startupi

Many people I know who can bring good ideas to fruition credit their ventures to a restless spirit, something inside oneself that won’t let you leave a it alone. Among these types, one who has been called the Brazilian Mr. Startup, winner of several young entrepreneur prizes, is Marco Gomes.

Marco’s story begins with many years (in the internet, 8 years is practically two entire eras) of experience accumulated while working as a developer and coordinater for agencies like Click - nothing like learning with other people’s money.

Insomniaware

One decisive factor in turning Marcos-the-developer into Marco-Gomes-of-boo-box was called insomnia. More precisely a thing called insomniaware: little apps written in a good night’s productive insomnia.

My first contact with him was when, because of a speaking engagement I had about Ajax at Intercon in 2006, he presented me with one of these insomniawares: “I made a little app in one night, just to learn to XML and respond to the API. I call it Wallpapr“.

Marco is from that generation (in which I include myself) that was influenced by Getting Real, the book in which the people of 37Signals described their best insights on development, design and business.

Programming is Free

Based on the inspiration of 37Signals, Marco wrote his own book, his manifesto, his campaign strategy: programming is free. “You don’t have to wait to arrive at a certain stage, or job, where they will award you, kiss your hand, to be a good developer. A good developer creates himself, in the savage dawn of the IRC channels and email groups.”

It was in one of these savage dawns that Marco sent an email to Raphael Vasconcellos “showing a photo of Gisele Bündchen as All Star, saying we have to sell her All Star, but it was just that, I remembered it the other day, I was have drunk from exhaustion.”

boo-box: bringing an idea to fruition

The two began to mature an idea and a business plan. With the help of an excellent design - at times like this it is not a bad thing to have good friends who are art directors at Agência Click. And they developed and launched boo-box. The product appeared in Techcrunch, which led to investment from Monashees Capital. Marcos Tanaka joined them as CEO and the rest is history.

Marco’s entrepreneurial spirit can be summed up in a parable which he, joking, always tells: if you have an idea, you have to get it out there or it will keep bouncing around in the world of ideas looking for someone else to manifest it instead of you. “It is a good way to exemplify what happens if you succumb to lazy-ass tendencies and don’t immediately implement what you think of”, he says.

As Getting Real taught, implementation multiplies the value of an idea; a good idea badly implemented isn’t worth much. And the energy of a practitioner of competitive parcour applied to the implementation of good ideas - and with good friends who helped him along the way - the result is the example of Mr. Startup, Marco Gomes.

Ready to talk

And in the same way he received help from so many friends, Marco is available to talk to whoever wishes:

“I still don’t have the experience to be a guru or write books about entrepreneurship, if for no other reason than I have not yet reached even the first steps of the long path I plan for my career, but I love to talk about what I have learned with whoever is interested in the same things I am. If you want to talk to me, to teach or learn, I am always accessible by e-mail and I respond to all messages.”