In short
HD in HD Podcast Episode Notes
Episode Title
How Prosus CEO Builds Winning Tech Culture | Fabricio Bloisi
Episode Summary In this episode of the *HD in HD* podcast, Henrique Dubugras interviews Fabricio Bloisi, the CEO of Prosus and founder of Movile. Bloisi shares his entrepreneurial journey, detailing how he built multiple successful companies from humble beginnings to global giants. The conversation explores significant themes such as cultural management, innovation, competitive dynamics in international markets, and the future trajectory of Prosus.
Key Themes and Topics Discussed
- Early Ambitions and Founding Movile
- Background: Bloisi, originally from Bahia, Brazil, moved to São Paulo to pursue a degree in computer science.
- Initial Ventures: Founded Movile focusing on mobile content, such as SMS and ringtones, around the year 2000.
- Entrepreneurial Spirit: Inspired by tech giants like Bill Gates, Bloisi had a vision to create a significant global tech company from a young age.
- Resilience and Growth of Movile
- Challenges: Faced near-bankruptcy situations and struggled to secure funding, relying on revenue from operations.
- Cultural Backbone: The importance of confronting "brutal facts" in company culture, emphasizing transparency and accountability.
- iFood's Rise to Dominance
- Acquisition and Growth: iFood was a small startup that Bloisi acquired and transformed into a leading food delivery service in Brazil, capturing over 90% market share.
- Diversification: iFood expanded beyond food delivery into groceries, pharmacies, and fintech services, emphasizing a tech-driven approach.
- Transition to Prosus
- Prosus Overview: Prosus operates as a tech company with a focus on global innovation, managing multiple investments across various regions, including Europe, India, and Latin America.
- Strategic Vision: Aims to build a cohesive tech culture connecting its diverse portfolio of companies while adapting to local conditions.
- Competitive Dynamics and International Markets
- Comparative Landscape: Discussion on how the U.S. market underestimates competition in emerging markets, particularly in countries like China and India, where innovation is rapidly evolving.
- Importance of Local Understanding: Bloisi highlights that understanding local market dynamics, including payment systems and consumer behavior, is crucial for success.
Key Takeaways
- Innovative Culture: A strong emphasis on innovation and disciplined management can lead to significant growth in tech companies, even in challenging environments.
- Embrace Disruption: Being open to disruptive innovation allows companies to adapt quickly and seize opportunities in fast-changing markets.
- Global Learning: Exposure to diverse markets and practices enriches business leadership and helps identify unique growth strategies.
- Ambidextrous Management: Successfully balancing innovation with execution is vital for long-term competitiveness.
Final Thoughts Bloisi expresses optimism for the future trajectory of Prosus, highlighting their innovative approaches using AI and their commitment to scaling successful models across various geographies. He encourages entrepreneurs to recognize the unique competitive advantages available in international markets.
Connect with the Guests
- Fabricio Bloisi: [X.com/fabloisi](https://x.com/fabloisi)
- Henrique Dubugras: [X.com/hdubugras](https://x.com/hdubugras)
- Brex: [X.com/brexHQ](https://x.com/brexHQ)
For more insights and updates, visit [Brex](https://www.brex.com/?ref_code=bmk_audio_HDinHD).
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00If 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 in this capability of learning fast and hiring and moving faster. This week, we have Brazil's 2025 person of the year, Fabricio Bloise. He led one of Latin America's most valuable tech startups, iFood, and is now the CEO of Proces, the global tech group behind some of the biggest internet businesses outside the U.S. 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.
0:40Tell 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 the US. Process builds and scales tech platforms everywhere. Technology is growing fast. The next wave of tech leadership isn't about copying the US, but about building systems that work everywhere. I think the Americas 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.
1:11They have to be super good to do that. I'm Enrique Dubugras and welcome to HD in HD. This episode is brought to you by Brex, a 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. Fabadoucio, thank you so much for doing this, man. Hello, big pleasure to be here with you.
1:46Really appreciate it. 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. I think Veronica's dinner. Veronica connected us many years ago. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I remember because iFood was just, I guess, kind of starting out. And I remember asking her 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, oh, they're mobile company, you know, like, and I was like, oh, wow, this guy can do a lot. This is like a real serial entrepreneur.
2:20Yes. Now I'm doing like 120. So that time was just 10. It was easy. But maybe take us a little bit for the story, right? Like how did it all start out? Yeah. Actually, I'm the founder of a company called Movilie. So I'm from Bahia in Brazil. I traveled to Sao Paulo to study computer science and created this company just when I graduated called Movilie. And we were doing mobile content. So services in mobile phones. How did that start? How did you have that idea? Like, was it your first job after college? Yes. I never worked in another company that was not the Movilie and everything we did before.
2:56And 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 eight 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. Wow. Then I moved to Sao Paulo to study computer science. I created my company. But the idea was not specifically mobile content. I started iterating and having ideas. And I said, I'm going to create a very big company. And I think one year after, everything started on mobile. But by that time, it was like SMS and WAP, this kind of thing.
3:39So let me give us some context of like, what was the technology? What year is this? What was the technology going on at the time? It was around 2000. Mobile by that time, it was sending text message and receiving a ringtone or participating in a chat or a dating app or receiving news in your mobile phone, 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? 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.
4:16But like 150 characters. So really a short message. And then I started the whole business doing that. It was like Twitter before Twitter. Exactly. Actually, Twitter was 150 because SMS was 150 characters. Oh, really? I didn't even know that. Twitter started more or less the same time. A few years later. Yeah. And then Twitter started on SMS. That's why Twitter has the limitation. Oh, I didn't even know that. 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 this company, it's funny, today the company is very big.
4:53Like, I don't know, we have 40 ,000 people in total in Prozos and iFood only is like 9 ,000 people. But by that time, we were like five or ten 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 bank erupt many times. I really didn't have any money besides 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 innovate and create products. And we started to grow a lot in the mobile content.
5:32What was the first product that like blew up? I think it was around ringtones. Ringtones was something that by that time was super innovative, 2003 or 2004. And we had ringtones and chats. So how did people find out about this? How did it even work? You had a website and you make marketing. And people went on their website and they did some very innovative thing that is change the ringtone of your mobile phone and put some music there. But you needed to access a website to do that? In the beginning, yes. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that was. And then you just put your phone number and then something showed up?
6:07Something like that, yes. Okay. And also chat or news. So you subscribe to receive the daily news in your mobile. And how did the billing work? And then you are charged in your mobile phone bill. Oh, so the carrier, the mobile phone carrier. Exactly. You had to do partnerships of all these carriers? Yes. How did that go? Very difficult. Very, very difficult. Actually, the carriers used to take like 80 % of the revenue. What? Exactly. Wow. 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 partnering with the carriers because it was very difficult to grow with the mobile carriers.
6:51So after a few years, like the company had like 100 people, it was doing a few million dollars. But I said, it's not enough. I think we are a 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, Movilie, and I started to create many other business to use that knowledge that we had to create business that were much bigger.
7:30What were the core capabilities you think you built then? 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. A company that at the same time is very innovative. like 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 a very young startup. So doing this at the same time, running the company well is a core capability. The second one was technology, innovation and products.
8:11As a computer 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 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 São Paulo. So sorry, before we go there, because I know I want to go super deep there.
8:46I want to understand all this part a little bit more detail. So how did you say like we were really good at like management? How did you like learn that? You know? I learned the same way we learn the things in the company today. Testing, doing it wrong, 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 modern 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.
9:29One of my benchmarks in terms of innovation was Silicon Valley. So 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 3G and Jorge Paulo Lehmann and Ambevi. So I think we could build a mix between Ambevi and a Silicon Valley company. And I think this ambidextrous combination is very powerful. So what are the elements of each do you take? Think big, be ready to change completely every year, empower people and put 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.
10:17So 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 a Jim 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 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.
10:57We cue products. We cue. We adjust the direction. We change the people in charge of what's not working. So this discipline to say, I know where I'm going. and I'm going to adjust the company as much as necessary until I succeed. Combined it through disruptive innovation, that's what makes us start to really grow. And do you think there's something about the kind of like AB InBev model that like doesn't work into tech companies and something that tech companies do you think, if it were there, probably wouldn't work? I think balancing the ambidextrous company is very challenging. Most of the 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.
11:48Most 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 is 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, no, that's manager, too much financial accounting. I don't like it. And the more results driven people, they say, 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.
12:37And 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 we'll 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 each other, they don't think the other, they really cannot act as the other type.
13:26When they really work together, we can create success for 20, 30 years. That's what I'm trying to do. Makes sense. Makes sense. I really like this ambidextrous kind of analogy. I think it encapsulates well the tension inside a lot of these companies. Are there any kind of processes, rituals, or something that you guys do internally that probably can make this more tangible? A 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.
14:11We 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 we really create an environment where everyone is working together with the same goals and the same goals. After we do that, lots of discipline. So every month, check what is working, what's not working, face the brutal facts. So I think this combination of 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 discipline, the execution creates the rituals to make the company work.
15:09That's awesome. So it's like you have this like, you know, 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 something like a little bit more subjective? What like, give me some, like what does that look in practice, 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 companies 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.
15:45Our 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 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.
16:31We 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. So I think one of the amazing thing of this kind of ritual is I, 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 it create a strong sense of group and that's what makes the company run faster so this is awesome um so going back to the story so okay you had these like you're generating cash flows from this core like SMS business or something like that.
17:15How big was that business, you know, when you kind of started doing these acquisitions? 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. Yes. But it was very profitable, I imagine. Yes. $3 million per year, probably four or five, something like that. So how did you have like the money to get and go invest in all these other businesses or buy iFood? Like how did you finance it? We had a few investors, Inova, Veronica, Jorge Paulo. We have also Prozos, now I'm CEO of Prozos. He was my first investor many years ago.
17:51But also, we were being profitable. And we never spent 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 JetSkis today. It means have like a three, four people team to test new things until we find something that works. 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 of ticket master. And we started testing selling food on the mobile phone.
18:33and also we started to think about what else we can sell of the real world in smartphones. It's fun that today, this is the, everyone buys things on smartphones. But in 2008 or 2009 or 2010, this was a very different idea. People are not buying anything on smartphones. So we said, the future is buy everything through the smartphones. So we created two or three or four business. And also with one, two 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 cheap by the time. So how many businesses do you think you guys had at this point in time?
19:17About 10 businesses. 10 businesses. And then if we look back now, iFood obviously became like massively dominant, right? Like, you know, how big is iFood today? Selling$20 billion per year only in Brazil. Yeah,$20 billion a year only in Brazil food. So in reais, it's like, it would be like doing probably like as a percent of GDP, it would be probably be bigger than DoorDash or something, right? Yeah. Percent of GDP is closer to 1%, since like 0.7, 0.8 % of the Brazilian GDP. Yeah. So like, if you were to think about that in the US, you know, that would be a, like, it would be like a 300 billion GMV company here or something like that, right?
19:53Like it's huge. And then do any of the other ones like kind of work or they just didn't work in comparison to iFood. You know what I mean? Actually, many of them didn't work. The problem is that iFood. So big. Exactly. It's not a problem, actually. I'm very happy. iFood is doing so well that many times we don't talk about the others. But an interesting thing. Let me tell you a very nice story about this tension on founder. I am a founder. I manage companies. Now I am also... I see myself as a founder in a very big company today. It probably has 40 ,000 people. but all the way I manage the company is the same as I did before.
20:32But 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 Movilie very well and I have 10 business but iFood was growing faster than everything. It was not the bigger business. And then it was not my idea actually. It was Proz's idea. Now I'm Proz's but I was not by the time. They told me, look, Movilie 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.
21:11Why don't you become iFood CEO? And it was not obvious to me. And I said, but things are good here. I'm happy managing all the 10 companies. And then I said, but I'm going to listen to you. Then I became CEO of Movi 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. 9-0? Yeah. Wow. 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 food company and more a tech company. and we started to innovate a lot in iFood.
21:57iFood is not a food delivery company. We are a food delivery. We are a grocery business, pharmacy, pet shop, and then also fintech. We have a credit card to buy foods. We have lending for restaurants. We have more five or seven business. iFood is like 10 business. And we started to innovate a lot and iFood grow from... When I invest in iFood, we were doing 20 ,000 orders per month, 25. Did you buy 100 % up front or no? No, I bought 30%, then 50%, then 70%, then 100%. Oh, wow. Yeah. This month, iFood did 160 million orders. Wow. So we grew from 25 ,000 to 160 million. And do you think that iFood did anything different and better compared to the other companies in the Movilet portfolio?
22:45Or was it because you were more involved in the end? I remember you guys are in some pretty big categories. 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? I think the potential of the food delivery business executing very well was bigger than the others. Got it. 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 with iFood is like so big. Yeah. That's a few billion. What messaging business is this? It was called Wave.
23:18Wait, what did it do? messaging like in the beginning short message then WhatsApp so it connect companies to their CRM through messaging ah okay so you sold that to whom? forgot not the name of the company yeah but we sold then first we we merged and then later we sold because the company IPO became public but it was a successful story super success yeah 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 lots of money there. We had a payment company called Zoop and another company called Simpla.
23:57That is the number one company for events in Brazil. So if you buy - It became the number one event? Yeah. Wow. Exactly. So this company, both of them today, we merged Mobily with iFood and they are part of iFood now. We did it like last year, but both of them are very successful in big companies and good companies. So it's just the comparison to iFood. That is the hard part. These two companies are super good. And we have others. We have PlayKids with 50 million users. In the end, we merged them with another company doing the same thing in the US. I forgot the name too. You see the problem of the size of iFood.
24:30But we had like five or six. Of the 10 companies, five or six did well. But one became a multi-billion dollar business. So you think it wasn't like an execution difference. It was just the kind of like core business quality and potential. I think the execution of most of them were very good. Makes sense. 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 increased the chance of having like a real big winner.
25:13So I really believe that the quality of the execution makes the whole difference. But it's not enough. I think that's the conclusion. And I guess like, you know, how do you trade off like the traditional management idea that you need to have focus with this idea of like diversifying your bets? Amazing question. And I think this is part of the management model and the culture that we have. How do we talk about that? We have to, when we are scaling a business to prioritize five, seven, ten things, and And the whole company should know what are the priorities. Having discipline and showing clearly the priority and showing to everyone makes everyone work together.
25:50Many times, one or two of these 10 goals is to innovate or experiment. Inside this goal, the mindset is different. Let's do 100 hypothesis tests. But they are usually one, two, three, four weeks of work. You should, they should be ship, fast, get numbers, conclude 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 hypotheses. We test, we execute, and we learn.
26:36So 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, reduce focus much more, put a different kind of people in scaling, talk about marketing and finance. But at the same time that we are scaling, we always have some goals that are keep innovating. And inside these goals, test 100 things, very cheap, very fast, and learn fast. But then how do you deal with the dependencies of the, I guess, the test?
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27:23Because I imagine you guys are going to build some new things to test on iFood. Some other team needs to coordinate for dependencies because some other systems involved and blah, blah. and that person, like how do you like deal with like all that? That's why the magic I said on balancing 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 product.
28:02Sometimes to have the kind of flexibility, if you need to do something with the main product, 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 to be fast and innovate, kill the dependence and let people be entrepreneurs and tests and make and fail until they find what works. Oh, very interesting. Okay, so you think about the system already so these bets can be completely independent. They are like a startup.
28:41You 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. Yeah, very, very interesting. But they cannot touch the billing system. They cannot touch the marketing systems because this one, you need the kind of discipline in the machine. Exactly. Very, very interesting. This episode of HD in 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 founders and startups face every day.
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29:51If you look at different industries in 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 like such a, you know, big market share of the ecosystem? There is competition there. There is two Chinese companies that just entered the market now. You said you have 90 %? Yeah, yeah. They just entered like the last month. So there is a lot of competition, much more competition right now.
30:24But there was Rappi also, right? Like last couple years. That's what I'm going to say. Actually, people think, ah, food is very big for some structural reason. Actually, no. We were, when I invested in iFood, it was very small. And we have, it was like the number, the third or the fourth company in the country. So it's not the number one. And food delivery? Yeah. What was it? What else was there? There was other three or four. What are the names? Restaurante Webby was one name. Oh, yeah. I kind of remember that. Another one was, I forgot. But there was many others. And then we executed well. We have the entrepreneurial behavior that makes companies grow faster.
31:04Patient 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 create a lot of tension for us. Uber is a global leader. What 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.
31:45And when we said less players, then actually Happy entered and Happy raised$2 billion. I don't know if you remember that. I remember SoftBank, yeah. Yeah. SoftBank said$2 billion too happy to fight iFood. How did you fight that off? Technology, passionate people. I think many people raise 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 our owner not only me be a nova but the mindset of the owner the mindset of 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 outperformance 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.
32:46And actually, as you know, now I'm running Prozos. We just acquired Just Eat's Takeaway, the biggest one in Europe. We also have one of the biggest in India, 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 have, they think we are not good enough. Brazilians many times think that. But the technology we developed in iPhone today is being used in many countries in the world. And I'm very excited about that. That's awesome. Yeah, no, it's an amazing case. I had, you know, Will from Deliveroo in the podcast before.
33:26And, you know, 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 iFood to Prozis? Like what happened? I remember just seeing the news, I'm like, what? 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 Moveli to iFood.
34:05Remember, I told you that Mobili had a better culture and execution and 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 well. And I was very concentrated in making iFood a$100 billion company. That was our goal. It is our goal for iFood, actually. And then one day, Prozos called me, the board of Prozos, and said, what about come here and run everything? We have like 100 companies. Now we're getting closer to$15 billion in revenue. So it's a bigger company. All around the world, we are a big shareholder of Tencent.
34:44That 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 the$5 million here or 10 there and wait five years. But my dream is to create the best tech company outside the US, 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 Prozos, I go tomorrow. And the guys told me, that's no, we are calling you because we want Prozos to be different a little. So I confirmed that. Are you sure? They said yes. Then I took an airplane and moved here a few weeks later.
35:23And it was a great experience. I think Prozos, 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. Very small group. Yeah. So I'm learning a lot. That's why I'm here, because I can learn and do better. And how would you describe what Prozis is, I guess? so this is not a picture it's a movie let me explain why and it connects to your last question when I arrived the process was much more managing this portfolio with many investments around the world little connection and worse than that little synergies between all the companies that's what process was today process is a tech company focused in just three regions that is India, Europe and Latin America and as a tech company, we run culture, management model and innovation globally.
36:36So 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 works 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 the US. What I changed the process to be is like a tech company that has a very big muscle in terms of development and innovation.
37:16So 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 the process from more of a manager of investments to a tech group that is really betting to operate the best e-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. They focused on innovation, speed, experimentation, risk. And I'm very confident we are going to do good things. How do you choose what to centralize and what to leave it at the companies themselves?
37:58Because 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 kill 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 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 is going to be the best in the world what you're doing.
38:37Our technology is going to be the best in the world in how to treat customers or partners or the interface that we are using with the customers or how we use AI. When you have a big vision, you start 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're not making a process and asking everyone to replicate.
39:19But 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. So 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.
40:07And sometimes people ask me, but I'm a 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 greed 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 want to do that.
40:45Please 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 a partner of someone that says, I don't care about how to use the best AI in the world. So either way, it works. Would you consider yourself a conglomerate? Is that a fair word to describe you guys or no? I see myself as a tech company that has many tech companies that own many tech companies and we work together. I guess my question was because I was trying to... I'm curious if you studied other companies that have similar characteristics that potentially grew through acquiring or investing in different companies around the world.
41:32Have you studied them? What did you learn? What are the other companies that you kind of... I studied 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 many of them, first, we are in the U.S. We are today in New York. The model that I'm trying to run works 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 we are doing. Because here we have so much capital. So much, it's so easy to raise more money and you have many people making bets and taking risks.
42:12Maybe that's why we have so many amazing companies here in the 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 in this capability of learning fast and hiring and moving faster. So being a company that has this ability to test a lot and when something goes well, you double down, you 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 Tencent or Alibaba or ByteDance that they have many, many business connected to them.
42:55Many 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 companies where you can have some synergies. Yeah, no, it's super interesting. I always describe to people that, like, why don't super apps exist in the US compared to the rest of the world? And like, capital is really a moat outside of the US, right? Like, you know, here, like, you see a$100 million seed round every other week, you know, like, you know,$100 million in these other countries is...
43:31I have an idea. So it's$100 million. Yeah, exactly. That's not how life works. Yeah. Everywhere. Yeah, anywhere but California, basically. 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. It's not, yeah. So I can do$100 million bet anywhere in the world. And this is a competitive advantage. And when I do that together with an ecosystem, the last two weeks we had 60 people in Amsterdam we have like AI house Amsterdam where we have every week five events per week where we just do people doing AI people in the valley can think wow that's normal in the valley who does that in Amsterdam it's us we created that and the last two weeks we did internal events 60 people really creating a fine tuning model so I took the QN model and we moved 60 people from around the world to create models to each one of our companies using the best technology we have to personalize on e-commerce.
44:40We 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 and all the tools that we have. So they have access of the best tools and the best way that we can do that in a lab in California. And we just did it with 60 people from now 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. And what are other kind of nuances that you think that the average American entrepreneur investor underappreciates about how it is to do business in the rest of the world?
45:26Yeah, I think the Americans have amazing results. So I'm a big fan of the results of the Americans. But many of them doesn't understand the dynamics around, of lack of capital, of lack of ecosystem, of a very positive thing on the Americans. They are much more risk-taking and want to do things and let's do it fast and get to a result. Now I'm a Dutch-Brazilian. I am a little 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.
46:11So it's very different how the Europeans see that and the Americans. I think the Americas sometimes underestimate what is happening outside. So I'll give you a few examples. What the Chinese are doing in 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 on AI. A second example, in India, Americans sometimes say, no, we are just going to make our companies work there.
46:56But the dynamics are 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 10. They are amazing because they sell, I don't remember their number now, I don't remember what is public, but like many hundreds of millions of items per month and 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.
47:37So the quality of innovation inside Misho to operate with those costs is amazing. We have another company in India called Rapido. They double the size of Uber there. And most of their rides are on Tuk-Tuk. I don't remember how to say that in English. I think it's Tuk-Tuk. Yeah. And they charge like, the number is crazy. I'm from Brazil and to me the number is crazy. Like one cent. It's less than one cent of dollar for sure per ride. And they are the double of the size of Uber and like millions. less than one cent of their part so what they charge is unbelievable ship wow it's a number that I think how we can operate on that so the mindset of operating in a country with 1.5 billion people in the different economics many Americans doesn't understand this how efficient you have to be exactly and I'm saying the Chinese are not copying they are innovating and the Indian they are not like just like it's 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.
48:45So I think appreciating all of that is... 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 US. But in the US, it's like one of the favorite kind of like, or was at least till this year, but... Yeah, it's true. And last six months, I don't know what this... But let's say for the last two decades, it's been kind of like a favorite. My intuition is always that the better ideas in Emergent Marge is really big ideas that are kind of like, they're not niche, they're kind of like core infrastructure for the country.
49:24But I'm curious, what are your views? And when you're looking at an idea outside of the US, what are the things that kind of make a good idea? 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 that 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 software as a service companies, they start operating. They take many years to become profitable.
50:05They require you to invest, to grow internationally and lose a lot of money during this process. I think the U.S. 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 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 enables US to have a successful business on this area. I think it's also because the US companies pay more for it, I guess, because like labor is more expensive.
50:50I 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 think? I think US, you do software because it's more expensive and you have the ability to scale it in a format that'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. Like no one's going to give you$300 million in India to do that.
51:25So I think business that has like a more local connection or requires to interact with the local institutions, it's easier to create local champions when you require logistics or you require payments I know fintech is a business that's a big one in emerging markets exactly big one and you see you have the Brex case and the Stone case now you have the NewBank case and even Revolut also in Europe so you see it's an area that Europe and Latin America and in China also in India also China has the the WeShedPay and the payments from Alibaba. In India, also, you have the UPI, where you can do payments faster.
52:09So 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 iFood. Also, you're required to have the local partnerships that you need to execute quite well locally. And you have many players around the world doing that as well. Yeah, makes a ton of sense. I guess, like, what's been something that after you joined Prozas 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?
52:51I'm learning a lot. I think the reason I'm there, I'm here in Prozas, 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 are innovating in ways that we are not thinking about that in Europe, nor in the US, nor in Latin America. So I really learned a lot about India and China. to me Europe is an amazing opportunity so I'm very happy to have the opportunity to learn and also to influence Europe because you know Europe market is more or less the size of US a little less smaller now it was 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$1 trillion in the top 10 companies in Europe So understand what is the work ethics there and what people value in the culture and understand how to interact with them.
53:59Not only understand, but then try to influence because I think there is a big, big opportunity there in Europe. I guess Europe is a good one. Like what do you think is preventing more kind of like, you know, maybe trillion dollar European company? Well, yeah, I guess Nova Nordisk was almost there, but, you know, I think it's not. Which one? Novo Nordisk, the GLP-1. I don't remember their number now, but they're doing well. What's preventing? I think that is an amazing report. Many people don't know here in the US from Mario Draghi. We talked, have you heard about it? It's very, very famous. It's 20 years old now.
54:35We call it Draghi Report, but that is like another name, like competitiveness in Europe. But you could call Draghi Report. He was a former central banker in Europe. And he writes like 100 pages explaining what makes Europe moving slow. And 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.
55:18It's crazy. The way you have to talk about sustainability and AI and reporting on everything in e-commerce, I 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, let's check all the regulations. Let's see what is coming. I say, guys, stop regulation. You're talking about creating the future through AI. First, we create the future. Then we understand what is the regulation, how we make it work. Because if you start saying, let's read the red tape before you develop the software, you're not going to create something amazing.
56:02So I think that is 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. Yeah. And then you have on top of that some bureaucrats that say you have to do everything considering the language and culture and the requirements of each one of the 27 countries. So the reality is there's a big thing called the 28th regime or EU Inc.
56:41that says we have to make sure that for a 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 like investing everywhere. And then there's 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 companies, nor big banks, nor big software companies.
57:23I just, 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. So it's like, how do we create a local loser, you know, where like the Chinese and American ones have so much more money and comes and like wins the markets. And then you have five local losers that lose. The good news is that the politicians clearly perceive that we need to change that.
58:03Hope it will be in Silicon Valley speed. You didn't mention labor a lot too. That's at least the one I hear the most here in the US than like labor law in Europe makes it very complicated to hire and fire in. I will get to the work ethics was my last point. Labor law and labor mindset. 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 year or... Debating if they're going to be fired. Yes. Then you have to pay for a lot to the people leave. And then people can think, yeah, because you have to preserve the jobs.
58:42It's a big mistake because you preserve the job and the company fail. And then the company fight everyone or the company doesn't grow. So how many jobs we created here in the 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 word work ethics in terms of really, I think winning. What we are doing there in Proz is, let me tell you the good thing there, the level of smart people with a very good education, talking about disruptive industries and technology is very high.
59:21So you have the education to create the future leaders, but you don't have the capital or the work ethics or the competition rules to do that. But in work ethics also, sometimes we need to think as winners. If you are in California, you leave it there, right? I live here. But used to be there before. There is this thing here in New York too. Like, I'm 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 do you have with you? No, it's just me and my partner. And we are the best in the world. And this is normal, right?
59:59Very normal. This is the default. In Europe, sometimes you have a very different work ethic. 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 Sundays until I create something that transforms the world. Many times, even companies in Europe doesn't think like that. and I think Prozos is contributing aggressively saying we are here to create the leader in the world and many people is living Prozos and it's part of life if it doesn't fit this culture but because we are reinforcing so aggressively that's our culture many people are also joining Prozos 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.
1:01:09Hope Proz is going to contribute a little if that's true. For, you know, any potential kind of, you know, we have a lot of people in finance listening and people who like to buy and trade stocks. I know Proz is a publicly listed company. If you had to, you know, explain the strategy that you have for the next five years of like why someone should be like a Proz shareholder, like what would that be? Super easy process today, as many conglomerates, trades on our discounts on our not-asset values. And maybe because a few people didn't see our vision. I think we didn't execute that well the last few years.
1:01:54But 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 is 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. So the two things that I'm more excited right now, what we call large commerce model.
1:02:28That 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 changes 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 chat GPT moment where we can understand about our customers, their demands, about how a food delivery customer, what are their 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.
1:03:09Also in the agents world, we have today 20 ,000 agents and we are running agents, for example, to talk to restaurants, partners, 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 newborn 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 this year and next year. So I think the process has been through a big change, and my suggestion is it's still on discount, so better to do it now than to regret later.
1:03:57It's awesome. Fabio, 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. Pleasure to be here. Hope to come back to tell. We need a part two, honestly. Exactly. That's the part two when we are getting back to$200,$300 billion. Perfect. Let's do it. Amazing. Thank you. Thanks to our friends at Atomic Growth for helping with production and distribution.
From the publisher
When most founders chase a single idea, Fabricio Bloisi built 120.
The Brazilian entrepreneur is the CEO of Prosus, the founder of Movile, and the Chairman of iFood, and has helped shape companies that now reach billions across continents.
And the spark for all of it began with a teenage ambition “to create a very big global tech company.”
We also get into:
• Movile’s rise from near bankrupt moments to a global tech giant
• how confronting brutal facts became the cultural backbone of his companies
• what the U.S. still underestimates about competition abroad
• where Prosus is heading next with its large commerce model
ABOUT US:
We’re proudly sponsored by Brex—a brand I co-founded, now supporting over 30,000 businesses like Anthropic, DoorDash, and Scale AI, helping them make every dollar count.
I’m grateful for their continued support as I bring you all conversations with some of the most exceptional founders of our generation. For more information, please go to: https://www.brex.com/?ref_code=bmk_audio_HDinHD
Connect with us here:
1. Fabricio Bloisi- https://x.com/fabloisi
2. Brex- https://x.com/brexHQ
3. Henrique Dubugras- https://x.com/hdubugras
00:00 Trailer
01:42 The Early Days
08:34 Scaling and Innovating: The Food Journey
11:28 Balancing Innovation and Execution
30:07 The Rise of iFood: Dominating the Market
33:37 Transition to Prosus: A New Chapter
35:58 Prosus' Global Strategy and Vision
45:16 Challenges and Opportunities in Emerging Markets




