of a manager of investments to a tech group that is really betting to operate the best e, uh commerce in the world through AI and innovate and have a big impact in the products we are creating, the technology we are creating culture changed completely the focus, innovation in speed, in experimentation, in risk. And I'm very confident we are going to do good things.

Speaker C: How do you choose what to centralize and what to leave it at to the companies themselves?

Speaker A: Great question. What I don't do. I think big companies, they say that's how we operate. We have this process, everyone has to follow this cue all the smaller companies and kill the innovation and the grit and the passion of the startups. That's not how we do. What we do is we have a ah, big vision of the future. Our big vision requires exceptional execution, exceptional innovation and exceptional people. When we share this big vision, many of the companies say wow, this vision is amazing and I can contribute. And the vision includes saying your company are going to be the best in the world what you're doing. Our technology is going to be the best in the world in how to treat customers or partners or uh, the interface that we are using with the customers or how we use AI. When you have a big vision and starts to deliver that big vision, everyone wants to go along because people want to win and want to be part of a winning team. So instead of I say that's what you have to do. We try to define a vision and invite everyone to run together with us or faster than us and build this vision together. So many of the things that we are doing in the center, the companies are not replicating because we are not making a process and asking everyone to replicate. But a few things I centrally say, for example being the best in your region in AI is a requirement but don't come here and just follow the process. You have to hire the amazing people you have to create your software but we have all the knowledge open for you. The best managers, they take all the knowledge, they learn everything and they run like crazy to be the best, let's say in India, some people say I don't care. And sometimes we own many companies. When the people say I don't care, we don't try to enforce the process, we change the management because I want management that say I really am going to be the best in the world. And sometimes people ask me, but I'm minority in many companies. There are many companies that we are minority investors. And people say but how do you enforce that this minority investment, they are going to really have the grid to be the best in the world in something. It's super simple. If your vision is good and you are really pushing for exceptional execution. The best founders in my experience, they say, wow, that is good. I can have 10% in a company. And if they say what we are doing, what we call large commerce model, how we are using AI to understand better preference of customers, people say I uh, want to do that. Please open everything to me. We are going to copy that. And if a minority company says no, I don't want, it's super simple, sell. I don't want to be partner of someone that says I don't care about how to use the best in the AI in the world. So either way it works.

Speaker C: Would you consider yourself a conglomerate? Is that a fair word to describe you guys or no?

Speaker A: I see myself as a tech company that has many tech companies that own many tech companies and we work together.

Speaker C: I guess my question was because I was trying to. I'm m curious if you studied other companies that have similar characteristics, um, that potentially grew through acquiring or investing in different companies around the world. Have you studied them? What did you learn? What are the other companies that you kind of.

Speaker A: I study many of them. Many of them are conglomerates. I just think that this is an old name for old companies. That's why I don't like it very much. But um, many of them, uh, first we are in US we are today in New York. The model that I'm trying to run work sometimes less here. But I think the market here, if you are an American listen to us, it's going to make less sense of what are doing because here we have so much capital, it's so easy to raise more money and you have many people making bets and taking risks. Maybe that's why we have so many amazing companies here in US but if you look to Brazil or Europe or Africa or India or even Southeast Asia, you don't have a lot of capital and this capability of learning fast and hiring and moving faster. So being a company that have this ability to test a lot. And when something goes well, you double down or invest much more. It's a competitive advantage, I think, more outside of us, much more than here in us. And if you look to China, for example, you have many companies like Tencentraliba or uh, uh, bytedance that they have many, many business connected to them. Many in case of Tencent, thousands, hundreds. Alibaba, the same thing. If you look to South Korea or to many areas in Southeast Asia, you see also or even Japan, this benefit of the scale of working together with uh, companies, uh, where you can have some synergies.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, it's super interesting. I always describe to people why don't super apps exist in the US Compared to the rest of the world. And capital is really a moat outside of the U.S. you know, here like you see $100 million seed round every other week. You know, like, you know, $100 million in these other countries is.

Speaker A: I have an idea. So it's $100 million.

Speaker C: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: It's not how life works everywhere.

Speaker C: Uh, anywhere but anywhere but California, basically.

Speaker A: Exactly. But because there are so many important people here in the tech world, many of them really think that's how the world is. It's not.

Speaker C: It's not.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, so I can do $100 million bet anywhere in the world. And this is a competitive advantage. And when I do that together with uh, an ecosystem. Uh, the last two weeks we had 60 people in Amsterdam. We have AI House. Amsterdam, Amsterdam, AI House. Where we have every week five events per week where we just do people doing AI. People in the valley can think. Well, that's normal in the valley. Who does that in Amsterdam?

Speaker C: It's us.

Speaker A: We created that. And the last two weeks we did internal events. 60 people really creating a fine tuning model. So we took the QN model and we moved 60 people from around the world to create models to each one of our, uh, companies using the best technology we have to personalize on E commerce. We had people from South Africa and India and everywhere. They don't have access to fly to a place and do that kind of training and learning all the tools that we have so they have access of the best tools. And uh, the best way that we can do that in a, uh, lab in California. And we just did it with 60 people from all around the world for 10 days without sleep to do that. So you see, we create this environment that people can learn from the best ones know what works and when something works. We can invest $100 million overnight that's what we are.

Speaker C: What are other kind of nuances that you think that the average American entrepreneur investor under appreciates about how it is to do business in the rest of the world?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think the Americans have amazing results. So I'm a big fan of the results of the Americans but many of them don't uh, understand the dynamics around of lack of capital, of lack of ecosystem, of um, a very positive thing on the Americans. They are much more risk taking and they want to do things and let's do it fast and get to a result. Now I'm a Dutch Brazilian. I am m a little um, from Netherlands, a little from Brazil. And the mindset is a little different. I've been criticizing a lot Europe. Not only criticizing, but I've been very active going to Brussels and talking to all our politicians saying it's time to change the mindset, to take risks, move faster, deregulate. So it's very different how the Europeans see that and the Americans. I think the Americans sometimes underestimate, uh, what is happening outside. So I'll give you a few examples. What the Chinese are doing. AI is very good, but it's quite common to listen to people here saying yeah, they're just copying us. Maybe not. It's very good, very good. And I go to, I travel all around the world every month. In Beijing or in Shenzhen, people are innovating really, really, really fast. In robotics they're doing really really well. For example, China and AI uh, a second example in India. Americans sometimes say no, we are just going to make our companies work there. But the dynamics is so different. The cost, the purchasing power and the capabilities of the economics of the business are so different. So we have a company called Misho that's IPO in December 10th. They are amazing because they sell. I don't remember their number now. I don't remember what is public but like many hundreds, millions of items per month are number one in the country. But their average order value is like it's less than $5. I don't know what's the public number, but it's less than $5. You see a typical tech company in US they work with a different world in terms of economics. So the quality of innovation inside Michoud to operate with those costs is amazing. We have another company called Rapido, the double of the size of Uber there and most of their rights are on Tuk Tuk. I don't know, I don't remember how to say that in English. Maybe Tuk Tuk.

Speaker C: I think it's tuk tuk.

Speaker A: Yeah, so.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker A: And they charge like the number is. It's crazy. I'm from Brazil and it should be. And to me the number is crazy like $0.01. It's less than $0.01 of dollar for sure per ride. And they are the double of the size of Uber and like millions less than $0.01 of their part. So what they, they charge per is unbelievable ship.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: It's a number that I think of how we can operate on that. So the mindset of operating in a country with 1.5 billion people in different economics, many Americans doesn't understand this how

Speaker C: efficient you have to be.

Speaker A: Exactly. And I'm saying the Chinese are not copying, they are innovating in the engine. They are not just its worst. They are innovating to operate a big business with thousands of people and millions of orders per month. They have to be super good to do that. So I think appreciating all of that is.

Speaker C: So what kind of business do you think works well in emerging markets? So because like clearly for example software and SaaS is like, basically doesn't exist outside of the U.S. um, but in the U.S. it's like one of the favorite kind of like. Or was at least till this year.

Speaker A: But yeah, um, last six months. I don't know what is.

Speaker C: But let's say for the last two decades it's been kind of like a favorite. Um, my intuition is always that the better ideas in emerging market are just really big ideas that are kind of like, they're not niche, they're kind of like core infrastructure for the country. But I'm curious, what are your views and when you're looking at an idea outside of the U.S. what are the things that kind of make a good idea?

Speaker A: Uh, I agree with you of the software SaaS preference here. When over the last one year that I'm in process, I also look to debt in comparison to what I see elsewhere. I think the scale or the capital, the ability to invest capital in the long term and take risks here makes a very big difference. Because imagine if you are in Europe or in Brazil or in India, many of these, uh, software as a service companies, they start operating, they take many years to become profitable. They require you to invest to grow internationally and lose a lot of money during this process. I think US is able to take risks on that and to fund that, take more risks in the beginning and then bet to expand internationally faster than everyone else. I don't think uh, uh, the technology to do that you have in the Valley and don't have in the world. But there is this economics of the capability to invest to create really big winners here that um, enables us to have successful, uh, business on this area.

Speaker C: I think it's also because the US companies pay more for it, I guess because of like labor is more expensive. I heard some argument that like, you know, in India it's like just cheaper to have like five people doing a thing than it is to kind of like do software. Yeah. But I don't know, like, what do you, what do you think?

Speaker A: I think us, you do software because it's more expensive and you have the ability to scale it in a format that it's going to become very cheap to everyone all around the world because you're trying to create really a global business. It's much more different to say in India, for example, I'm going to create a global business. I just need $300 million. No one's going to give you $300 million in India to do that.

Speaker C: That. Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, so I think business that has like a, a more local connection or requires to interact with the local institutions, it's easier to create local champions when you require logistics or require payments. I know Fintech is a business that

Speaker C: big one in emerging markets.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Uh, big one. And you see you have the Brex case and the Stone case. Now you have the new bank case and even Revolut also in Europe. So you see it's an area that uh, Europe and Latin America and in China also in Ninja also China has the WeChat Pay and the payments from Alibaba. In Ninja also you have the UPI where you can do payments faster. So you see in Fintech that is more regulated, that is more local and you need to consider much more the local connections. You have many, many global success cases. I think in the local commerce. That's an area that we are coming from with fivefold. Also you require to have the local partnerships that need to execute quite well locally and you have many players around the world doing that well.

Speaker C: Yeah, makes a ton of sense. Um, I guess what's been something that after you join Prosystem that you're having to learn that you didn't have to learn before. Like what's a new skill and capability you're having to acquire for this job now?

Speaker A: Um, I'm learning a lot. I think the reason I'm there, I'm here in Prosus is to learn. I learned a lot in ifood in Brazil to create a very nice Brazilian business. But the Beauty of going global is learn a lot. And I learned a lot going to for example India and China because they uh, are innovating in ways that we are not thinking about that in Europe, nor in US nor in Latin America. So I really learned a lot about India and China.

Speaker B: Um,

Speaker A: to me Europe is an amazing opportunity. So I'm very happy to have the opportunity to learn and also to influence Europe because Europe market is more or less the size of us, a little smaller now it's the same size 10 years ago. Now it's a little smaller, 15% smaller. But you have $20 trillion in the top 10 companies here and maybe half trillion dollars or uh, $1 trillion in the top 10 companies in Europe. So understand what is the work ethics there and what people value in the culture. Understand how to interact with them. Not only understand but then try to influence because I think there is a big, big opportunity there in Europe.

Speaker C: I guess Europe is a good one. What do you think is preventing more kind of like maybe trillion dollar European company? Well yeah, I guess Novo Nordisk was almost there. But which one? Novo Nordisk, the uh, GLP1.

Speaker A: Don't remember their number now, but they are doing well. What's preventing? I think there is an amazing report many people doesn't know here in US from Mario Draghi. Have you heard about it? It's very, very famous. It's 20 years old now. We call it Draghi Report. But there is another name like competitiveness in Europe, but you could call Drag Report. He was former central banker in Europe and uh, he writes like 100 pages explaining what makes Europe moving slow. And uh, the president of European Commission said that's my strategic goal and I'm going to change that. And I think most of the politicians in Europe, they agree we have to change. So a few things at last I'm going to talk about work ethics. But like red tape Europe for 20, 30 years they said we have an idea, so let's start regulating. And they put people together in Brussels and they create rules about that new idea. It's crazy the way you have to talk about sustainability and AI and uh, reporting on everything. In E commerce you have so many laws. Many people say this is Brussels fault. I would say a more polemic thing. Yes, it's Brussels fault too. But sometimes the European people, they are open to this bureaucracy. Many times I'm in a meeting inside the company, people say, uh, let's check all the regulation, let's see what is coming and say guys, stop regulation. We're talking about Creating the future through AI first we create the future, then we understand what uh, is the regulation, how we make it work. Because if you start saying let's read the red tape before you develop this software, you are not going to create something amazing. I think there is an excessive, not only in Brussels, but in the mindset on let's model the future before you create the future. I think it's a big mistake. But there is a second thing that maybe I couldn't see it from outside. European Union is amazing, but it's still 27 countries with their own legislation, their own politicians, culture, language, language, uh, and then you have on top of that some bureaucracy that say you have to do everything considering the language and culture and requirements of each one of the 27 countries. So the reality is there's a big thing called 28th regime or EU Inc. That says we have to make sure that for startup, for technology or for any business, you should register and follow one set of simplified law and you can sell in all 27 countries without having to adapt to all the local legislation. There is not one single capital market either, so you cannot invest everywhere. Uh, and then there is something that I think it's a big mistake. Big, big mistake is that the mindset in terms of consolidation or the competition authorities, they really want to have in each one of the 27 local companies competing. So Europe didn't consolidate to have big telecom, um, companies, nor big banks, nor big software companies. We had two big food delivery companies and the European Commission asked us to sell one of the two. So here in the US you want to create a global leader. In Europe, the competition authorities ask you to create companies in each country. Instead of understanding that the competition is not between Italy and France, is between Europe and us, Latin America, India and China.

Speaker C: It's like, how do we create a local loser where the Chinese and American ones have so much more money and comes and wins the market.

Speaker A: And then you have five local losers that lose. The good news is that the politicians clearly perceive that we need to change that. Hope it will be in Silicon Valley.

Speaker C: Speed, you didn't mention labor law too. That's at least the one I, I hear the most here in the US that like labor law in Europe, makes it very complicated to hire and fire.

Speaker A: And I will get to the, the work ethics was my last point. Okay, labor, uh, law and labor mindset, um, firing is very difficult. Sometimes you have to say, you have to get to an agreement to the people to fire someone. The people say, no, I don't want to be fired and then spend one

Speaker C: year or debating if they're going to be fired.

Speaker A: Yes. Then you have to pay for a lot to the people who leave. And, uh, people can think, yeah, because you have to preserve the jobs. It's a big mistake because you preserve the job and the company fail, and then the company fire everyone or the company doesn't grow. So how many jobs we created here in US because we have very successful tech companies, millions of jobs and trillions in value. And in Europe, you said, I'm going to preserve that five jobs and the company is not a winner. So there is a word ethics in terms of that and also a work ethics in terms of really, I think, winning what we are doing there in process. Let me tell you the good thing there. The level of smart people with very good education talking about disruptive industries and technology is very high. So you have the education to create the future leaders, but you don't have the capital or the, the work ethics or the competitional rules to do that. But in work ethics also, sometimes we need to think as winners. If you are in California, you live there, right? I live here, but used to live there before. There is this thing here in New York too. Like, I'm, um, going to be the best in the world, 100%. Actually. You can meet a guy with like 25 years and he's going to say, I'm the best in the world on that. And what you have, if, you know, it's just me and my partner and we are the best in the world. Uh, and this is normal, right?

Speaker C: Very normal.

Speaker A: This is the defoe, uh, in Europe, sometimes you have very different work ethics of like, I have to talk about the regulation and what are my benefits and how I reduce my risk of being fired. So I think sometimes you miss the winning culture. Like, forget the rest. I'm going to be the best in the world because I'm going to work a lot, all the time, including nights and Saturdays and Sunday, until I, uh, create something that transforms the world. Many times even companies in Europe don't think like that. And I think process is contributing aggressively, saying, we are here to create the, uh, leader in the world. And many people is living process and it's part of life if they don't fit this culture. But because we are reinforcing so aggressively, that's our culture. Many people, uh, is also joining process because they say, that's what I want to build. So I think we are in a moment of the full way is to say, let's Just keep working. But we are now in a moment to say Europe has to fight back. Hope pros is going to contribute a little with that too.

Speaker C: Um, for any potential, uh, uh, we have a lot of uh, people in finance listening, people who like to buy and trade stocks. Enoprose is a publicly listed company. If you had to, um, explain the strategy that you have for the next five years of why someone should be a prosa shareholder, what would that be?

Speaker A: Super easy, uh, Process. Today, as many conglomerates trades on a discount on our net asset values. And maybe because few people didn't see our vision, I think we execute. We didn't execute that well the last few years. But what process is today is extremely, extremely exciting. First we focus in a few regions, as I said, India, Europe and Latin America and really creating champions there. In Latin America we have ifood with many companies around. In Europe now we have just eat. We are building an ecosystem around Just eat. And in India we have 30 investments, the best tech companies in India as part of our portfolio. But the best thing to me is not only good execution, it's how we are really innovating to create the future. The two things that I'm more excited right now, what we call large commerce model. That means we take all our data and we have 2 billion customers and we train a model. We fine tune models with all the data. It's a very different way to look how AI change. E Commerce, for example, iFood has 200 models running. IFood now we take all the data and we train one model that can predict everything. And this is very, very magical. It's a chatgpt moment where we can understand about our customers, their demands, about how a food delivery customer, what are the demands to travel, for example. And our model can predict that because we have so much data on that. I think the innovation we are doing that is best in class in the world. Also in the agents world. We have today 20,000 agents and we are running agents, for example, to talk to restaurants, partner customers. And we have today we calculate around 5,000 extra people working in pros just because our agents are behaving as regular employees or human beings. So I think we are quite ahead in how to use AI to change our business. I'm very happy with that. At the same time, the company is really every time growing faster and we are going to deliver a few billion dollars in profits, uh, this year and next year. So I think process has been through a big, uh, change. And my uh, suggestion is it's still on discount. So uh, better to do it now than to regret later.

Speaker C: It's awesome. Um, Fabicio. I know we're at time, but so grateful that you do this. Thank you so much. And it's awesome to see another Brazilian taking over the world.

Speaker A: Pleasure to be here. Hope to come back to tell we

Speaker C: need a part two. Honestly, like this is exactly.

Speaker A: Let's part two when we are getting back to 200, $300 billion. Perfect.

Speaker C: Let's do it. Amazing. Thank you.

Speaker A: Pleasure.

Speaker B: Thanks to our friends at Atomic Growth for helping with production and distribution.