“In my twitter profile I describe myself as a “World citizen, business with a social purpose, constant learner, passion for innovation and travel, Brazilian by birth and soul.” I think I did well in trying to define myself in 140 characters, though by being a constant learner I hope to continuously renew my points of view. There’s a song by a Brazilian legendary artist called Raul Seixas that says “I prefer to be this walking metamorphosis than to have that same old opinion about everything…” I believe in keeping our most essential values, not in strong opinions.
I am the co-founder of tripku – the social app for adventure travelers to make their dream trips come true by taking the best out of a network of adventurers as well as adventure tour operators. We turn the travel planning process upside down to focus on what travelers really want to experience and make traveling truly meaningful. It was born from the pain we felt as adventure travelers to plan our own adventures. We’ve been many times held back in realizing some of our dream trips because we couldn’t find like-minded travel buddies available or because it was really hard to find the right information to plan our trips. Our vision is to live in a world where everybody can find the right people and the right info to realize life-changing travel experiences. By changing their lives they also make an impact in someone else’s life along the journey!
We have released our first public version just about a month ago and we recently closed our first sales, meaning that adventure travelers started finding at tripku the tour operators that could provide the travel experiences and advice they wanted for their next adventures. We have just joined Start Up Chile, a world-class incubator sponsored by the government of Chile. It is helping us further develop the tripku platform and expand market reach. It also gives us access the top international investors as we look for funds to scale the business.
Before the MBA I was living in Prague, The Czech Republic, for 4,5 years. I headed the Americas and Iberia operations of a top provider of international academic tours for business schools called International Study Programs. That’s where I had two major insights about my life: first, that I wanted to start my own business and second that Latin America had a really special place in my heart and I really needed to go back and contribute to the region’s development. On the other hand I really wanted to keep living internationally and interconnected.
When I decided to do an MBA those insights about myself made me chose IE as the one school I wanted to get in. IE’s student body is probably the most diverse of the top schools worldwide, both in cultural diversity as well as in professional backgrounds. We could confront very diverse points of view based on real life experiences. That was very enriching. Yet, IE’s connections in Latin America made my return to the region happen naturally.
At IE I realized I was actually ready to start my own business. IE’s entrepreneurship tracks allowed me to learn what I needed to learn about the world of startups and to meet who I should meet, including my current business partner. Being part of the Venture Lab, an elective class that’s designed in the form of a business accelerator, allowed me to focus on developing tripku in a relatively safe environment. In other words, everything we did in the project was for real from the start, but after graduation the clock inevitably starts ticking and the pressure to start making money grows. If I didn’t have time during the MBA to exhaustively test and develop tripku’s concept, that pressure to get a regular job could’ve won me.
Another important point for me was that the International MBA is short and intense. I didn’t want to divide my time between work and MBA. On the other hand, I wanted to get quickly back to work because I really like to make things happen, to feel like I’m helping to build something good for the world.
For that reason my participation as a member of the Net Impact Club was…… TO BE CONTINUED ….Check back for the last part of this great insight story in a few days!!
PS: BREAKING NEWS: Tripku has just been featured en El Pais; check it out!
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