Did you know that it is possible to build businesses based on the techniques used by Silicon Valley companies without ever traveling to the world's most innovative region? And that you can create profitable, lean, and scalable ventures anywhere in Brazil using the same methods employed by the professionals who have been building virtually everything we consume over the past few decades?
I will show you how to reshape the way you do business by discarding everything you have ever heard about how a conventional company is built. Much is said about Silicon Valley, but few people understand the fundamentals behind the companies in that region. It is not technology that makes these businesses profitable and innovative — it is the speed at which they are created and managed. And you can apply all of this to the way you build your own business.
You may be thinking that these lessons and this knowledge only apply to large companies or technology firms. In fact, they apply to any company, of any size, in any type of business. To illustrate this, let me tell you a story: Dr. Alessandra Morelle, a physician from Porto Alegre, worked at a hospital and wanted to do more for her patients. She traveled to Silicon Valley, learned everything there is to know about how businesses are created and managed in that region, and came to understand how she could apply those lessons within her own profession. She returned to Porto Alegre and, upon landing in the state capital, she created Tummi — an application that enables remote monitoring of cancer patients undergoing treatment. She is an oncologist and reported that a large proportion of deaths occurring at the start of chemotherapy are caused not by the disease itself but by the side effects of treatment. Tummi allows Alessandra and other oncologists to monitor their patients' health remotely, and doctors are alerted at any sign of abnormality. This example shows that Silicon Valley techniques are not exclusive to large corporations — they also apply to small businesses, including simple ventures that are not, at first glance, related to the technology sector.
Some people who encounter Silicon Valley culture for the first time experience a shock. Maurício Benvenutti, author of the book "Incansáveis" and former partner at XP Investimentos, reported in a video that shortly after moving to the Valley, he received a lesson from an 18-year-old on how to build a business in this new economy. From that moment on, he began to realize that everything he had applied to build a highly successful business in the past was no longer relevant for building a highly successful business in the present. That was when he concluded he needed to change. He says he needed to acquire new skills, capabilities, and competencies in order to learn the techniques adopted by companies that are thriving in the new economy. From the moment he began living in Silicon Valley, he immersed himself in that world — learning, and speaking with countless people who make the Valley a special place.
It was from that experience that his first book was born — mentioned earlier — which documents precisely the practices adopted by these new-generation companies. Through that journey, he also encountered a number of core concepts from the region. The first of these was the concept of monopoly. Much is said about how, when you build a business, you must try to outperform the competition. In the Valley, however, the tendency is to create monopolies with barriers to entry that are difficult to overcome.
The first principle is to strive to be the very best in a specific area and a narrow niche. When you create a venture, you must be the best at what you do. And there is nothing wrong with that market being small — in fact, it is a good thing. It could be your street, your neighborhood, your district, a segment of people, or a segment within a profession. In the early stages of a business, learning as much as possible about it is more important than revenue, turnover, or profitability.
When you create a business, the most important thing is learning what is working and what is not, what people like and what they do not. But in order to learn about your business quickly, you should not focus on the number of customers or rapid growth in the early stages. The priority must be trial and error, rapid learning about the business, and idea validation. Talk to your first customers and ask them what is working and what is not. Ask them what could be improved in relation to the product or service you are building. When you choose to test your product or service in a small market, you have the opportunity to speak with your customers every day and, as a result, learn a great deal about your product, service, or solution very quickly. When you try to scale a business from day one, you forfeit an enormous opportunity to learn about it. Once you have validated the concept and learned as much as possible, then — and only then — can you afford to scale your business. Otherwise, if you scale from the outset, something can go wrong on a very large scale, and that can be catastrophic, as Eric Ries describes in his book "The Lean Startup." You may end up wasting a great deal of time and money, only to discover later that the market does not want what you are offering or is not ready for it — that your solution is simply out of time (mistimed).
When Talis Gomes first started EasyTaxi, for example, he put up a website with a phone number for people to call and request a taxi. He would answer the call, contact the nearest taxi stand, and dispatch the car. In this way, he began learning a great deal about the business — and the rest of the story is well known. There is a phrase in the Valley that says "Get out of the building" — meaning: leave the office, go out into the street, and talk to people, test your solution.
Another example is DoorDash, a food delivery app that started in Silicon Valley. The founders built a website featuring the menus of nearby restaurants, answered the phone themselves, drove to the restaurants in their own cars, and personally delivered the orders. After six months of doing this, they had developed an expertise in that business that no one else possessed. The founders described it this way: after six months of doing this, after six months of coming home smelling like food, rolling up their sleeves and getting their hands dirty, no one in the world knew more about food delivery than they did — because they were out there every single day asking customers questions, understanding the pain points and the joys. Only after that did they expand throughout Silicon Valley, then all of California, then the entire East Coast, and eventually across the United States. This is yet another example that illustrates precisely how businesses in the Valley are built. Facebook became a monopoly at Harvard, then a social network for universities, and then expanded to the world — and we could cite many other examples of this (according to the film "The Social Network," this happened organically, even surprising the founders themselves). Building businesses that aim to become monopolies in small markets is, therefore, one of the key success principles of Silicon Valley companies.
Startse, the company you know today — one that hosts so many remarkable events and has experienced significant growth, with offices in multiple countries — was born out of the work of Júnior Borneli and João Evaristo, offering online courses from their child's bedroom, which happened to have the best internet signal (3G) in the house. Through those courses, in which they taught people how to build businesses, they gradually learned what worked and what did not, what satisfied people and what fell short. Looking at a photo of them working in that small space, one is compelled to think: Why not? Why couldn't I do the same? They had no perfect product and no business plan. At that stage, what mattered most to Júnior and João was learning about the product they were building. In the years that followed, that learning led them — together with the other partners who joined later — to create products that now delight thousands of people. In the beginning, all of this was built with very limited resources. Everything was done in the simplest possible way, through trial and error, and as they later discovered what delighted their customers most, they concentrated their focus on the most successful products.
As the partners honed in on that path, the company began to take shape. It became increasingly profitable, and in the past year, it grew its revenue tenfold. So you have just learned that to launch your startup, you do not need a perfect product, a large amount of capital, years of product development before going to market, or cutting-edge technology.
Marcelo Molina of Molina Advogados, a law firm with approximately 20 professionals, offered legal services in the traditional manner — until he realized that the way law is practiced is changing. Marcelo traveled to Silicon Valley, understood the dynamics of this new generation of companies, and returned to Brazil aware that it was not necessarily technology that could transform his firm, but rather a shift in mindset — his own and that of his team. With that insight, Marcelo created what he called the "Wow Effect": a standard stipulating that for every service contracted by a client of the firm, the team should always deliver something beyond what was agreed upon. In this way, he was able to delight and retain his clients even more effectively. One client, when making an installment payment for a contracted legal service, actually asked to increase the amount charged by 20 percent — such was his level of satisfaction. So there you have it: it was not technology that made Molina Advogados a differentiated firm. It was the change in mindset — the shift in thinking — that placed Marcelo's firm squarely within the new economy.
But you might say: my business is tied to a very traditional industry — this is not for me. Let me tell you one more story that you can use however you wish, as inspiration to innovate in your own business. A Brazilian entrepreneur innovated in one of the oldest industries in existence: the sleep industry. Zissou created a completely new experience for people who need to buy a mattress. What did they do? They thought about which moments in the entire purchasing process were painful or difficult for the customer. One such moment — which stands out immediately — is the product trial experience. For instance, when people go to a store to try out a mattress, they feel uncomfortable lying down in the middle of a showroom with many people watching. The traditional approach is simply not a pleasant experience. What Zissou proposed was straightforward: you purchase the mattress online, sleep on it for 100 nights, and if you are not satisfied, they refund your money and come to collect the product. Simple as that. This example serves to show that even in an extremely traditional industry, with a product that seemingly has little room for further invention, it is absolutely possible to innovate profoundly and revolutionize your market.
Consider this: everything that was considered innovative five years ago holds little relevance today. Everything changes very rapidly. If you use the same methodology that everyone else is using, you will find yourself in a red ocean (high competition). Try to create a solution for a specific pain point and follow the methodology described above.
All the concepts of business creation you have learned throughout your life — five- and ten-year business plans, years spent developing a product before launching it to market — none of that is relevant anymore. Take that outdated playbook and throw it away, because the principles for building successful businesses today are entirely different.
So: get to work, find a niche, develop a solution that is as simple and as inexpensive as possible, launch fast, learn fast, persist with the business or pivot (shift to a different solution), and only then scale. There is a phrase in the Valley that goes: if you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you launched it too late.