What was the moment when Guilherme came face to face with the fear of failing? Do you still have that fear today?
Does it still come knocking?
It does, it still comes knocking to this day.
Guilherme Benchimol is the founder of XP, the largest investment brokerage in Brazil, with more than 2 trillion under custody. But it wasn't always like that. He went from a firing and carried a phrase from his father that haunted him for a lifetime: good people don't get fired.
If you stay here, you're going to be a real loser. You're going to have to build your life somewhere. I decided that I wanted to be the protagonist, right? That I want to learn to pilot my own company. I'll accept going bankrupt, but on my own terms.
He went to Porto Alegre as a form of escape. He did odd jobs trying not to go back to his parents' house in Rio de Janeiro. And with 10,000 in his pocket, he built XP, the company that changed the way millions of Brazilians see investing. But the biggest challenge wasn't growing, it was surviving his own growth.
My father, he used to provoke me, you know? Nothing I did was ever enough. I remember when I was 13, 14 years old, my father said: "Look, I bought your clinic." It wasn't that thing of "you're going to be a doctor," but I had already mapped out that journey.
After nearly going bankrupt, losing his health, and realizing that the founder can also become his own company's bottleneck, Benchimol had to learn to step out of the center of operations to build something bigger than himself.
And you don't understand, your company has 200 employees. The general stayed up on the hill on top of his horse. Why, Guilherme? Because he had to see the battle from above. You're on the battlefield and you're getting in the company's way.
This episode is the journey of a man who started out trying to prove he was good and ended up understanding that true greatness isn't in controlling everything, but in building something bigger than yourself.
I know you must be eager to watch this great episode with Benchimol, which was super special for us. But before that, I'd like to ask you to make sure you're subscribed to the channel. Now then, a great episode for you.
Guilherme Benchimol, welcome to Deep Story.
Guilherme, we're very happy to have you here. Someone who is certainly an inspiration to many entrepreneurs, including those sitting at the table with you right now. And we wanted to understand the following: your company today is one of the most respected in Brazil, from north to south. And what would you say to entrepreneurs who are watching us, what would be that first step? Many times a person hasn't yet figured out what their knack for business is. You come from a family of a doctor, an artist, kind of in the balance there, right? There was all the discipline of medicine, of studying, a mother who is an artist and is more laid-back. How did you find your purpose in business?
Rafa, my entrepreneurial story starts completely by accident, right? Actually, I think I already had that entrepreneurial vocation. My parents ended up separating when I was too young, I was 7 years old, so my mother didn't have a very stable financial life, and I had this desire of how can I help, right? How can I master this thing called money that I always see is lacking at home, right? Nothing was ever missing in my life, but life was always very much on the edge, right?
Yes, from the mother's side.
So I was that teenage kid who always set up a little stand at my grandmother's house, always selling old stuff and such. So I had that entrepreneurial streak, and I started my own business because I got fired, right? So I think sooner or later I would have ended up becoming an entrepreneur anyway, right? But the entrepreneur is a bit of a rebel, he doesn't fit into a company, he's part of it, but he questions a lot, he creates a lot of confusion inside the company. So I was always a very questioning kid, with firm opinions about things. So I think the beginning is for you to learn to know yourself a little better and to know if you're a person who is curious, who is proactive, who is confident, right? I think in a way I wanted to have a sports career, right? I've said this a few times, I wanted to be a tennis player, right? So I had a very competitive side. So when I fell into the thing of "okay, now I'm going to be an entrepreneur, and now it doesn't depend on anyone anymore, it depends on me," I saw that it wasn't easy, but that I wanted to control the variables. So I would say that in a way I was always a bit of a control freak, in the sense that I need to have the variables under my control, right? And when you have a corporate life, many times you're even competent, but maybe your boss doesn't like you and then you feel a bit vulnerable in that respect. And then when I was fired, I decided that I wanted to be the protagonist, right? That I want to learn to pilot my own company, I'll accept going bankrupt, but on my own terms.
Yes. And this need for control that you revealed here now, it perhaps comes from childhood. How do you understand where it comes from? Perhaps because of your parents' separation or because of a rigid education on one side and a laid-back one on the other. And when you see that bond breaking in front of you, you say: "Whoa, this I can't control, but what can I control?" Perhaps it comes from that issue. Or what was that family environment like, what's your last memory from childhood before your parents separated?
Uh, yeah, it's very little. I was very, very young, right? My parents separated when I was 7 years old. I don't know if this was more of a characteristic of mine, right? But my education was really very antagonistic, right? Because my father, a super orthodox doctor, studious, a bookworm, right? And my mother, a plastic artist, right? So my father demanded competitiveness, high grades from me, and my mother talked to me about tarot, astrology. So they were... I don't even know how they ended up getting married, right? And the separation ended up not being so light, right? Their communication wasn't very good. So I basically had two educations, right? An artistic education and a super rigid one, right? And then I don't know, I think there must have been, without a doubt, some interference, but I can't say for sure. I think I was always very... I think I had a very visionary mind, of believing in my own things and somehow managing to get there.
So when I ask myself what was the thing that marked my life the most, I don't remember XP, I don't remember. I remember being 10 years old, my father always demanding competitiveness in tennis and so on. I said: "Dad, I want to play tennis and I want to, actually, I want to compete in the upper category." So I went to compete in the 13 to 14 year old category. So at 10 years old the difference is very big, right? And he said: "No, you're not going to compete because you're going to waste money for nothing, you don't need to. You have to train in your own category." That got to me, right? I entered the category and I became the champion in the category, right? So I think this thing of starting as a kid to perhaps believe in things that my parents doubted, I think the issue of me challenging my father, you know? I'm going to challenge my father because I want to show my competence. I think there was some aspect in that direction. I think my father provoked me, you know? Nothing I did was ever enough, right? So I think that tennis event was very striking for me, right? Because he said I shouldn't enter because I had no chance, right? And we didn't have money to spare, so that didn't make sense, and in the end I was the champion. So I think these things were a bit... I think when you start having some things in life that stir you up, you want to live that again.
Yes. So I think I was always seeking that adrenaline, that thing of... this behavior ended up conditioning you to always put yourself in uncomfortable places, right? I think you resolved it well, he challenged you there and you wanted to show him that you were capable, even if for that you put yourself in unfavorable conditions there, right? And it's funny, right? You're talking about it here, right? But I don't remember, okay, to this day... no, I think nowadays I do, right? My father is already 78, 79 years old. I don't remember my father telling me: "Congratulations, you did great." It's more like: "Okay, you got a 10, you have to keep getting 10s," you know? Not even when you get the 10, you were the champion in the tournament, you have to be the champion of the next ones, you know? So nothing was ever enough, right? So again, I think trying to interpret all of this a little, right? I think this kept challenging me more and more, putting me more and more in uncomfortable positions, right? I never talked to him about this, but after today I'm going to talk to him [laughter] to see if he did it on purpose or unintentionally, right? But clearly with him I was always very uncomfortable, right?
Yes. And there were some episodes here where we saw that this education from the father and us putting them as a reference ends up generating, in a way, a competition to be better or to surpass what he achieved, what he conquered. And your father, being a good doctor, must have encouraged you to continue in the medical career. When you decided not to continue, was it an affront, was it a form of... a cry for freedom? Maybe.
Maybe, Rafa. Look, my father never put direct pressure on me, but the indirect pressure was very big, because his father was a doctor, right? My grandfather was a doctor, my cousins were doctors. And I remember when I was 13, 14 years old, my father said: "Look, I bought your clinic because I'm going to have a clinic in Barra da Tijuca and this one is going to be your clinic." So there wasn't pressure. It wasn't that thing of "you're going to be a doctor," but I had already mapped out that journey.
Maybe you took that as a challenge. Once again.
A challenge. Yeah. What do you mean, right? And it's curious because in my memory here, I also wanted to be a doctor. Actually, I wanted to be a tennis player, but maybe the serious profession was medicine, right? And my father always worked a lot and I had to always be there, if I wanted to be with him on the weekend, I had to follow along with the surgeries he performed and such. So I remember that at 14, 15 years old I had already seen many surgeries and I abandoned medicine when I saw an accident, right? He went to treat a person who was going to have a coronary angiography and this person had a super rare thing, an allergy to the plastic of the catheter, she had an anaphylactic shock and died in front of me. I said: "Dad, I don't want this anymore."
Do you still have that scene in your mind to this day?
I saw the whole mess happening and there I said: "Dad, look, it's not..." that's where I abandoned medicine, right? But certainly I wouldn't have been an academic doctor. If I had gone into medicine I would have been the owner of the hospital.
I think it's funny, right? How many people who have been through here had improbable stories of success, right? Everyone seemed to be going down one path and destiny, or whatever people believe in, ended up taking them to a completely different one. And then you go into economics, what led you to study economics? Was there a specific event that awakened you to this? No.
So I think my childhood, this aspect of financial freedom, of being able to earn my own money, I think that led me in the direction of entrepreneurship. I think in adolescence you have a natural bond with your father, right? He ends up being your superhero there, you want to follow in his footsteps, so I think medicine ended up appearing as something natural there. And then when I interrupted medicine, I think I went back a bit to my origins, right? The thing of taking care of money, right? Of how do I gain financial freedom, right? So I always saw money as freedom, right? Because I didn't want to live like my mother, right? My mother, our life, I remember we had to save on the air conditioning at night. She was that mother who said: "Oh, you're hot, you're going to take a cold shower?" You'd wake up at night in the Rio summer, ice-cold shower. Come on, stuff like that, Mom, I want to study with... I want to study with the air conditioning, son. Air conditioning is on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
And all of that because why? Because there was no money, right? So I think my childhood was forged within this concept. So learning to work with economics, in my head, was working with money. I watched a lecture by Luiz César Fernandes when I was 16 years old at PUC, right? And I was a good math student, right? Basically good at math. So the academic competitiveness my father wanted from me was only in math. I was a very good student in math, but in the rest I was a C student, just barely passing. And then economics was the natural path, it was: I want to study economics and I want to learn to work with this thing called money, because I want to learn to make money, to learn to build money.
And then I think I ended up connecting that with entrepreneurship sooner or later, right?
But back then, did you already have a sense of greatness or was it a shortcut so you wouldn't depend on anyone, so you'd have freedom of choice, for example, to turn on the air conditioning to study? What was going through that young Guilherme's mind back then?
Rafa, I just wanted to have a slightly better life, for my parents to have a better life, to dream one day of having a house, having a family, but very far off. I just wanted to have a better life. No, I never... in my childhood I never dreamed of building anything enormous. I was always competitive, but I was very far from believing that one day I would reach where I am today, right?
So things just went... I think it's that thing, right? You... my parents used to say a bit of this, right? You have to learn to do in life what you like, right? And I think it's a bit the opposite, you start to like what you do well, you know? So when I... I think my corporate life was... I had 6 years of corporate life, so I entered college already working. So I wasn't that student sitting in college, I was a student who got decent grades, but I wanted to work, I wanted to have my independence,
I wanted to have my money.
That was it, you wanted to take the first step and you weren't thinking...
I didn't want to build, I just wanted to have my money, I wanted to have my freedom, because I couldn't stand not being able to do the things I wanted anymore, right? Anyway. And so I entered college as an intern, I started working, so I had 6 years of corporate experience, but I wasn't... I do a self-analysis nowadays, I was a mediocre employee. I was, sorry, I was the employee who was very questioning, not someone who would fit into a company, not someone who had the profile to follow a career, of "look, you're going to build this here for 20, 30 years, depending on someone, playing the corporate game you have in a company."
So that long-term perspective, which later you became obsessed with, it came later.
Guilherme, we're going to do a dynamic here called Deep Cards. Here we have three levels of questions. So, first level we talk about your origins, like we're doing right now. Then we move on to level two, which would be something about learnings from the journey, and level three, which is something a bit deeper, more sensitive. And I'm going to start here with level one. And we wanted to know, Guilherme, what was the most valuable lesson you learned in the last year and why?
In the last year, 2025, I almost separated from my wife, okay? And I think when you go through life, right? I've been married for 21 years and I've been with Ana for 24 years, right? It's normal for life to cause some separations and so on. At some point I think everyone asks themselves if they still love their partner and so on. And maybe that question last year was very present in me and I ended up staying apart for a month. And I think when you have a good story and when there's a true love, from way back, the thing rekindles again, right? So I think that lesson was a lesson that deep relationships can shake a bit, but if it was true, it's probably a communication failure.
I think the learning is that a large part of the confusions we go through in life are simpler problems than they seem. And I would say that most of them are simply communication failures. So, yeah, relationships, whether it's work or family, if it's at home, in the end, if you don't communicate well, that ends up creating noise. And that's hard, right? That's hard sometimes. But I think sometimes you're very good in business life and sometimes you're not so good in other parts of life, right? So people think that whoever is good at one thing ends up being good at everything, right? That's not true, right? But I think this learning is really valuable, we sometimes aren't good at communication and...
Yes, and you live in a universe of extreme pressure all the time. It's funny that when I see your content on social media, you're always serene, always the calm guy, but obviously there are questions, fears. How do you manage to separate, taking a trigger from what you're saying, the pressure of external life, right? And when you get home, right, you have a different environment, you have to flip the switch, right? I remember a lot of Albani talking here at the table that he was on stage, there was applause. So there he felt an absurd adrenaline spike and when he was in any random city, he'd go back to the hotel and there was a deafening silence inside the room that was almost... he almost went crazy inside the room, right? So how is that in the business world for you? You're in a company of extremely high pressure, 3 trillion, I think, in... 2 trillion, right? How do you get home and flip that switch? Maybe that collapsed this situation a bit too.
Maybe, maybe. Look, I think the issue of serenity, I think I'm more and more serene. I think for you it's almost like becoming a NASA pilot. If evolution allows you to reach that stage, you have to be serene, because if you're too stressed a person, you won't be able to get there, because it's serenity that allows everything to work, right? So if I'm an explosive manager, people won't want to be near me and the company won't exist. So serenity, tranquility doesn't mean you're complacent about things. It's just that you do things at a pace that allows people to keep up and that you be an accessible person, right? But I like this thing of getting home and having peace, you know? I think during my day I have a lot of harassment, a lot of conversation, there are people who want to take photos, there's everything, right? So it's something that is a pressure, but I deal well with it nowadays. Everywhere I go, right, I feel that people want me to bring that magic touch, you know? Like, wow, I don't have a magic touch, you know? So...
You practically become a therapist, right?
Yeah, so I think it's that pressure in a good sense that I end up feeling. So everything I want most at home is... actually, what I want most is to get home and become Gui, become my wife's Gui, my daughters' Gui, right, and play with the little one and...
Yes, and try to forget a bit. A doubt I have is, at the business level you have, at the team level you have, it's very hard to escape also because of the adoration people have for Guilherme and they end up agreeing a lot with the things you say. Do you have the people you can count on one hand that you allow to pull your leg or to tell you what you wouldn't like to hear? Do you give freedom to some people or do you feel this issue of everyone agreeing with you all the time and do you miss someone holding you accountable, "Guilherme, I think you were wrong here. What you said wasn't cool."
I don't feel that, but I think in a way that can happen. But I'm very careful because I understand that, right? And I understand that when you have some success, right, people end up putting you on a pedestal where it seems like everything you say is correct, right? So I understand that this can happen to me, but I have a company where I have several partners, right? So all the partners are tied together with me. So my life is their life. So we have a relationship where we respect each other a lot and all the time one is trying to convince the other that they have the most efficient path, right? So we've always been very open with each other, right? So how many times have I given my opinion on a path and my partners pointed out that it was a different path, right? So many times they were right, other times they were wrong, but I say inside that I'm just one more and I need to convince not by who I am, but by bringing correct ideas, right?
So it's the power of persuasion with facts and data, right? So that's the way we manage, right?
Perfect. So, but obviously when you have a meeting with people a bit less senior and so on, I think that ends up happening a bit more, right? People end up getting a bit more intimidated, and so on. But at the high level of the company, I'm sure not. The team is very cohesive. Thigo Mafra, who is our CEO, is a very lucid person. We fight, we discuss, we agree, we disagree, he has his opinions. So...
Having someone to fight with is good once in a while.
It's good, it's good, it's good, [laughter] it's good, [sigh] it's good.
That's it, Guilherme, look, I want you to take me to the moment now where you hear from your father that good people never get fired.
What does that bring up for you? Why were you fired? Tell us about that moment and the feeling that comes up when you remember it.
Ah, I always studied at good schools in Rio de Janeiro and I had friends who on average had a much greater purchasing power than mine. So they were friends who always took many trips and, you know, always had the latest cars and so on. So I think that's the backdrop, right? So my life was, I had that social circle, but I was maybe that kid who had to choose the things I'd do, because I couldn't do everything and I had to work, right? So working from very early on,
did that hurt in some way?
I think in a way, because when you're younger, you don't have your standard, your benchmark of knowledge is low, right? So you're very restricted to that little world you live in, right? So I think yes, it did hurt, like, wow, why can't I do certain things, right? There's a certain air of injustice here with me. But it's okay, life is what it is, right? Especially when friends came back and... I went through that and so on.
Yeah, you understood a bit. It's exactly that.
So I had a very scarce life, right? I remember that during vacations I was working, right? So I wasn't... my January vacation was, I had saved money during the semester, I had to buy a computer. So the money was to buy a computer, it wasn't to... I wasn't going to travel, right? So, and then, right? I was following the corporate career and then when this episode happened, I went to talk to my father about it: "Dad, I'm worried, right?" Very much with that feeling that it might be me, right? And already maybe wanting to do a hedge, right? That thing of, look, if it's me, get ready. But he gave me an answer that was bad, right? That was like, don't worry, you... good people never get fired, meaning there are certainly people much worse than you, right? And I remember that the brokerage V Shop where I worked had 300 employees and they fired 15, 20. So it wasn't that many people, it was few people, right? And I was already among them. And then, then it added up a bit like, wow, I have friends who have a very good life, right? All of them, wow, working at their father's company, right? A bit of heirs and such. And wow, I was already that underdog kid, right? I had almost nothing, right? I felt like that and now I got fired. So on top of having nothing, I'm incompetent. Ah, I said, I want to... I don't want to run away from Rio de Janeiro. So my reading, I...
Ashamed. Ashamed like, ashamed of my aunt, right? I have a spectacular aunt, right? I have three brilliant cousins, right? All of them did MBAs, studied abroad and so on. And my father's benchmark was always these cousins of mine, right? Like, oh, your cousin Marcelo did it at MIT, your cousin Sérgio lives, I don't know, in New York for 30 years, you have to be... and I'd look at it and think, an MBA doesn't suit me, it doesn't fit,
you couldn't see yourself in that situation.
And then you start feeling a bit weakened and in my view I need to escape. No, no, this life here in Rio de Janeiro doesn't suit me, right? Because my father thinks I'm weak, my friends have lives that don't match mine. No, it doesn't work, it doesn't work. So that was my start, and it was perhaps the most important thing in my life, leaving Rio de Janeiro, right? When a young person comes to talk to me, the advice I'll give you is: leave your parents' house, go live preferably in other cities, because you'll become a man. You'll learn to fend for yourself, you'll learn to hustle, to hustle in your city. You're always that kid who... you're a kid, you're the kid who's trying and so on. And you never... you never take your skills to the extreme, because you're always in some comfort zone. There's mom's house, dad's house, many times grandma's, friends and such. You live in a natural comfort zone, right? It's no wonder Americans are very entrepreneurial, right? Because they finish high school and go study college in another place. So that generates independence, right? So my... my real life started with the firing and with the feeling that I didn't fit in there. And then maybe I had the courage, maybe a bit of the competitive spirit of, look, if you stay here, you're going to be a real loser. You're going to have to build your life somewhere.
So it was actually an escape, you wanted to vanish from Rio de Janeiro ashamed. And what you're bringing up is extremely interesting and certainly young people who are watching us during this episode may be looking for an answer. And I also remember when I was very young, my parents were separating and my friends were doing an exchange program that was work experience. And at the time my father was separating, he wasn't in great shape, but I got a job and said: "Dad, I'll pay half, you help me here with the other half, they split it 10 times on the card." I talked to the people there and he said: "Okay, my son." Only he didn't know, but I already knew my parents were separating. I went there as an escape too. And that was an awakening for me, because when I arrived in the city it was Breckenridge, it was a small town in Colorado. And I worked at the ski resort and met a guy who worked with me there clearing, right, the snow parking lot, right, you had to help. The guy was the street sweeper there, no, the valet of the ski resort. And then I meet a guy who makes snowboard clothes and always sells 50 jackets per season, always to locals. He didn't sell to outsiders. And there I saw how the locals were the protagonists of the city. Then I look at that, fascinated, go back to Vitória, Espírito Santo. Vitória, the mutt complex. People value Rio and São Paulo more. Walk on Camburi beach and Ipanema. Walk there in the Capixaba mountains, Copacabana. I said: "Damn, I remembered the guy." I said: "Wow, how the locals there were protagonists, I have to make Capixaba be a protagonist here too." My brand emerged from an escape that I ended up there and how when you're in a different environment, right, it ends up provoking you because your repertoire expands.
No, and you... was it like that with you?
No, totally. And when you're in a city, actually, when you live in your parents' city, oh, the parents are going to meddle in your life, because they're there all the time and you stopped being a child, an adolescent not long ago, so parents up to a certain age always see you as a child, right? So you always have someone micromanaging you, controlling you, wanting to know if you did or didn't do something, where you're going and such. And then, you can't grow into a real man, right? Fend for yourself, right? Learn from your own mistakes, learn to evolve, right? And I think when I left my parents' place, I freed myself from my friends in the sense of, look, now you're going to have to make other friends, right? Yes, my friends are friends to this day, but at that moment it was important for me to create new friends and start building a different story, right? Because then we meet again, we meet again at some point, right? In a different way.
And how was it for a carioca to go to Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, cold, how was that?
Ah, it was really hard, man. It was hard. My mother was here with me yesterday, right? And she was telling a bit about how it was. I told her, I said: "Mom, look, I got fired, you already understood, but I'm going to live in Porto Alegre, I'm leaving Monday, I want to set up my business. There it's a city that has a high income, there's a lot of education and I'm going to live there." She said: "My son..." I said: "Mom, it's decided." She said: "I'm going with you." And I drove, I had a car, put my things in the car, put my used TV in, packed the bags and drove, she went with me. So she was telling a bit of that story yesterday, right? And I got there, stayed at a hotel for three days, rented a kitnet and rented a small office, later I found a partner from Rio Grande do Sul, but like, I didn't even know how to start, right? What I wanted was how am I going to make some money here, because I need to survive. So it wasn't an entrepreneurial instinct, it was a survival instinct, total survival.
So then I bought some used computers and an internet cafe in front of my house that was closing. And then I went, right, setting up my office which was in a medical and dental building. So it was literally a small room of 20-something square meters. And I started out, in the beginning, right, I was the one going to visit clients at their homes to try to convince them that I was serious, but that didn't work. And then when I found the financial education model, things started to work out, right? I started to realize that the path wasn't to invest in a carioca living in Porto Alegre but rather to learn. It was much easier to sell education than to sell investments. And that's when things started to work out. But the beginning was really hard, really hard. It was a life working Monday to Monday, doing odd jobs. Odd jobs, really odd jobs. Like...
Look, we had a client who had a meal voucher company. Meal vouchers, back then it was that little ticket you'd tear off, I don't know if you caught that era.
I caught it at the very end, I'm from the 80s, so... 79, 76.
76. Then he said the following: "Look, wow, look how interesting, Guilherme, right?" He was commenting, right? "I deliver my meal vouchers to companies and then at lunchtime there are people who go to the company door and they buy meal vouchers at a discount because they trade them, they make money with that. So you hand over your block of vouchers and the person hands you money with a 10% spread, right? And later I buy from them with a 2% discount, I earn and the middleman earns 8%, right?"
And I was killing two birds with one stone, right? And I remember I did that for about three weeks, about four weeks. Then I understood that was very dangerous, because I was paying with cash and I'd sit at the door of companies, I'd go to the door of... I knew, I knew the day he delivered the vouchers.
Can you still picture that scene in your head?
I remember, I'd put a fanny pack inside my pants, I'd carry 5,000, 10,000 reais and I'd buy 10,000 reais in meal vouchers and earn 800, 1,000 reais that day. So that was the only way we had to survive that moment, to survive. Meaning, I was starting a business where I had a rough idea, but I didn't have money. The money was running out.
Did you think at that moment, like, what the hell am I doing here, man?
Yes, totally, totally. So like, in the beginning, until things got going, it was a year, a year, a year and a half and I was really getting by, getting by. So I basically had two partners, Marcelo who started the company with me and Ana Clara who later...
later became my wife. And I said: "Look, you guys stay here, but I'm going there and later we split the earnings among us." So we were partners in everything, right? So it was...
So things like this kept coming up, right? Your wife, Ana Clara, she becomes your... because you didn't have money to pay her salary, so you sold shares to her.
How, how do you sell a company that's worth nothing? How did you manage to convince her, [laughter], of a company that had no value at that moment?
Yeah, we had... we were four, right? It was me, Marcelo, Ana and Thiago, right? And Thiago turned out to be a super smart guy and he wanted to get hired. And he ended up saying: "Guilherme, look, I see you guys here, I'm going to work at an American bank here in Porto Alegre because I want to have a signed work contract." Back then being an entrepreneur wasn't a cool thing, like, people wanted to follow a solid stable career and so on.
So he left the company, so the company went from four to three. Not... 25% of the workforce was eliminated at that moment, right? At the time it was certainly the most obvious decision, right? But today I... no, but I was envious of him at the time. I even said, Thiago, keep an eye out, if an opportunity comes up, call us, right? But the thing is, Ana was going to graduate too and if she wanted the same thing as him, the company would end, right? It wouldn't end. And Ana... I really don't know why Ana agreed, because it wasn't a smart decision, it was an incoherent decision, because we had nothing. And I think she agreed, she believed in some sixth sense of hers, right? Obviously I made my pitch there, I said, look, I didn't tell her, look, I'm not going to, Ana, I'm not going to hire you. I know you want a signed work contract, but I'm not going to sign your contract because you deserve more than that. You're going to... you know we're going to build the largest investment company in Brazil and you're going to be my partner with 10%. 10%. And she said: "No, I agree, I agree, I want it, I accept." And so it was. In my logic, 10% of nothing is nothing.
I need to have her here with me.
