218 - Paulo Veras and the story of 99 Taxi: Brazil's first unicorn

PodKast de K Fund

In this week’s episode we had the privilege of chatting to Paulo Veras, co-founder of 99 Taxi, Brazil’s first unicorn.

Paulo has had a very interesting career and we went in-depth with him on both his personal and professional journey. He started coding as a teenager and founded his first company while still in university, which successfully raised funding from Goldman Sachs and later exited.

After that he co-founded daily deals site Imperdível and later served as the managing director of Endeavor, where he actually met Renato Freitas and Ariel Lambrecht, who would become his co-founders at 99 Taxi.

99 Taxi was a tremendous success in Brazil and fought in the now popular ride hailing battles against Uber, Didi and other well funded players in the mid 2010s. Did would end up acquiring 99 in early 2018 for $1 billion.

Paulo was super transparent during our conversation and shared all kinds of valuable details about his journey. Hope you enjoy it!

(0:00) Intro

(1:48) Paulo’s background, coding and first company (Tesla)

(20:07) The Endeavor experience

(26:12) Imperdível: daily deals debacle

(41:25) The story of 99 Taxi

(1:15:09) Fighting leukemia while being CEO (1:23:51)

(1:34:28) Selling 99 Taxi to Didi for $1 billion

(1:45:42) Life after 99 as a board member of traditional companies

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