So far g1Gabriel Cantarin Simos, 26, said that on his first visit to the country 5 years ago, he didn’t get the investment he needed. At that time, at the age of 21, a student of systems analysis had a dream but no knowledge,
“At that time the social network did not work, first because I did not have the technical ability to develop the project, I never had my own company. Therefore, I could not answer investors’ doubts about the business. For example How much will the social network earn?”, he explains.
At the time, at the age of 21, the student had the dream, but not the knowledge to increase the investment – Photo: Gabriel Cantarin Simos / Personal Collection
With these innumerable doubts, Gabriel, who lives in California, applied for an acceleration project at Plug and Play in Silicon Valley, where he spent 6 months studying social networks and understood that, at that point, waving won’t work,
“In Silicon Valley, I spent months studying social media, and I realized that at that time, Waving would not work, raise money, or meet investor expectations. So, we decided to give up”, they say.
Despite the great knowledge gained from traveling in Silicon Valley, Student was unable to increase investment, During this period, Gabriel had already closed the Faculty of Systems Analysis and therefore, he decided to return to Brazil.
Gabriel graduated from Draper University with a 100% scholarship in a startup-focused administration course – Photo: Gabriel Cantrin Simos / Personal archive
However, 4 months later, the student received an email offer to study at a university, Draper University, in which 100% Scholarship in Administration Courses Focused on Startups,
“I built a pool to buy tickets, sold a guitar I had at the time, and left for California again with an open mind. This was where I learned how to manage a business at Draper”, he says. it is said.
waving a fresh start
If the application doesn’t work first, 11 months after Gabriel and his colleagues return to work at Weaving, the company is already worth $6 million – Photo: Gabriel Cantrin Simos / Personal Collection
After another season in the United States, where he also worked at two startups, this year the developer spent time reflecting on his own project, which was born in 2016. Anyway, they decided to restart the wavering, “Give it another chance” and came up with a solution to the long-awaited application,
“I felt affection for him again, I stopped thinking because the app was not working at that time in 2016. I went back to study social media and came up with answers to the problems of weaving and came up with the idea. bugs fixed.
Therefore, the social network, which was previously based on geolocation, was redone and has a “new face”. Unlike earlier the cost of acquisition (CAC) per customer was high and hence, it would not be easy to keep people away geographically, this factor is not relevant today.
“Earlier the biggest problem was CAC, today it is almost a solution to make the application more interesting. Today, it does not matter if people are geographically far from each other”, he explains.
with this The social network is gamified, with the mechanics of Instagram stories, in the sense that the content is instantaneous and with the reach of TikTok, where people from all over the world receive user-posted content and can interact.
“to happen Gamified means that everything you do on a social network gives you coins., Therefore, getting a follower, liking, viewing pictures of other profiles, inviting friends helps you release new features including increasing your organic reach”, he says.
Waving, previously based on geolocation, has been redone and has a “facelift” – Photo: Gabriel Cantrin Simos / Personal Collection
it even has one Differences in relation to other social networks, This is because, in order to protect the content sent, the images are accompanied by a “watermark” with the name of the person receiving the recipient to enable identification of the recipient and prevent unauthorized leakage,
If Gabriel and Partners had not worked before 11 months after returning to work at Waving, The company is now worth BRL 6 million, The next step for the student is to return to California in January, this time ready to raise new investments.
“I am making a dream come true. The journey of a startup, however straightforward it sounds, is an eternal cycle of launching the idea, learning from it, and going back to the beginning. It is one step at a time. Today I am going through many of my I recognize weaknesses and this is where I help people help me and complement the company”, he says.
* Under the supervision of Mariana Bonora.
Video: View reports from the field
See more news from the region g1 bauru and marilia,
