Underdog Founders - Joao sets out to build the tech teachers needed to survive covid.
How do you bring an old-school industry like education online?
Joao started his 1st business in school - selling imported football jerseys to classmates.
“I’ve wanted to have my own business since high school, and I’m crazy about football“
Margins were great, and gave him motivation to venture further into the business world.
Years flew by, and now with a masters in Management under his belt, Joao invests his 1st pay check in tech stocks - posting his views on eToro.
His content takes off, and investors start following him.
At his peak, he became Portugal’s most followed investor, managing 4 million AUM from 2k users - not too shabby for a fresh grad.
Joao, left, with one of his co-founders.
Then CV19 hits.
His friends Duarte and Diogo - CS engineers - tell him that Diogo’s mother, a high school teacher, asked him to find a simple digital assessment platform, so she could move everything online.
Diogo’s answer:
“There isn’t one - yet”.
Intuitivo was born.
Diogo’s mother starts using the platform, and soon after so is everyone else in the school.
Diogo was young back then - living with a user created a tight feedback loop.
Joao was invited to join them as a co-founder, complementing their CS roles with his business background.
With a working product in the hands of users, things slow down for a while - until a 2nd wave of CV19 hits Portugal again.
The year is 2021, and the team decides to go all-in and become a full-fledged startup.
“We saw teachers saving up to 40% of the time they previously spent reviewing assignments. There was clear value, with or without lockdowns”.
Joana Geraldes Barba from Nova SBE gave them a golden piece of advice when ambition was running wild:
“Focus on doing 1 thing super well - if it’s digital assessment, win that arena”.
They got 100k from Demium, a pre-seed accelerator, and loved the support of folks like Diogo Patão and João Marques dos Santos.
Despite a strong start, things were far from smooth sailing in 2022:
Diogo got a tempting job offer and eventually moved to NYC - the handoff took months, but was clean.
Runway was shrinking.
"We’re kids - we didn’t know how procurement works in the education market"
"The long sales cycle, the right doors to knock on - credibility is so key in education"
They were saved by Rita Vilas-Boas, who not only gave us key advice but actually put cash in the company when they were hit with an unexpected tax bill.
Fortunately, they did end up finding the right door in Portugal.
They're now used by IAVE to run national exams (think SAT equivalent).
Users (teachers) exploded from 500 to 15,000, and revenue jumped to 15k MRR - zero ads, exclusively through word of mouth 🤯
They finished Techstars in Torino and are raising 500k to grow abroad in 2024.
If you know folks in tech with experience in cross-border growth, comment below.
Underdog Founders 16 - Joao Guimaraes from Intuitivo
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