Q: What was your main motivation to become a CEO?
I didn’t seek the role as a personal goal. What led me to the CEO position was a complete understanding of the culture and the vision to grow the business, factors which I always thought were attributes of the CFO. Additionally, I am not risk-averse and have always sought to foster simple growth options—looking at problems, testing hypotheses, and acting on the learnings.
Q: What skills or knowledge did you need to acquire or improve on the journey to becoming a CEO?
The focus was on how to sustain consistent behavior, be open to more opinions, accept more challenges, and organize the team around this mindset. It all comes down to mindset and how you perceive things. It’s challenging. Turning an introvert into an extrovert, or transforming an innovator into an operator, is what we call ambidexterity—the ability to do two opposite things simultaneously. It’s about adapting to each situation. I read constantly and sought to connect with mentors in Brazil and abroad. Additionally, I operate with retrospective strategy: I analyze past strategy, operate with tests, and the strategy is built.
Q: What were the main focus areas of the board for your preparation as CEO?
My two major gaps:
1. Capacity for simplified discussion. The CFO communicates with charts and tables, and I needed to learn to communicate simply. I started going to board meetings with five slides to communicate what was needed, so this gap turned into an achievement.
2. Preparing the company for the future and scalability. With 100 million monthly orders, we could only deliver with a high AI architecture. The learning was to develop a proprietary system to ensure viability and not depend on third parties, creating a capable team and having the right mindset.
Q: What resources or opportunities do you think are underutilized by CFOs aspiring to become CEOs?
Systemic thinking, less focused on finance and returns to understand system dynamics, side effects, and derivatives. More focus on strategic thinking
Q: What specific advice would you give to CFOs at the beginning of their journey to becoming CEOs?
Think like a CEO. Because regardless of whether you aspire to the position or not, there is no reason for a CFO not to prepare and act as such.
