Hello my friends,
It has been a while and I hope you are all safe, well, and having the time of your lives.
Today's a big one. Today is Day 1.
“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”
- Steve Jobs
April 23, 2024.
Today I'm publicly launching WE Heart Impact [👉🏾 www.weheartimpact.com]. It's a happy day in my life and I'm excited about what's to come.
< I built WE's website by myself. Once a bootstrapper, always a bootstrapper.>
WE Heart was born because I believe that there are people out there on this planet who aren't happy with a lot of things and want to change them and make them better, and WE's mission is to be part of that movement.
WE wants to partner with amazing people to build the future; one mission at a time.
So what’s WE Heart Impact?
WE Heart Impact are entrepreneurs doing the best work of their lives.
And WE does that because WE builds start ups for mid-sized companies worldwide.
WE's elevator pitch: WE Heart Impact is a startup studio building startups for mid-sized companies to address an opportunity they have identified. WE builds a small team of amazing people to create a start-up that, if successful, will enable them to grow exponentially.
Each WE team has an Entrepreneur Leader, a Number 2 and Students and has access to a special group of specialists; exceptional people with global experience and network. [for more information on how WE structures our teams, click here.]
Each Mission - that's the term we use for our projects - will last 110 days during Phase 1. The first 10 days are exploratory, where WE tries to better understand what's on the table and at the end of these 10 days we will pitch a solution to our client, if the mission gets the green light WE's team will work on it for 100 days with the sole purpose of doing the best work of their lives. [for more information on how WE operates, click here.]
I have been working on this idea for the last 10 years, but it is only recently that I sat down to write down my ideas, hypothesis and give it a go. I think now is the time to connect the dots.
Connecting the dots and a little bit of context…
In 2010, I started DCAN+M, a service company that makes digital products for clients - in the beginning, I offered my friends a better looking website and that was it.
In 2012, DCAN+M had it's big break and started to create and develop mobile apps for big companies like Volkswagen and Nivea. At DCAN+M we were a lean team, but super motivated to build great things. We believed we could do anything we wanted and that’s pretty much what we did.
We had two things going for us at the time:
1. We prototyped everything and we showed the prototype to our clients; this played a big role in our success because it gave the client a real look and feel of what we could do for them;
2. We were super lean and we outsourced most of the coding with amazingly talented people, but the game changer was how we paid them; we paid them based on sprints. We paid freelancers every week based on how successfully they completed their sprints.
We worked with some very cool companies and I estimate that we created and launched 30+ mobile apps with 20M+ downloads worldwide. We were never more than eight people in the office.
After a few successful apps and market recognition, we realized that we could create far more ideas than we could sell in the market and we started investing in our ideas; in 2013 we launched our Venture Builder. The Venture Builder released other successful projects such as TilTheRace - a running app; PrintPic - a JV with a much larger company; and VaiMoto; which later became one of the largest last-mile logistics platforms in Brazil, successfully raising funds from external investors and later sold to a much larger player.
VaiMoto was a beast in its own right.
Yes, we raised a bit of cash, but the truth is that we bootstrapped its growth, taking the business to 5+ Brazilian states and thousands of deliveries daily. It was insane. I sold my breakfast to buy my dinner.
VaiMoto was my real life PhD. It took everything out of me. It gave me so much joy to test my limits and see how the underdogs can win the battle when they believe they can do it together.
It was during this time that the startup scene in Brazil was gaining momentum and the ecosystem was super vibrant with accelerators, VCs and entrepreneurs. Players like EasyTaxi, Loggi, iFood, Rocket Internet and many more were creating a new economy. I rushed to get involved in as many initiatives as possible and loved my mentorship roles at Startup Farm and Gema Ventures.
It was around 2013-14 that I learned about a company that later became my dream company, PreHype - a real venture builder. Once I understood their model - collaborating with large companies and creating startups for them -, I knew that's what I wanted to build in this lifetime, but I wasn't there yet. (PreHype will come back in this story in a very nice way!)
The Entrepreneur in Residence [EIR] journey.
After closing the chapter with VaiMoto, I moved out of Brazil and took a short break to fully recover from such an intense experience.
In 2019, I received a call from Asics Corporation to be part of their innovation project, Ten Kan Ten, and join the organization as an Entrepreneur in Residence.
During my time at Asics, I had the opportunity to work with two amazing founder-operators; Julien Callede, co-founder of Made.com, and Sébastien Lefebvre, founder of Mesagraph, which was acquired by Twitter, and former Head of Growth in Europe at Twitter.
Together, we worked with five early-stage startups in the program, each of us pitching what we thought was the best accelerator methodology for the program. It was a great experience to work with a large organization like Ascis and support early-stage founders on their journey to building a great business.
After my time at Asics, I was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Google Campus Madrid and at London Sports in the UK.
The combined experience, plus everything I learned as a founder and operator, fueled my own methodology of how to work with founders in the early days and provide them with the right tools to validate and gain traction for their solutions.
I kept connecting the dots.
I started working 1:1 with entrepreneurs and helping them figure things out.
I had the best job in the world. Each deal presented many challenges and allowed me to learn, explore, and develop as a person and a leader.
For four years I collaborated with hundreds of entrepreneurs from all over the world and had the privilege of working closely with amazing people.
I would like to thank Mateus and Kiko from Rei do Pitaco, Matt and Tim from HomeThings, Max and Lestat from Healf, Pedro from Frezze, Ivan from Esporte Educa, Felipe and Marcelo from Networkme, Humberto and Matheus from Kosmos, Hugo and Andre from iFut, Clara and Ste from AmoKarite, Julien Callede from eClo, Vinicius from eMentor, Mario from Readocracy, Braulio Medina from SigmaGeek, Daniel from Silva, Gustavo from Replayers, Milton from Bounties4, Cristina from UpMat, Bruno from Bora Experiencia for believing in my work and giving me the opportunity to dream with you. [if you want to know more, here is part of the story]
I would also like to thank the hundreds of founders and game changers from whom I have had the opportunity to learn and contribute to their entrepreneurial journey.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” -
Theodore Roosevelt
Testing from a different perspective…
Back in 2019, I started testing myself as an investor. I have great respect for early stage investors and how much they contribute to the whole ecosystem, but their role was too far away from where I started my journey as a bootstrapper operator.
I knew nothing about it, even though I had raised money from them.
I did my Investing 101 crash course by watching Marcelo Franco of Verve Capital [I’m now a proud and happy LP in their Fund II] and how he partners with founders and helps them succeed. As with everything I have done, I learned as I went along, always asking people smarter than me to teach me. I'm a product of the mentor-mentee relationship. I have so many great people to thank for sharing their wisdom and knowledge with me, and it inspires me to give it back to the next generations.
I ended up investing in more than 10 deals from different parts of the world and most importantly, I gained a whole new perspective on the world of early stage startups. Amazing companies in my portfolio: Moises (now Music.ai); Greenfly, JáVendeu, Rodeo, Base de Clientes, and more.
I believe I have a good eye and a good heart to spot a great leader.
I have been fortunate to meet amazing people along the way, and to experience the ecosystem from different angles.
Now.
WE Heart Impact is a collection of all the things I have ever done.
I believe that mid-sized companies are in a unique position to innovate and grow. They have revenue, they have a core product that is a winner, and they have 100% of their intellectual power dedicated to growing that core product. The number #1 rule for them is to stay focused.
At the same time, the leadership team has its eyes and ears open to new challenges and opportunities, but they don't want to lose focus and they don't know how to test and validate what they think can work.
They need outside help. They need amazing people to implement and experiment for them, and that's what WE Heart Impact will do for them.
WE will experiment, test, learn and evolve and when successful WE will build a new exponential growth stream for our clients.
The way WE will run it for clients is where my heart and soul get the inspiration to chase the impossible.
WE will have an entrepreneurial leader for every mission WE is assigned and each leader will have their own unique team to work with and do the best work of their lives.
I have seen entrepreneurs struggle with their own businesses, sometimes for far too long. They spend two, three or even years on an idea that doesn't work and the risk is that they don't learn, they don't experiment, they don't win and they don't move on.
It's my mission to give entrepreneurs amazing challenges so they can test themselves, learn and make a difference.
Over the last 12 months I have tested and experimented with our thesis and frameworks in three completed missions and the results inspire me to #alwaysbeshipping.
1. After 9 months of work, the company completed an M&A transaction with early investors making 8x on their investment;
2. WE scaled their revenue 7x in 4 months of collaboration;
3. WE achieved 60% revenue growth and outperformed every key KPI.
👆 I said at the beginning of this article that I was going to bring PreHype back into the story, right?
Well, around 2016-17, Thadeu Diz, a brother and co-founder of ZeeDog, introduced me to them and I got the opportunity to chat with them and better understand how they operate. After a few interactions in the previous years, I reached out to Philip, one of the co-founders, just before launching WE Heart to the world and it was a great moment of validation for my ideas, inspirations and how I see the future of venture building. PreHype is my role model.
Philip was a true gentleman and held nothing back about how they operate, how they see the market and the key to success as a venture builder. Thanks mate.
It starts right here👇🏾
If you are a business leader and would like to know more about our story, please send me an email and I will be happy to chat with you - daniel@weheartimpact.com
If you are an entrepreneur and want to join us and explore the challenges our clients trust us with to make the impossible possible, apply here.
If you are a student and want to learn and be part of something cool, WE want to be part of your journey; apply here.
My vision for the future is that work will be challenge-driven and people will follow their curiosity and passion and choose the challenges they want to test themselves on and I believe WE Heart Impact can be the perfect space for that.
If I get this right, alongside amazing people, WE will reinvent how we do the best work of our lives and that's a mission worth pursuing. I'm happy with that.
If you have made it this far, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. It means the world to me.
Always Day 1.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit" - Greek proverb.
Hecho con amor en Madrid.