Inevitable Podcast

Inevitable Podcast

By Pedro SorrenBusinessEntrepreneurship
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Inevitable Podcast episodes

  • 26 - Lucas Abreu (Astella)

    Welcome everyone to another episode of the Inevitable Podcast.

    Welcome everyone to another episode of the Inevitable Podcast.  

    In this episode, I had the pleasure to host Lucas Abreu.  

    For those who don't know, Lucas is a venture investor at Astella Invest an early-stage venture capital firm focused on funding and supporting entrepreneurs in Brazil.   

    Lucas is also a Venture Capital Fellow at Blitzscaling Ventures, a firm that supports growth-stage companies attacking winner-take-most markets.  

    Here are some of the questions that I asked Lucas:  

    - How was your childhood?   

    - When did you realize you wanted to work with VC? How was it? 

    - How did you get your first job at a VC firm?  

    - How did you get started at Astella as a first employee? 

    - What do you think is necessary to be a successful investor? 

    - What is your advice to people that want to join VC?


    --

    Listen to the episode on other platforms and access the show notes:

    https://www.inevitablepodcast.com/guest-name/

    Watch short clips from other episodes:

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyAj5UamLWaF3AIL14miu_w

    Read Pedro Sorren's essays:

    https://pedrosorren.com/Follow

    Pedro Sorren on social media:

    https://pedrosorren.com/links/

    Subscribe to Pedro Sorren's newsletter:

    https://pedrosorren.com/newsletter/

    Meet Atman:

    https://atman.vc/



    56 min
  • 25 - Iona Szkurnik (Education Jorney)

    Welcome everyone to another episode of the Inevitable Podcast.  

    In this episode, I had the pleasure to host Iona Szkurnik.   

    For those who don't know, Iona is the founder & CEO of Education Journey, an education platform that offers education solutions to companies and their employees, helping them to become lifelong learners.   

    Iona is also the co-founder and Board Member of Brazil at Silicon Valley, a movement spearheaded by students from Stanford and Berkeley that aims at improving Brazil’s competitiveness through innovation and technology. Brazil at Silicon Valley also holds an annual conference where it brings together the most influential Brazilian executives, entrepreneurs, experts, and policy-makers to discuss topics that are relevant to the country's development.  

    Here are some of the questions that I asked Iona:  

    - What made you decide to leave the public sector and take a Master's of Education Technology at Stanford? 

    - When did you realize that you wanted to work with education? How was the feeling of finding your purpose in life? 

    - Were there any moments when you felt uncertain about leaving your job in Brazil to take a Master’s in the US? 

    - How did all the different experiences that you had help you better understand what you wanted to build? 

    -Can you tell us how Brazil at Silicon Valley was founded? 

    -In 2020 you founded Education Journey in order to offer education as a corporate benefit. Can you tell us a little more about the company and its purpose? 

    -What has been your biggest source of inspiration throughout your career? 

    -Eventually, when Education Journey becomes a major success and you feel like you accomplished what you were looking for at the beginning of your journey, what would you be doing?


    Listen to the episode on other platforms and access the show notes: https://www.inevitablepodcast.com/

    Watch short clips from other episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyAj5UamLWaF3AIL14miu_w

    Read Pedro Sorren's essays: https://pedrosorren.com/

    Follow Pedro Sorren on social media: https://pedrosorren.com/links/

    Subscribe to Pedro Sorren's newsletter: https://pedrosorren.com/newsletter/

    Meet Atman: https://atman.vc/

    1 hr 3 min
  • 24 - Paulo Martins (Arena)

    Welcome everyone to the Inevitable Podcast.

    In this episode, I had the pleasure to chat with Paulo Martins.

    For those who don't know, Paulo is the founder and CEO of Arena, a data platform for consumer enterprises to increase engagement, conversion and revenue. Arena has over 25,000 customers in 50 countries and just announced its Series A round led by CRV.

    Before that, Paulo was part of the Ad Products team at Hulu, scaling the company from its early stage to $1.1B annual revenue and growing its user base from 100K+ to 7M paying subscribers in 2 years.

    Paulo started his career as a software engineer at NASA Houston and has a master's degree in Data Mining and Machine Learning.

    He had amazing personal and professional experiences as an entrepreneur and business leader and is here today to share some of these learnings with us.

    Here are some of the questions that I asked Paulo:

    • What is your formula to continuously push yourself to the limit throughout your life?
    • What did you have to do to move to the US early in your career?
    • You almost took a very different career path. How was your experience in the fighting and entertainment industry?
    • When did you realize that you wanted to become an entrepreneur?
    • What problems does Arena solve for its clients in order to serve them in so many different geographies?
    • How was your experience raising the series A round for Arena?
    • What were the levers that Arena had for investors in order to have such a successful round?
      • 1 hr 7 min
    • 23 - Donato Helbling (Miami Ice Club)

      In this episode I had the pleasure to host Donato Helbling.

      For those who don't know, Donato is the founder of Miami Ice Club, a community dedicated to cultivating regular breath work and cold exposure practice, helping members to activate their ability to regulate their autonomic nervous system.

      He is the only Certified Wim Hof Instructor in South Florida, and has trained directly under Wim Hof himself.

      If you follow me on social media (@pedrosorren) on all accounts, you’ll see that I have been jumping on ice tanks for the last five months.

      Regular breathing and ice baths have completely rewired my mind, body, and spirit—eradicating anxiety and depression.

      If you want a protocol to be an Inevitable founder/investor, you’ll find that on the ice club. I have taken several friends, LPs and CEOs to this experience.

      Donato is also a Budokon black belt and has over 15 years of experience in Miami and traveling worldwide, with Budokon University teaching Yoga, Martial Arts, Mobility, Meditation and Life Coaching. Additionally, he is the Director of Human Development Labs, a consulting firm that works with leaders in different industries.

      He had amazing personal and professional experiences, and shared some of these learnings with us.

      Here are some of the questions that I asked Donato:

      • Can you tell us about your childhood?
      • In your opinion, what is the difference between Budokon and other martial arts that you have practiced?
      • Where do you get your desire to not give up and run so many different initiatives in your life?
      • How did you find out about ice baths and the Wim Hof Method?
      • How was training and taking the ice baths with Wim Hof himself?
      • What were the challenges that you faced when you decided to create the ice bath community in Miami? How did you overcome them?
      • How did you start the Miami Ice Club?

        • You can listen to this and other Inevitable Podcast episodes on Youtube, Spotify and all other audio platforms.

        1 hr 3 min
      • 22 - Adam Burrows (Range Ventures)

        In this episode, I spoke with the brilliant Adam Burrows.

        For those who don't know, Adam is a venture investor, a former C-level leader, and the co-founder and Managing Partner of Range Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on funding and supporting entrepreneurs in the Colorado area.

        Before that, as a senior vice president and general manager at HomeAdvisor, Adam was part of the executive team that built the company from $100M to over $1B in revenue, taking the company public in 2017 – it was Colorado’s largest tech IPO. Later, Adam was the first C-level executive at Guild Education, helping the company to raise its Series C and sign their largest clients towards $1B valuation. Guild is backed by investors such as Bessemer, ICONIQ, and General Catalyst, having raised $378.5M in total funding.

        He had amazing personal and professional experiences as an entrepreneur and business leader and is here today to share some of these learnings with us.

        Here are some of the questions that I asked Adam:

        • Before joining the tech ecosystem, you graduated at Harvard Law School and went to a consulting firm right after. Why did you decide to not pursue a career as a lawyer?
        • You then joined HomeAdvisor. How did you feel jumping from traditional consulting to a startup?
        • Why HomeAdvsior was so successful despite all the challenges seen by other incumbents in the services marketplace space?
        • Do you think that being a Colorado-based company impacted the overall culture at HomeAdvsior?
        • As we see the world going remote, how do you see the impact of your strategy, since it has a geographical component attached to its ethos?
        • Shortly after HomeAdvisor IPO, you joined Guild Education as the first C-level executive at the firm. How was the feeling of getting back to an early stage company?
        • After helping Guild Education become a USD 1B company you decided to dedicate your life to helping entrepreneurs and co-founded Range Ventures. Why did you decide to focus mainly on Colorado based startups?
        • What has changed in your life as a VC compared to everything you did before?
        • What do you think will be the impact in venture from a macro perspective?
        • Have you had any realization as an emerging manager that you were not expecting?

          • This was a great chat, and I'm sure you will find it extremely insightful.

          57 min
        • 21 - Alessio Alionço (Pipefy)

          Welcome everyone to the Inevitable Podcast. In this episode I'm going to talk with Alessio Alionço.

          Alessio was the first CEO I ever partnered with, back when I was an associate at FCVC when we invested in their seed round. At that time, Pipefy had $2,000 in MRR.

          Furthermore, he is the only founder I have invested in every single Venture Capital chapter I had. I.E., aside from leading our investment in Pipefy when I was running ONEVC, Atman investors are also privileged to be a part of Pipefy's story.

          Alessio is the founder and CEO of Pipefy, a no-code business process management platform that helps companies optimize sophisticated workflows for those who don't know. Today, Pipefy is present in over 150 countries and has raised over 200MM.

          They started in Curitiba and expanded worldwide, mostly because of Alessio's relentlessness as CEO.

          Over the past seven years, we had several opportunities to learn and grow as individuals, as he matured as a founder and I matured as an investor.

          Before launching Pipefy, Alessio also founded Acessozero, an online social city guide where users could find deals in local businesses, which he sold in 2013. After the sale, he searched for his next business idea, traveling and meeting entrepreneurs in Israel.

          He had amazing personal and professional experiences as an entrepreneur and business leader and is here today to share some of these learnings with us.

          Unfortunately, I had a hard stop, and we had to cut the episode short. That being said, we'll certainly schedule other conversations.

          Here are some of the questions that I asked Alessio:

          • When did you realize you wanted to be an entrepreneur?
          • Can you tell us more about your trip to Israel and how it shaped your decision to make sure Pipefy was going to be global from Day 1?
          • How did you make Pipefy into a sexy enterprise product?
          • How do you deal with the challenges of running a growing business and becoming a professional leader?
          • What was your feeling after raising the series C for Pipefy?
            • 1 hr 14 min
          • 20 - Anthony Eigier (NeuralMed)

            Welcome everyone to the Inevitable Podcast. In this episode I talked with Anthony Eigier.

            For those who don't know, Tony is the founder and CEO of NeuralMed, a healthtech startup which uses proprietary AI algorithms integrated into the workflow of health professionals, delivering accuracy and productivity gains.

            Before launching NeuralMed, Tony cofounded TreeLabs, the second startup accelarator in Brazil. After that he founded Fanatee a casual gaming startup, which he left in order to take a leadership position into the family business but still remain as an investor. In 2018 Tony again took the entrepreneurial path and cofounded NeuralMed.

            I am a proud angel investor at the first round of financing for NeuralMed.

            He had amazing personal and professional experiences as an entrepreneur and business leader and is here today to share some of these learnings with us.


            Here are some of the questions that I asked Tony:


            • How was your college experience in the US?
            • You mentioned that you even received an offer from a bulge bracket bank in the USA, which you further declined. Why did you make that decision?
            • What made you come back and start you career in Brazil after that?
            • 10 years ago you co-founded Tree Labs, the second startup accelerator in Brazil. How was it? What was your feeling when you first started to help entrepreneurs grow?
            • How did you fund Treelabs?
            • After the learnings from TreeLabs, you founded Fanatee, a casual gaming startup which has today more than 150million games downloaded. How was the process of founding Fanatee?
            • Gaming is usually a different type of investment for a VC, is there a way to combine how to properly invest in gaming as a VC?
            • What is your take on metaverse?
            • Did you like playing The Sims?
            • What do you think will be the future for human interaction?
            • After a few years into the day to day operation you left Fanatee. What made you take this decision? How did you feel giving up your role in the business and become an investor?
            • You took a leadership position in a mature healthcare family business. That must have been very enlightening and helped on what you decided to do after. What were the most important lessons that you took from those years?
            • Why do you think that things are so messed up in healthcare?
            • In 2018 you decided to return to your own path as an entrepreneur and founded NeuralMed. How was the process of founding NeuralMed? What changed from all of your previous ventures?
              • 54 min
            • 19. Paulo Silveira (Alura)

              Welcome everyone to the Inevitable Podcast. In this episode I'm going to talk with Paulo Silveira.

              For those who don't know, Paulo co-founded, with his brother, Grupo Alura, the largest technology education platform in Brazil, which Paulo serves as the CEO. Grupo Alura started as on-person tech course called Caelum and since then has served over 500k people with over 1,350 courses in Portuguese, covering all areas in technology and digital business.

              Before that, Paulo had the first experience in technology with a CP 400 computer, when he was 9 years old. Paulo has a Masters in Computer Science from USP, is an Angel Investor and also a Podcaster.

              He had amazing personal and professional experiences as an entrepreneur and business leader and is here today to share some of these learnings with us.

              Here are some of the questions that I asked Paulo

              • Different then today, When you were a kid it wasn’t as easy to have access to computers or any technology device at all. Especially in Brazil, computers were a rare thing to find at home in the 80s and early 90s. Who had the ‘audacity’ to buy a computer back then?
              • As a kid, your focus on technology was already towards programming? How was your experience programming in Basic?
              • Back then, did you have the feeling, or at least felt compelled, that you would work in technology? Why is that?
              • In college, at first you decided to join Computer Engineering and then moved to computer Science, which you ended up graduating. What made you take that move? Did you have a special person that helped you in this special moment?
              • While an undergrad in Computer Science, was there anything that made you comfortable on the path you took?
              • Have the hackathons made you really fall in love with programming? Do you feel that the competitive environment may have been your ‘calling’ to fall deeply in love with technology?
              • Technology has been present in your life since you were a kid, but when did you figure out your passion to teach? What made you chose this specific path within technology? Have you always had this desire?
              • You took a Masters right after graduating from college. By that time, were you planning on taking a college professor career? How did you move from an aspiring traditional academic career to an entrepreneurial career in education?
              • You started Caelum as a small in-person programming course, which eventually became the largest tech education platform in Brazil. What were the most difficult challenges that you hadn't foreseen when you started? How did you overcome them?
              • What is your view with the current job market for technology professional?
              • Since 2016, on top of your career as a teacher and entrepreneur, you also became an Angel Investor. How all your previous experience helped you invest in entrepreneurs? What are the traits and skills that you look for in a founder?
              • Taking all these different roles and responsibilities shouldn’t be easy. Have you had any mentors that helped you achieve goals you never thought you could have achieved? 
              • With a great career as a teacher, entrepreneur and Angel Investor, time should have felt as luxury. Have you ever felt that you neglected your personal life in some way throughout the way?
              • Do you have any habits such as journaling, meditation, exercise, that make you feel more balanced for your day-to-day activities?

                • Make sure you subscribe in the channel. See you soon!

                1 hr 14 min
              • 18. Brian Requarth (Latitud)

                Welcome to another episode of the Inevitable Podcast, today I have the honor of being here with Brian Requarth whom I have known for almost a decade. For those who don’t know, Brian runs a company called Latitud.

                Latitud is a venture capital firm that helps the top doers and thinkers of Latin America build the next generation of world-class tech companies. 

                Before Latitud, Brian was the CEO and co-founder of VivaReal, a pioneer in the proptech market in Brazil. VivaReal eventually merged with Grupo Zap which was then acquired by OLX for $642 million.

                Here are some of the questions I asked him:

                • You were born in the Bay Area. How were your early days as a kid and where did you grow up? What made you realize that you wanted to come to South America?

                • When was the time that you realized that you were wired differently than most people? What made you realize that you wanted to be a full-time founder?

                • You dropped out of college and then joined back after a while. What provoked you to make that decision? Do you regret making that decision?

                • How are you so much self-reliant? It has been so long since we met and, to this day you have the same energy. How do you channel your energy towards the goal?

                • Who were your mentors growing up? Was there any specific person that you looked up to or did you have a role model?

                • How was it to move from Colombia to Brazil? How did you make that decision?

                • For how long were you running the business? How was the entire experience?

                • What are your views on the venture market? The situation for founders today is phenomenal and it keeps getting better. What do you think the founders need now?

                • Is there any specific advice that you would like to give for starting companies and their founders?

                • Do you have an ideal morning routine you can share with us?

                1 hr 8 min
              • 17. Jerrod Engelberg (Codecov)

                Welcome everyone to the Inevitable Podcast. In this episode I'm going to talk to Jerrod Engelberg. Thank you so much for joining us, Jerrod.

                Jerrod is the CEO of Codecov, a platform that is scaling the world's leading code coverage solution. Codecov is used by over 1 million developers from leading open source projects to the Fortune 100.

                Before being CEO at Codecov, Jerrod was the first venture hire at FundersClub. There he led the venture team. While in FundersClub, he was awarded the Forbes 30 under 30 in the venture capital category.

                Jerrod is here today to share some of his amazing professional experiences with us. I'm sure you guys will like this episode.

                In my conversation with Jerrod we discussed his childhood, his decision to go to Wharton,  his experience working at FundersClub and being a CEO at Codecov.

                Here are some of the questions I asked Jerrod during our conversation:

                • How were you as a kid, were you a shy kid or an extrovert?
                • How did you make the decision to go to Wharton? What made you think that would be the best decision for the beginning of your career?
                • You consider yourself to be the re-founder of Codecov. Can you give us more context about what that means?
                • Before the pandemic hit you were in the Bay Area, living the perfect venture-backed founder life, where everyone around you is in tech. And then, the pandemic hits and the world goes remote. When thinking about decentralization of innovation, do you believe a tech founder living outside of the Bay Area can be as successful as a founder living there?
                • When I got into FundersClub I learned a lot of things from you. Things that made me a better person and that I will always be thankful for. Compared to other venture firms, what do you think was different in FundersClub that made it so special at the time?
                • I don't want to get too deep about Alan Watts' illusion of money, but capital is just a tool. Thinking of capital, what are your thoughts on stage financing for your company? How do you see the difference between  traditional firms versus individuals when it comes to funding?
                • How did you get to know about Codecov being an opportunity for you to become its CEO?
                • What changed in your life from before and after being a CEO? How did you prepare for that challenge, and what do you do to make sure you are a good CEO?
                • What do you think is going to happen after you achieve success building Codecov?
                • I have some rapid-fire questions for you. What's an ideal morning routine for you, if you have any?
                • What's something that you started doing recently that you felt that significantly improved your routine. It can be something that you bought as well.

                  • Jerrod, thank you for being here on this podcast. It's wonderful to see you and catch up with you.

                  1 hr 8 min

                About Inevitable Podcast

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                Pedro Sorren, from Atman, hosts candid conversations with world-class founders and investors to understand their secrets and the decisions that made them who they are.