GoBooks
Building the first textbook rental company in Brazil.
Back in June 2012, Marcus and I were thinking about creating our first startup while working in 21212 and our goal was to build a sustainable business that could help Brazilians. After brainstorming a few hours drinking a beer in Urca — Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, we decided to work with education, because
“As undergraduate students who we knew, the students could not afford to expensive textbooks and that’s why we decided to try to democratize the education providing cheap textbooks”
The problem we were trying to solve
I created the first landing page to understand what the must-have problem was. We ended up concluding that textbooks were too expensive and students could not afford to it. They were always looking for the cheapest solution.
After 10 days of launching our landing page, GoBooks got 10.500 visitors and 2.500 registers without investing a cent with marketing. It represented almost 25% of conversion and then, we saw an opportunity.
After talking to hundreds of students, we believed the must-have problem was price and decided to validate a solution providing a service that could allow students to rent textbooks for 4 months.
Solution validation
GoBooks is the first textbook rental company in Brazil that is helping students to save money and time by renting textbooks.
We studied and talked to students to understand what solution would fit better in the market. Students were tired about buying textbooks and using them only for 4 months and they always said: “My textbooks are on my shelf. I used them only for a semester and I do not want to touch them anymore”.
Having that information, we decided to test a model which students could use textbooks only for the period of the semester and the renting model was ready to be launched.
We built a brand and, after renting the first 20 textbooks using Facebook groups and obviously without an e-commerce, we launched our MVP and then we tested our value proposition.
GoBooks was accelerated by 21212.com. We stayed at this acceleration for 6 months, and we could learn the most important aspects about finances, law, business, design and technology. Deciding to go to an acceleration was one of the best decision we could have ever done, because they definitely helped us to build our first aircraft wings. Learning how to fly is another story and they certainly do not do it, because it is not their responsibility. They just show you the ways as mentors and investors, and then you decide how you want to manage the machine and how you will invest your money.
Size of the market
After being accelerated, we fundraised money with a few angels to put fuel in the truck. We started testing massively the business and expanded to 40 universities in the state of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
We understood that students want to pass in exams. It doesn’t matter whether or not you have to use a book and this aspect minimized the size of the market for the renting model solution. This minimization put in risk the whole business model because this model is a very capital intense one that has to have a big volume, so we might have never achieved the break-even point if we continued the operations and we could go bankrupt soon.
I believe we could pivot the business model but we decided to shut the business down because we did not close the third round of investment.
Fortunately students have saved more than R$800.000,00 with our services so far and it was a long journey which has lots of details that I can tell you in a coffee.
I hope to help my clients with amazing services or products again as quickly as possible. The next startup is coming. Just wait for it.
I am a Brazilian computer programmer and an Entrepreneur specialized in Internet, currently living and working in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
If you want to know more about me, feel free to stalk my LinkedIn Page or send me an email at vbrazo@gmail.com.
