Bio

I joke that I am a poet — which, in fact, is true — but I walked through the wrong door and stayed. 36 years making and running businesses.

I started selling at 18, at Xerox. That is where I learned the craft that runs through everything I have done since: negotiation — in the practice of a traditional American school and in PSS training, Professional Selling Skills. From there to Texaco Brasil, still in sales but with a foot in marketing: methodology, processes, compliance. And then to Banco Nacional, one of the finest companies anyone could hope to be part of. I was very lucky in those early years — great schools.

At 23, I started building companies of my own. Muiraquitã was born in 1995, the year commercial internet arrived in Brazil. We built one of the country's first internet production houses and developed some of the first Brazilian websites for major brands. That was my first lesson about frontier technology: it does not come with a manual.

Out of a Muiraquitã spinoff came Via Global, which we sold in 2000. It was my first exit — and the turning point of my career. The fund that bought the company invited me to work at its holding company, looking after the other assets in its portfolio. That was the first time I crossed from the entrepreneur's side to the investor's side.

I created ORANGO, another pioneer — that one in digital advertising.

Later, on a second invitation from an investor, I became a partner at Deltalink and, in 2006, joined Ideiasnet — a publicly listed company on the Bovespa, where I was a Statutory Director and a member of the Board of Directors.

There, I crossed over for good to the investor's side. My work was in Venture Capital, through an intense period of M&As and very successful exits.

In 2013 I founded Brain Ventures, where I have been for over a decade. We invest in edtech, healthtech, indtech, games, digital twins, IoT, logistics, Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence. That exposure to deep tech and to innovation translates, today, into the ability to point out paths for companies.

The natural evolution was to sit on boards of directors, where I can contribute the experience gathered across an entire career. Hence the training at IBGC and Fundação Dom Cabral.

36 years after that first sale, the passion is the same. And what I bring into a boardroom is this: the instinct of someone who has negotiated, the scars of someone who has built. And of someone who puts work and capital at risk. And a broad, deep knowledge of what is newest in technology on the world stage.