Bring the best people on board [Lessons from my entrepreneurial journey]
One of the things that I’m most proud of was bringing together the best and most aligned people to go through the entrepreneurial journey with me. I’ll share how they made the whole difference for Cantinho and my personal growth:
Finding the best co-founder: look for someone with a shared mission and willing to be all in
When I decided to figure out if I’d become an entrepreneur, one of the key milestones of my process was finding a co-founder. After my years at Endeavor, I was sure companies that had complementary entrepreneurs were much stronger, and I always thought I performed my best when working in a team.
I was lucky enough to find Lorena right in the beginning of my discovery process through a friend in common. The first thing that attracted us right aways was a deep connection to a social mission and a pragmatic vision to make it happen. Even though her profile wasn’t exactly the fit I was looking for, as our skills were too similar, we soon realized we were a good match. After working together for a few months, it was clear that she helped the venture move much faster and we had a lot of fun.
Apart from the connection to the cause that brought us together, we were equally workaholic, results driven and nerds (at some point we started a book club and read a book every 15 days on a challenge of the venture). Even though we seemed too similar at first, we soon found our complementarities. She was much more empathetic than I was, and was the responsible for building a culture of caring for people, always thinking of small details to make the team feel appreciated. She was also much better in operations, more analytical than I was and made things happen in an organized way through playbooks and streamlining processes. We after all divided our roles with her focusing more inside the company, while I was more outward focused (building partnerships, selling, bringing our new franchisees, interacting with investors, etc).
Beyond that, she has ben an amazing partner, trusting, reliable and eager to always improve our relationship (we even did a coaching session together when we thought our relationship wasn’t at its best). She is super confident and resilient – she moved from RJ to SP before we agreed on the equity split, and lived as a nomad in other people’s apartments for the first months of the venture. She is an overachiever and a fast learner, never afraid of asking or being judged for not knowing something.
I had a blast as her partner, and will miss so much working with her everyday. She’s definitely the person that brings the best in people and I’m so lucky to have had her bringing my best during these years.
Building a movement: find the people who buy into your madness
As this funny leadership movie shows, your dream is only real when you can convince the first people who buy into your madness.
Even before Lorena joined me, the first incredible people to buy into Cantinho’s dream was our pedagogical team. When I was still getting my feet wet in early childhood development, a mentor connected me with a stellar team of idealist and pragmatic specialists. Flavia was the first to join. She has worked as an early childhood educator, pedagogical coordinator and teacher trainer for more than 15 years. Luckily she was licensed from the school she worked when I met her. She immediately feel in love with Cantinho’s idea of empowering women in communities in Brazil, and went to South Africa with me to learn from our main benchmark organization, Smartstart. We got back from Africa officialy as Smartstart’s partners, wining their generous support to adapt their methodology in Brazil. The other wonderful specialists that joined this team to tropicalize the. methodology were Carola, a neuropsychologist expert, and Renata, an educator and PhD student in the Univeristy of Lincoln-Nebraska. They both led a training program for early childhood teachers with a neuroscience focus. This team worked for more than a year 100% pro bono aligned with the mission to turn Cantinho into a scalable venture that could impact vulnerable children all over the country. Finally, a semester later, Maria, our pedagogical coordinator, who was also a psychologist and an early childhood educator, joined this dream team, and helped us shape the pedagogical products to make it ready for scale.
Apart from our pedagogical leadership team, we also brought wonderful team members who bought into our mission and went through all kinds of sacrifices of this early stage of the venture. Pedro, who spent almost a year as a volunteer and then become an intern, helped us with everything, from stalking mothers to convert them into leads in our first unit, to leading the restoration of our following units. Our first educators (Nat, Isa) brought the methodology to life in our units and made parents fall in love with their careful work with children (which resulted in a NPS of 93). Our sales team (Ana and Wallace) and analyst (Fabi), who were up for whatever task, from calling mothers, participating in community events in weekends, painting our office wall, organizing the logistics of all materials to all units, and even dealing with the continuing invasions of our Capão unit by burglars.
Finally, the people who believed us most were our first franchisees who bought into our dream and made it theirs, opening their houses to launch the Cantinho’s franchises in the communities. And our first clients who beyond trusting us with their most beloved beings, their children, became our evangelists, trying to convince their friends to come to Cantinho’s units, and then, in a later stage, engage in Lilah’s activities.
Finding real angels, the most aligned people to back you up
When we were finally ready to scale the model beyond our first model unit, after having bootstrapped for almost a year, we were very fortunate to find a group of angels and mentors that helped us immensely in various ways. Apart from the financial support that made possible our growth to 7 units in less than a year, they made incredible contributions to the company and our development as co-founders.
With different levels of time commitment, they made us feel backed by the most aligned and most competent people to help us through the different challenges of the company. We had a few angels willing to be super hands-on, defining hypothesis to test, evaluating the results, reviewing processes and troubleshooting in a weekly or monthly basis. Others were less present day-to-day, but still helped us in critical moments, like when we were defining our equity split, or when we had deeper reflections about when to persevere, to pivot or to stop.
Of course, not to let us be too naive in venture funding, there is always an exception to the rule. One of our angels decided to leave us during the pandemic, and didn't honor the investment commitment. However, as one of our “guru” investors made us see, it was a lesson for us to bring experienced investors, who are there to help, and well aware of the risk of losing all the money of an angel round.
Overall, these were the right people. They were high net worth individuals willing to go to the periferias to see first hand our product and impact in the community, because they really cared. And they were patient enough to give us guidance in the journey, and push us with serious accountabilty, empowering us as first time founders without much interference.
Building your extended support network: advisors, mentors and volunteers
The best thing about being a social entrepreneur is that people want you to succeed for the betterment of the world. We had so many wonderful people that helped us in so many ways that, at some point, we even organized a spreadsheet not to forget them. I was never afraid to ask for help, and this ‘cara de pau’ (shameless attitude) proved to be very relevant throughout our journey.
Since the beginning, we had incredible advisors and supporters that helped us with the most strategic challenges, like fundraising (Big Bets, Daniel), our numerous marketing efforts to acquire customers (Mineiro, Lais, Bia, Cami, Amandinha, Marcia, Grecco), or reassessing our business model to pivot (Ju Perlin, Pati and Marcelo). We also had a lot of help from strategic people on the ground, like the manager of a community center (Deborah from CEU Capão Redondo) that helped us become known and gain trust in a community where we didn’t belong. And we had a ton of volunteers who helped us with everything from translation, building spreadhseets, event coordination, research, tech and law issues. To these wonderful supporters, be sure you really made the difference to the people in the communities we’ve impacted!
It takes a village..
In summary, as much as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes an entrepreneurial community to start and grow a new venture. I am eternally grateful for all the wonderful people who bought into Cantinho’s dream. The journey was so much more meaningful by having all the right people on board.
