The trajectory of Carlos Cêra, co-founder and CEO of Superlógica, begins far from the universe of fintechsERPs and Faria Lima. Still a computing student at Unicamphe entered entrepreneurship almost out of obligation, helping at the family’s children’s buffet in Campinas.
“I didn’t want to go to work there, but I needed to. If the family didn’t work, the accounts wouldn’t pay off”, he remembers. The learning, however, was definitive. “There I learned two things that I still carry with me today: loving service and solving problems.”
It was also in this environment that Carlos had his first contact with the sensation that would mark his career. “I saw that I could depend on my effort and achieve a great result. That transformed me.”
The turning point came with a course at Sebrae, where he met Lincoln, a former Banco do Brasil executive who had become a trustee. The problem was the management of condominiums, which seemed archaic, somewhat stuck. The solution, still embryonic. Superlógica was born there, still far from being the giant it is today.
“The idea came up to solve his problem. Then, I understood that it could become a scalable product”, says Cêra.
The businessman participated in the program From Zero to Top and explained the strategic turn that integrated banking services into ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning or Company Resource Planning) and the construction of a model that repositioned the company as a power in the condominium market.
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Price of a big idea
The beginning, according to the CEO, was not easy at all. It took two years just building the software and without earning money, giving up working in large companies. For him, internet dominance was the company’s first competitive advantage. When the product began to be sold, around 2002, Superlógica was smaller and technically inferior to its competitors. But it had a strategic difference.
“Our competitors were born before the internet. We were born within it”, he states. The company started to sell online, with much lower acquisition costs, and invested in self-service to reduce administrators’ expenses.
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The big turning point came more than a decade later. In 2012, Carlos attended a lecture by a former college friend, Bloise, then an entrepreneur who would later lead iFood. The impact was immediate. “We realized we were making the mistake of thinking small.”
Back at the company, Carlos gathered the team. There, weekly conversations were born that would forge the culture of Superlógica. “Without knowing it, we started to build a much stronger team. To discuss strategy together”
Two years later, the goal that would change the game emerged. The thesis was simple and bold: if the individual’s bank branch would go to the cell phone, the company’s branch should go into the ERP.
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“For the company, the bank makes much more sense within the management system than in a physical branch”, says Carlos. The market reaction was harsh. “I was ridiculed by investors. How was a small company going to compete with banks?”
The regulatory turn
The scenario began to change when the Central Bank simplified the rules for financial licenses. “This enabled the emergence of fintechs, including ours”, recalls Cêra.
Without obtaining capital in Faria Lima, Carlos sought strategic alliances. He found the ideal partner in a banking software company, and in a former bank owner.
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The result was decisive. “We started offering banking services with virtually no fixed cost.” The first product was payment. “Boleto and Pix are essential for condominiums. Offering this in a cheaper and integrated way was a game changer.”, says the CEO.
More than revenue, the company discovered something bigger: the power of distribution. “We realized that we could distribute any product to condominiums via administrators, with very low acquisition costs.”
The current Superlógica model was born: a platform that connects software, financial services, credit and now hardware and AI. Today, the company serves around 130,000 condominiums, has 1,100 employees and is targeting R$1 billion in revenue with a 30% EBITDA margin in the coming years.
The next cycle involves artificial intelligence. “The software market is booming. And vertical software will gain a lot from AI.”
The company entered into a partnership with OpenAI. “They want to create a great case in the Brazilian real estate market”, says the CEO.
To find out more details about Carlos Cêra’s entrepreneurial journey and the condominium market, see the full episode on The program is available and in its podcast version on the main streaming platforms such as , , , , and
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About From Zero to Top
O podcast From Zero to Top is a production of InfoMoney and brings, every week, the stories of prominent women and men in the Brazilian market to tell their story, sharing the biggest challenges faced along the way and the main strategies used in building the business.
