Romero Rodrigues: as the founder of Buscapé became one of the biggest entrepreneurs in Brazil

Successful trajectories inspire to move forward, as does Romero Rodrigues, founder of Buscapé.

You, as the owner of your business, know the setbacks and challenges of being an entrepreneur.

In some moments the desire is to throw everything up and give up.

Well, nobody said it would be easy.

Therefore, Romero Rodrigues’ story is an incentive to persist and be resilient.

Understand in this text how he went from scratch and became one of the biggest entrepreneurs in the country.

Romero Rodrigues’ idea that revolutionized the market

Against the success stories of large technology companies, in which innovative ideas emerge at random, Buscapé, by Romero Rodrigues, was not born out of nowhere.

Since he was a child, when he helped his grandfather in his building materials store, he already had an entrepreneurial spirit and dreamed of creating his own business.

The opportunity came years later, in 1998, at age 21, along with two college colleagues: Ronaldo Takahashi and Rodrigo Borges.

Buscapé was a pioneer in this market and is considered the first Brazilian startup.

But what was interesting was the decision to create a business on the internet, which was still taking its first steps in Brazil.

The plug fell when they looked for a printer on search engines and realized that there was none that listed and compared product prices.

It was then that they decided to create a solution to this problem.

As they wanted to innovate, they developed software that compiled and compared data from product price information provided by stores.

The inspirations that Romero Rodrigues brings us

Romero Rodrigues is a great inspiration for us as entrepreneurs.

See some balconies!

1 — Let them call you crazy

Romero Rodrigues’ idea was innovative and original, but at that time the retail market was different, after all, the consumer had little bargaining power at the time of purchase.

This means that stores barely passed prices over the phone.

Imagine listing the values ​​of all your products on the internet so that customers could compare them with those of other stores?

Therefore, it was not easy to convince retailers to make their prices available.

So they didn’t buy the idea right away and refused to provide information, considering Romero and his crazy friends.

Has something similar happened to you?

If it didn’t, you can be sure there is a chance it will happen, especially if your idea is really innovative.

You will encounter resistance and maybe even be called crazy, but it is essential that you persist, especially if you are sure that your balcony is really valuable.

2 — Make the business work

The initial investment made by Romero Rodrigues and the partners was R $ 100.00 per month for hosting the website and creating the layout, in addition to R $ 4,800.00 for the purchase of three computers.

Even so, Buscapé took about two years to present results.

It was only in 2001 that the project started to have significant revenue.

Then investors appeared and the company started to grow, becoming in 2005 the largest price research website in Latin America.

In 2008 Buscapé had revenues of R $ 50 million and in 2009 the company made history when the Naspers group acquired 91% of its shares for more than US $ 370 million.

For you to have an idea, this was considered the biggest internet business in Brazil.

Even after the sale, Romero Rodrigues remained as CEO of Buscapé until 2015 and left him to become a partner at Redpoint Eventures, an American fund that invests in Brazilian startups.

Did you realize that it takes a great idea and a lot of focus and persistence to make it happen?

And nothing (or almost nothing) grows overnight.

The important thing is to follow your goal, have resilience and not give up.

Romero Rodrigues’ trajectory is inspiring because it opened doors for other entrepreneurs to launch their businesses, contributing to generate more innovations for the Brazilian technology market.

Think about it when you encounter obstacles in your path as an entrepreneur!