Marcelo Pimenta: +Mu is that healthy food company you've probably seen in some supermarket or health food store. Otto, thank you very much for being here so we can exchange ideas about building businesses and growing a company from scratch. I know you have a great story to tell. Please, I'd like you to introduce yourself, share a little about how you got started and how you arrived at this point.
Otto Guarnieri: First of all, thank you for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be speaking with you. It's funny, but +Mu was my first job. I never did an internship, and I think that has a lot to do with how I was raised by my parents. I didn't have close contact with anyone who worked at a traditional company, so I never got to know what that world looks like day to day. My father worked with artists and entrepreneurs who would buy works of art; my mother also always had a lot of contact with artists. In my family, my cousins, for example, had roots in agribusiness — everyone would go to the farm to work in that field. But I always had in my head the idea of studying business administration. I enjoyed the conversations we had at home. I started college and when the time came to do an internship, I didn't even really know what an internship was. I asked myself: what do I do here? What's my next step? I wasn't very psychologically prepared because I had never wanted that since childhood. I thought: either I would do an internship or I would become an entrepreneur.
15 years ago, when I was working out trying to take better care of my body and boost my self-esteem, I came home, put a big tub on the table, and my mother asked: what is this horse-sized container doing in the house? It was hard to explain. I told her it was a milk derivative and that there was nothing wrong with drinking it. Getting her to understand all of that was quite a challenge. But I had that problem — that customer pain point — of consuming a product and facing resistance, so I talked to my business partner and said: let's make this happen. We developed a small bottle that had Whey powder to which you added water, shook it, and drank it. People told us: what a clever idea you had. In reality, it was creativity born out of a lack of resources. What we really wanted was to make a ready-to-drink product, a protein drink already prepared that you just open and consume. But I didn't have the money. So we were trying to test the idea like an MVP (minimum viable product). Let's try putting the powder in a bottle, change the packaging a bit, and see how the public reacts to this idea. We ended up almost creating a new market category that didn't exist — those powder proteins. We call it ready to shake, not ready to drink. That's how we became known, but that was the first step toward the product and brand creation. We were still in college at that time.
Marcelo Pimenta: A large part of our audience wants to understand: how do I create my startup? How do I build my company from scratch? What steps should I take from the conception of the business to getting the idea off the ground? What can you share with people about that moment in your journey? What was it like from conceiving the business to launching your first product on the market?
Otto Guarnieri: I've thought quite a bit about this, because one day I was invited to speak at GV to a group of college students, and I divided the subject into 3 points: self-knowledge, expression, and commitment.
– Self-knowledge: When you decide to become an entrepreneur, you need to be very aware of your emotions. Entrepreneurship is much more about the work of dealing with anxiety and the abrupt swings in emotions. One day you think you're going to be the next Bill Gates; the next, you feel like you'd envy someone begging on the street. You feel like you have little value in the market. Over time, the maturation process sets in. If you don't have a very strong purpose, if you don't truly want to do it for something bigger than yourself that you believe in, then in one of those low moments, you'll probably give up. And that has nothing to do with intelligence — it has to do with your level of resilience. Because to be an entrepreneur, you need to deal with a great deal of uncertainty.
– Expression: I don't see a business solely as a way to make money. I have to use entrepreneurship in the company as a way to show what my mission is, what I want to do, and how I am going to express myself. I call it emotional fuel. Otherwise, you'll hardly be able to sustain the resilience to continue on this journey that is very fulfilling and very rewarding — but it's not easy. It's not always light.
– Commitment: You need to understand that you will have to have the necessary resources — physical, financial, and emotional — to be able to walk the entire journey. You also have to read a lot. You have to manage your finances. Ideally, you should have a financial cushion so that you can achieve a minimum level of peace of mind to commit to the business.
I've met people who wanted to become entrepreneurs because they had a unicorn mindset. They thought about entrepreneurship purely for the money. A billion-dollar valuation — but I don't believe that motivator is strong enough to make you endure the highs and lows of an entrepreneurial journey. There will always be a greener lawn from a neighbor catching your attention.
Marcelo Pimenta: I'd like to understand a bit about how you defined your sales channels, where you distributed your products, and how you designed your strategy.
Otto Guarnieri: We started developing the product in the college cafeteria, asking people for their opinions. One day we approached someone and they asked: are you actually going to open a company or is this a college project? We said we wanted to open a business — and long story short, he owned several cafeterias across various colleges, and those became our first points of sale. We also sold directly to friends.
After that, we set up an online store. We kept growing, talking to other people, getting into more physical stores. After about a year, we were in 20 stores. We were still in college when the opportunity came up to sell to a major retailer — Saint Marche. Then we got into Mundo Verde and Pão de Açúcar. But reflecting on it a bit, I ask myself: how did we manage to get into those channels? Our strategy was not a prospecting one, not a salesperson going door to door. It was much more about spreading the message of what we were selling. We then decided to hire some influencers to talk about us. The strategy was much more focused on demand creation. Once you manage to create demand for the product, the major players come looking for you.
Marcelo Pimenta: You created a completely new product on the market — a product that didn't exist, at least not here in Brazil. Do you think the fact that it was different was what caught buyers' attention the most?
Otto Guarnieri: I think the format of the bottle and the fact that it's a single-serving dose generated curiosity. But I believe our differentiator is more related to the communication we do. The whole thing was a process of deconstructing a prejudice and providing information. We showed that Whey is not a "bomb," that supplements are not poison. We explained that the product is a milk derivative. Newborn babies drink it; elderly people trying to minimize muscle loss drink it too. We started using a more fun, more human language and gradually broke down that resistance. I think the most obvious perception is the bottle format, but what I truly believe brought the real differentiator was the communication, the visual identity, and the message we want to convey.
Marcelo Pimenta: I believe what you said has a lot to do with a startup mindset — you create a product, overcome objections, reposition the product in the market, and make it grow in an almost accelerated way. What contributed most to making the business succeed?
Otto Guarnieri: Many entrepreneurs have an idea, create a product, put it on YouTube and think people will discover it on their own. You need to be a bit bolder. We started working with influencers who made more sense for the business — ones whose message was more aligned with our mission. That's when we started getting better results. We also started doing work on social media, through Facebook Ads and Google Ads. Another crucial point is having a focus on distribution — delivering in the most efficient way possible. How do I use my levers correctly? How do I select the people who will talk about us and who have the most affinity with our message? How do I create messages that make more sense? And how do I have products that make more sense?
Marcelo Pimenta: You mentioned the influencer strategy. Are they your main growth channel today?
Otto Guarnieri: We have our own media channels — our own Instagram, our own Facebook. When we run campaigns on those channels, we achieve good reach, sometimes even stronger than some influencers. But that's also a consequence of the work done to build a more solid consumer base, a more solid customer base.
Marcelo Pimenta: Could you share the tactic you use for choosing influencers?
Otto Guarnieri: There are a few things that are important. The first thing is to try to make the message you want to convey clear, and to see whether the person believes in the purpose — not just whether they have a large audience. I've done promotions with influencers who had millions of followers that yielded poor results — the ROI was negative. We've also hired people with few followers who were much more aligned with the idea, and we achieved returns 10 to 20 times greater than the amount invested. We believe the secret is to find people who believe in what you believe in. Who have a genuine connection with your product. Who engage with it. Who speak with authority because they use your product in their daily lives. But even so, always measure to evaluate whether it's working.
Marcelo Pimenta: What are your next entrepreneurial challenges ahead?
Otto Guarnieri: The phases of a company are: having an idea, developing the product, starting to sell, and scaling. At that stage, the work of management comes in. It's not enough just to innovate — innovation has to be part of the company's DNA — but when it comes to scaling, I believe we have to build the team that will make the company grow. We have to have well-structured departments. Bring in people more for the purpose than for the salary, people who believe in what we believe in, do the fundamentals well, and manage with a focus on outstanding results.
Source: Startse