Review: Viva the Entrepreneur by Brian Requarth

Beforehand I must say that when I purchase this book, I was hoping for a linear story on how one of the first entrepreneurs to develop a successful Latin-American tech company made it. The steps that lead Brian Requart from idealizing the company Zap VivaReal to selling it to OLX for R$2,9bn in 2020.

But what a pleasant surprise it was to find out that this masterpiece is much more than that and aims at a much broader purpose: to be the entrepreneur guide 101 providing a step-by-step guideline on how to organize, fund, be prepared to start your own business and what to value and focus along the way, giving a wonderful jumpstart to anyone to Latam entrepreneurs.

Here, I'll try to list the main highlights, but in the next few days, I'll probably share a few knowledge nuggets to slice the massive amount of relevant info we can find throughout the pages.

1. Money is indeed part of being an entrepreneur, but ideally, it's a by-product of being passionate about what you're doing. If you start a business only driven by money, you'll be more likely to quit when things get tough.
2. Believe in yourself. As an entrepreneur, you need to have a level of determination and conviction that, at times, borders on egotistical. But you also need to listen, really listen. Have the humility to learn from others and the courage to ask for advice. Acknowledge what you don't know and ask smart people for help for the many challenges you'll encounter. So, do not forget that if you're starting a business you shall always leave your ego at the door.
3. Building a business is an emotional roller coaster like none other, but you don't have to keep the pressure bottled up. You've got to share your challenges with others and find your personal support network, including advisors and mentors who preferably faced the same challenges that you will be facing. This means to open yourself up and showing vulnerability.
4. Be transparent - which is one of the core agile values. You should spread out your concerns among your team because people will step up and they can take much more than we think. So, don't shield other people from the challenges and problems you're facing, including prospective employees, because then you'll know what they are really made of.
5. The #1 job for a CEO on an early start-up is to make sure they have enough money for the go and that means assuring you'll have at least a 12-month burn rate on your balances and that you'll start rising more funds exactly when you don't need it yet, as you'll have more leverage. The valuation and other terms of these rounds we shall discuss later, as that is another broad and complex topic.
6. Don't become boring. Even though you're really passionate about what you're doing, people all around you - mainly your family & friends - cannot stand listening over and over only about it. You've got to establish boundaries and give yourself a health break so you can become more productive, of course, but also in a way that you can still develop all of your other interests and grow as a person and a nice companionship.
7. You need a co-founder and think carefully about it as disputes among co-founders are the #1 early startup killer. You shall look for someone that will balance your skills and abilities to offset and support each other in a complementary way. And when we're talking about a tech company it's quite important to bring someone really good to fulfill the CTO role at the earliest.
8. Vest your shares for all key positions and keep an eye always open to the options pool. If you're bringing someone to drive along the road with you, you've got to test it before you buy it and give the co-founder or key employee a great stake in your company. With that in mind vesting their shares allows you to work together and see if you're a good fit before compromising. In the same way, if you're looking after creating a strong team, you've got to balance the lower salaries and benefits with stock options that will lock-in your talent
9. Everyone starts out as a generalist at a startup and progressively moves to a specific-area and specializes. In the beginning, everyone wears a lot of hats and must develop the maturity to delegate these hats to the newcomers and understand with clarity their new roles. You should never create a role around a person; you should always create it around the needs of your business and that means sometimes let some people go.
10. Trust is at the very foundation of the cofounder relationship and like in a marriage, sometimes you've got to take the time with them to just connect and sync-up. This means being there for them in their personal struggles too, 'cause you're in this together to pick each other up.
11. The best-companies are purpose-driven, inspired by an impulse to solve a real problem in the world. Solid companies have to at least offer a pain killer and not a vitamin.
12. One of the core roles of the co-founders is to establish the company's virtues which are values in action. After selecting them, they shall communicate it consistently and from the beginning with every new person who joined the company. And as you evolve, some virtues will become more relevant than others, as the context changes and also does its needs. These will be your north star for hiring new people as they will also hire and the cycle goes on and on.
13. When you're starting, you shall focus on getting to the product-market-fit, with a small and nimble team that will go into battle with you. This means hiring hustlers more than MBAs and don't spend time building business plans that will grow old as soon as the ink dries: in the earlier stage it's all about execution and agility.
14. Be bold in your decision-making. Whereas large established companies are trying to preserve their existing revenue, a startup is trying aggressively to create and expand one and that means being open to change your course fiercely when the timing is right. Brian for instance took a bold statement by shifting a regional approach for Viva Real to a AAB (all about Brazil) which included letting people go and moving his operation and home.

These are just a few of the takeaways that I've had the pleasure of unraveling, but I hope that they were as meaningful for you as they were for me!