The courses focused on micro-entrepreneurs, which will be launched soon on the TIM Tec platform, will cover essential topics for those who will open a small or micro-enterprise or who are becoming individual micro-entrepreneurs (MEI). In addition, students will learn the story of four small entrepreneurs, interviewed by professors Teco Medina and Alan Edelstein. The cases show what led the entrepreneurs to open their businesses, how this trajectory happened and the learning and challenges they faced along the way.
One of the interviewees was Diego Ximenes, from the 99jobs platform, which connects professionals to the job opportunities that fit most in their profiles. Before developing the platform, Diego’s team conducted market researches to understand the needs of both professionals and the HR industry. The goal was to build a business that would not just make profit, but that would positively impact users’ lives. It took three attempts to make the business work. “These ways of making mistakes, of learning and listing what you have already gone through, are nothing more than the concept of the word ‘experience’. How many experiments have you done to know what not to do next, to know what went wrong”, he says.
Carolina Lima, from the online cosmetics store for black women Prapreta, had the idea of starting her business by realizing the lack of online stores aimed at this audience. For 8 months, she planned the business on paper and took entrepreneurship courses, but many things Carolina only learned in practice. Among them, is that one of the most efficient tools for publicizing the store is the direct contact with the audience through social networks and partnership with bloggers. “The bet of the segmented market is this, it’s that you recognize yourself in that and understand that this company values you as a consumer.”
After working for 18 years as a bus driver, Moisés Pena had in an everyday situation the inspiration to create his product: square slippers. The company Kuatro Kantos grew gradually. It started with a small production in his yard and the help of resellers who offered the slippers door-to-door until it resulted in a factory that produces up to 10,000 pairs a month. “In the field research, I already saw that the business was going to work out, so I went head on without fear”, he says. Moisés points out that he would not have been able to do it without the help of his family, especially his wife, who left her job at a bank to become responsible for the financial management of Kuatro Kantos.
Volare, a manufacturer of portable lavatories, came from Gislaine Marcandali’s desire to work on her own. At the time, Gislaine was a hairdresser and decided to leave the salon where she worked, but she needed an equipment so she could wash the hair of her clients in their own homes. She created a portable lavatory, but used it for a short period of time – at a beauty fair that she participated exposing the product, she saw that there was a wide audience interested in it. “I had to choose between two paths: either continuing to work as hairdresser using my own product or start making the same product for my profession colleagues”, she says. Over 10 years, the business has expanded and now it includes products for other types of professionals, such as dentists and beauticians.
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