Translator: Claudia Sander Reviewer: Themis Scalco
Entrepreneurship is grandiloquent.
It's almost always stories like,
"How I left my well paid job and founded my millionaire company."
Obviously those stories are told by those who succeeded,
looking in the rearview mirror.
Losers or those who simply didn't get there don't tell their stories.
Or has anyone ever heard about those who broke their company
and are now working in a job they don't like?
Very few people would like to hear this story.
I was reading the book "The Shop of Everything,"
about Amazon's biography,
it has more than 300 pages,
and at page 20, Jeff Bezos is already a multimillionaire
and Amazon is already one of the most successful companies in the US.
And this is unfair, because it is not what usually happens,
we know that this is not what happens for 95-99 percent of the entrepreneurs
who try to build something.
But what is the everyday reality
and the entrepreneurship seen behind the scenes?
I know how it was for me and I'll tell you a little bit of my story.
Everything didn't start in a garage, as the legend says;
it started in a library.
And it began with an entrepreneurial impulse
that I compare pretty much with an artist's impulse
to create, to compose, to paint.
At the time I was studying Business
and entrepreneurship was the expression I found to myself.
Expression of what?
Expression of being able to see that my work influences people's lives;
to create a company with a purpose a little bigger than just profit -
not that this doesn't have its merit;
I wanted to do what I really love,
to put something I like into my daily work.
And what I love are books.
Not only books, of course, but they are one of the things I love.
Gustavo, my partner, always wanted to have a bookstore,
but he never found a way,
so we met, we discussed
and we came up with the idea of a subscription book club.
It's a model that already existed, some of you must know, of beer, of wine,
but there was nothing for books.
But book clubs have always existed,
people come together to discuss, so we thought the model could fit,
"There's a chance for me to do something I like,
to work with books and culture, in a business opportunity."
So, we started with this idea
and a year after the first conceptions
of how a subscription book club would look like,
we founded, in August 2014, TAG Literary Experiences,
which is a subscription book club.
And that's how I started my pathway in entrepreneurship
and the learnings I have to share.
The first one is that it's very difficult.
We all know this, but, anyway,
every learning is a truism that one day we perceive its truth;
and I realized how difficult it is.
The Brazilian author Rubem Alves
has an analogy in which he compares the jequitiba and the eucalyptus.
He says that the jequitiba is a splendorous tree,
with personality, that takes centuries to grow,
and the eucalyptus, on the other hand, is planted under a commercial perspective,
one next to the other, as if they're saluting someone.
And this is a metaphor that can be understood for innovation.
I always wanted my company to be a jequitiba, to be different,
to spread my values and beliefs to the world;
but working with literature -
the literary market is extremely conservative,
and, after all, we are in Brazil,
it's very difficult to sell something here other than "Fifty Shades of Gray."
(Laughter)
But we wanted to try
and to know that if one day Brazil becomes a country of readers,
maybe we have taken part in this process,
maybe not, well, if it doesn't work, we would do something else.
But the hidden part of this metaphor
is that until the jequitiba becomes this beautiful and splendorous tree,
it's only a strange and intrusive sapling in a universe of eucalyptus.
And how difficult it is to be an intruder,
trying to bring your different idea to the market.
So much so that this is the second comment in the history of our Facebook page.
We had just launched the company, we were euphoric, and someone commented,
"Why should I pay 69.90 Brazilian reais to receive a 1986 book
that by the way I already have,
and which costs 55 Brazilian reais, and a used one costs only 25?
You promised new authors, new readings and perspectives
and offered a champion of sales from almost 30 years?
What's the point?
Just making money from the unwary
or really spreading the taste for reading?"
Pow! A punch in the stomach.
And it had six likes.
(Laughter)
So he wasn't alone.
(Laughter)
Little did we know that this would be the keynote
of the next five, six, or seven months of business,
and that this would be the preponderant comment
on our first attempts to bring the idea to market.
We started with 65 subscribers.
We are three partners; if we add the family and friends of each one,
that's more or less what we get.
(Laughter)
So few people were customers we didn't know.
And six months later,
we had one hundred subscribers, almost no growth.
Obviously, I didn't make any money.
In fact, I earned my first wage, a trainee wage, by the way,
almost three years after we founded the company.
We wouldn't make money, and worst, we knew that if we continued this way -
six months had passed, with one hundred subscribers -
if we continued this way, we'd have seven, eight months of life, and it would end
because we weren't going anywhere.
And the money I'd saved throughout college to open my business would end.
And then I'd wonder where love is.
After all, love was one of the great reasons for me to try to do business.
And I realized something:
when we think about the future, we don't pay attention to small things,
we don't think about the ordinary details that make up our everyday.
We think about the great blows,
the moments when we feel proud of what we've built,
and that's what we want, what we think about, so we take action.
But we forget that a 10, 11, 12 hours workday
is made up of small things, of ordinary things,
like answering to a customer like that one on Facebook,
trying to promote our brand, talking to cultural institutions,
setting up a box, issuing invoices, buying books,
a universe of things that in the end may lead to nowhere.
And we would do all those things with great affection.
I remember the first shipment,
we wanted to send a beautiful box,
with our logo, with literature drawings,
but we couldn't buy 1,000 or 2,000 boxes, which was the minimum order,
we had no money or need for that.
So we made a stamp with the company logo.
And we stamped each box 20 or 30 times
so as to make it look cute and deliver it to the subscribers.
And we did these kinds of things not only with the boxes,
but when chosing books, the magazine, everything that composes the kit,
just to realize, at the end of the month, that we had no new customer
and that we were a month closer to the end.
And if it's love,
at least in the early stages, it is an unrequited love.
(Laughter)
And then I remembered the story of Roberto Medina,
who had 70 meetings with 70 bands,
trying to convince them to take part in the first rock event he wanted to create,
and he received 70 negatives.
At the 71st he received a yes, and today it is Rock in Rio.
And I asked myself two things.
If my 71st meeting would ever arrive.
(Laughter)
I had already had around 70 meetings, I think. Anyway.
Or, worse, if I would be one of many anonymous Robertos Medinas.
Those who didn't get 70 noes, but 80, 90, 100, 200,
and things never happened to them.
The amount of these guys is much higher
than that of Robertos Medinas who tell their story.
I discovered, another truism,
that entrepreneurship is a bet you make in the beginning,
and you never know if it will happen.
It doesn't matter how much planning you've done, you don't know.
And it would be easy to endure the pain of difficulty for six, eight months,
if we knew that at some point it would end, in two, three years,
that we would get something good in return, but we don't know.
To work without clients,
without knowing if there will be any client -
you may handle this for one day, maybe two months,
maybe six months, but then you'll start to weaken.
And I was weakening.
I remembered Amyr Klink;
in the book "One Hundred Days Between Sky and Sea"
in which he writes about his entrepreneurial project:
he came from South Africa to Brazil in a rowing boat.
That was his idea.
Crazy!
Just like any idea of entrepreneurship.
And the worst, he studied many guys who tried to do this before him
and they all died.
(Laughter)
But he thought he could do it.
And he made a 40-page dossier
where he discriminated the color of the boat to avoid mosses,
the route he would take, the tides, the sea currents he would get,
the port from which he'd depart, the ship's design, sponsors, everything.
And that's how he thought he could do it.
He hit his chest; but then it's time to put the boat in the water.
And that's the easiest moment,
you're still immersed in your convictions and thinking that everything will work,
you just paddle,
but then, a month later, you're in the middle of the ocean.
Then you look forward and see the horizon, you look to the side, horizon,
look back, horizon, you don't see anything else.
And then you start having cramps,
some equipment of the boat are no longer working,
you couldn't meet the goal, so you're not where you imagined you'd be;
and then you begin to doubt
and the 40 pages of conviction turn into 40 pages of doubts.
You think your project won't work,
and six, seven months after starting the company we were feeling like that.
However, I've learned that "yes" is much more restrictive than "no."
The moment you say no to something, you move away from it
and you get closer to every other option, which are infinite.
When you say yes, you move away from a whole world of possibilities
to cling to the one that you decided.
And this hurts because you give up not only the life you had -
in the case of entrepreneurship, of working eight hours a day,
not taking so much work home, not taking as much responsibility -
but you also give up everything you could have had,
projects that you could accept, trips you could make,
that now you can't anymore because of your choice.
That's me during a bike trip I made.
Cycle tourism is something I love to do.
I rode my bike from Camboriú to Porto Alegre,
and I'd like to repeat it, I want to repeat it, I can't repeat it;
because I have no money and no time.
But I will, I hope.
(Laughter)
As the Brazilian philosopher and economist Eduardo Giannetti says,
"Betting on creation, in any field of human activity,
is like entering a huge lottery.
The bet has to be paid at the entrance,
and it usually takes the best part of the hopes and energies of a youth."
I felt this way, with the energies drained
by my dream and by the idea that I'd like to create.
But there is a poor guy in whom we put all our hopes,
which is time.
And we think time will change things.
And sometimes it disappoints us.
But sometimes it doesn't.
And our initial stock, that was at the library, first,
then at my partner's home,
then at a little office that we managed to rent,
it was a small one, for 65 subscribers;
today it has grown, as we have 5,000 subscribers.
I'm proud ...
(Applause) (Cheers)
And I'm proud of it just because I know how hard it was.
And it's not just a numerical issue.
We were three partners who were just arguing with one another,
because when things don't work, obviously we just get stressed.
And it's not a relationship issue;
in the context we were immersed it's pretty usual.
And we are no longer three people,
the team has grown, there are another five or six people besides these ones.
And seeing our friends working
on something they believe in
and now that it seems the wheel is spinning,
that's extremely rewarding.
And if we used to talk to nobody,
now we're talking to someone.
So every month there's a flood of messages
from people who receive our box, even cats enjoy it, not just the readers.
(Laughter)
And the smile of people who receive it,
who now see that it's not just a book for 69.90 Brazilian reais.
No, we don't want to fool the unwary
who don't know about literature.
That's not why we face all the difficulties,
it wouldn't be worth it.
So things changed and this is the goal of TAG
and, after all, I think this should be a little bit of the goal of any business:
to foster smiles.
And literature is this, the kit is this -
people say that receiving a TAG kit
is like opening a Kinder Surprise in childhood
or celebrating your birthday every month.
And that's it, discovering new authors, new perspectives.
And once a subscriber - this is an emblematic example,
which represents what we're beginning to do now -
she sent a video to our email;
she spent a month in the hospital for a surgical procedure, I don't know.
In fact, she had asked to change the delivery address, we didn't know why.
She asked to have the kit sent to the hospital.
She recorded the moment the kit arrived,
saying it was the happiest day of her month.
This represents a little bit of what we want to bring,
what we tried to bring, and that's why it was so hard, so difficult -
but today it's happening.
We now begin
to experience and to glimpse a possibility of reward in entrepreneurship.
Not from everyday, those 11, 12 hours are not a presentation,
so we pick up the best highlights.
It's hard, it's still hard, but today we start to see another side,
we start seeing that perhaps it may be worth it,
it's already worth it.
And if today
the experience that's most alive within me
is the price we pay for trying to invest in a dream,
I hope that one day I can talk about the reward that we really have
when going after a dream.
At least that's what I'm looking for.
We have no guarantees, this is not a ... there is no message in this talk,
or, if there is one, it's a message that there's no message, neither ...
(Laughter)
neither optimism nor pessimism; it may work, it may not work,
and this uncertainty is the only thing that's present in the entrepreneur's life.
Thank you.
(Applause)