An amazing experience!

By Marcelo Franco de Sousa, Managing Director at Matcerâmica

A real upgrade to the software in the brain: my mindset is much richer after I returned from San Francisco.

On the basis of all visible differences there is the way they use cognition, not necessarily because Americans are smarter than Europeans, but surely because they exploit cognitive abilities in a much more assertive way.

It is imperative to understand their culture, not to do the same, but to raise our standards of competitiveness.

I highlight three factors that I have observed and consider to be key in the American business culture:

Speed        |         Focus        |        Commitment

At speed they are like time, they never stop, not even for lunch, they do not waste time on minor things and they do not complain all the time.

In focus, the attention given to the market, namely the importance of sales, is truly impressive: sales, sales and sales.

In compromise it is not about not reaching the finish line, failure is not a reason to give up or discourage or even disqualify, failure is simply a stage of the process, as in science.

Trust in people, believing in someone else’s ideas/projects and the investors’ availability to take risk, are totally different from our banking reality.

For investors, the decisive factor is a project that solves a problem for which a solution has not yet been found.

For the initial valuation of the project the determinant is the growth rate of the business/sales.

It is evident that scale – in everything, is a determining accelerator.

No one has guaranteed places. Employment relationships are much different, only distinctive competences create bonds.

Of course, there are a few other factors, or values, such as non-risk aversion, where interest and curiosity are clearly ahead of fear, of the unknown or of the fear of failing.

Also worthy of note is a long-term vision where the importance of projects related to artificial intelligence and technological development, i.e., the search for sustainability in the future, is always present.

And, beyond all this, there is a fantastic thing, informality! In everything: in dealing with you, in the access to top executives, in the way of being, in the way of doing things… although it does not look like it, it eliminates a lot of barriers.

Congratulations to the organization of the program!