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Pedro Peixoto (SK 2018): “The entrepreneurial mindset is at the heart of SKEMA”

30 September 2020 INTERVIEW

A native of Brazil, Pedro decided to move to France temporarily to attend the famous SKEMA Business School, where he started his own business while studying. Now back in Belo Horizonte, he tells us about his international entrepreneurial journey and the brand-new business he has started, 10b.

 

Can you tell us about your educational background and your choice to attend SKEMA?

Before joining SKEMA, I had left Brazil at the age of 18 to go live in New York, where I stayed for 5 years. There, I earned a Bachelor of Finance at the New York Institute of Technology and also worked for a family office. I then returned to Brazil, where I worked for a leading Brazilian venture capital investment firm. I then wanted to round off my education with an international programme in connection with the professional experience I had already acquired. I was particularly interested in France. And then SKEMA opened a campus here, in Belo Horizonte. I was able to chat with some students and find out more about the school and its reputation. It seemed like an obvious choice then to attend SKEMA Business School in France, on the Sophia Antipolis campus.

 

Can you tell us about your experience at SKEMA? What were the high points of your time there?

One thing is certain, I really wasn’t like the other students! Before joining SKEMA, in Belo Horizonte I had co-founded an investment consultancy for startups in Brazil, called Circle Ventures. With two other co-founders, we invested in startups in several sectors. All were deeply unique in some way. We also helped the startups to develop their products by applying innovative strategies.  So once at SKEMA, I spent half my day in classes and devoted the rest of my time to growing the company remotely. Because of my entrepreneurial enterprise, I had a very different approach to my studies. Every time I learned something I immediately started to think about how I could apply it to my daily work. I was very dedicated, not only to my studies, but also to networking, and SKEMA is a great ecosystem for that. The entrepreneurial mindset is truly at the heart of the school. Sophia Antipolis is also the ideal environment for building a network. I networked and interacted with a lot of people on campus, but also around the school, with entrepreneurs, students and professors ─ and I’m actually still in touch with some of them now. SKEMA is not like other schools where you only learn from books. Sure, we learned the theory, but there was always time to discuss, to go into more depth, and to learn beyond the classroom... It really was the right choice for me, because I was able to put everything I learned into concrete application. I would literally learn something in the morning, and during my lunch break if I had a call with a client in Brazil I would apply what I had learned in class. It was an enormous help in growing my business.

 

Where are you at on your entrepreneurial journey now? 

After one of the projects we’d worked on with Circle Ventures for one of Brazil’s top agribusiness companies, called BRF (Brasil Foods), we attracted the attention of BRF’s biggest investor at the time, a Brazilian investment firm. Their company was going through a transition phase, being a highly successful traditional business that needed to innovate and adapt to the world of new technologies. So we began working with the investment fund and helped them to formulate a new strategy for implementing this innovation ecosystem. This naturally led us to invest in companies geared towards innovation, and particularly in the agribusiness industry, a very powerful sector we knew well. That’s when I started 10b, my current company, specialising in asset management. For two years now, I’ve been working with other associates on this project. The name “10b” is a reference to 10 billion, the projected global population by 2050, and to the fact that agriculture will have to produce 70% more food to sustain our current food consumption, which is very bad and very unequal around the globe. We are convinced that innovative solutions and technologies need to be found to enable people to adapt and evolve, because we cannot continue to produce and consume the way we have been for over a century now, with deforestation, the use of chemical products, etc. Our goal with 10b is to invest in these technologies which, among other things, will allow farmers to cultivate their lands more sustainably. We have already invested in two companies and have nearly 10 million dollars in funds to invest.

 

Are you still in touch with the SKEMA network?

I’m still in contact with some professors, and I’m particularly close to the head of my master’s programme. We speak regularly; he gives me feedback, advice, puts me touch with the right people... As soon as I told him about my plans, he was ready to help me. I’ve also stayed in contact with some entrepreneurs from Sophia Antipolis that I got the chance to meet around campus. And of course with my old classmates. We help one another regularly; they have really helped me to expand my network. I think that, besides a really good resume, a network is really crucial for a career. I also try to help SKEMA from Brazil, and I regularly go and talk to students on the Belo Horizonte campus. Next year, I hope to also be able to welcome some SKEMA interns to Brazil to help with my company.

 

Contact: Pedro Peixoto (SK 2018)

Interview by lepetitjournal.com for SKEMA Alumni

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