Some trajectories do not make sense when viewed in a straight line. Marcelo Loureiro’s is made of cycles, ruptures and changes of route. From micromobility to health and well-being, his choices were never guided only by the market, valuation or hype, but by personal questions that he sought to answer at each stage of life.
This logic appears in the way he thinks about time, control and the act of entrepreneurship itself. After experiencing the accelerated growth of Grow, electric bicycles and scooters, in addition to the dilution, loss of autonomy and the pain of a business that took a different direction than imagined, Marcelo started to look more carefully at the timing and cost of growing too quickly.
Read more:
In recent years, this movement has been accompanied by something quieter: the search for solitude. Inspired by the idea of a “basement” – a space of voluntary isolation for deep reflection – he began to move away from the constant noise of the ecosystem to pay more attention to his own patterns, his body and his everyday choices. It was from this process that his turn to the world of health was born and, later, Superdash, a smart diary on WhatsApp that allows users to monitor habits and create a new behavioral pattern.
In this conversation, he talks about career, learning, autonomy, discipline and why he believes that seeing patterns, more than accumulating data, can be the real difference in the world of business and life. Check it out:
You’ve been through many cycles of the entrepreneurial journey. What connects these choices throughout your trajectory?
Continues after advertising
Talking about cycles makes perfect sense, because I didn’t have a linear career. I always moved from project to project, depending on various situations: either I sold the business or I lost enthusiasm for that market. I was even jealous of friends who managed to stay in the same industry for 20, 30 years, while I, every cycle of seven or eight years, completely changed my path.
Today I see this as a great benefit. This gives me the ability to see things more holistically and a feeling of being able to deal with any type of situation, much more than if I were an expert. This cyclical career has made me a generalist. And, for today’s world, perhaps this is a more important and rarer skill.
Read more:
Continues after advertising
I realized that all the projects I was involved in were always born from personal reflections, from very private issues. I noticed that when I worked on private issues, my connection with the project was so great that I became the best salesperson and the best spokesperson. It didn’t feel like work.
I like trying to understand what the next market trend is, but this always comes from my personal experience. I like to live a little in the future, and this is linked to the moment I am in and the questions I am trying to answer.
The experience with Ride and Grow was intense and very public. What were the biggest learnings from this period?
Continues after advertising
I came from the mobility sector in the United States. I worked with shared bicycles and had a platform called SpinLister, which was an Airbnb-type model for bicycles. I saw the birth of the scooter industry and, when I returned to Brazil after ten years, I wanted to be the first to invest in this trend.
Everyone said I was crazy, that it wouldn’t work in Brazil, that they would steal the scooters, that there weren’t adequate roads. I thought it was a solution that would greatly help traffic in a city like São Paulo. I went against the consensus and created Ride Mobility.
Ride ended up being sold to Grin, which later merged with Yellow, giving rise to Grow. I really believed that the scooter would revolutionize urban mobility and I continue to believe in micromobility. I still ride a scooter today.
Continues after advertising
The business, however, turned into something much bigger than I imagined. It has become a Latin American company, operating in dozens of cities, extremely capital intensive. With that came the need for a lot of money, dilution and advice. I lost my place on the board, lost my vote and ended up outside the company I created. This was very painful, because the business that emerged was not the business I had started. Mine had a different maturation time.
The main lesson was: it is better to slow down and maintain control of the company at all costs. When you lose control, you become the person in the photo, but you don’t make the decisions. It takes fame, but it doesn’t decide. It’s the worst of all worlds.
Another important lesson is timing. When I arrived, he was right. A year later, the company was already worth a billion dollars, but the timing had turned out wrong. Shortly after, the market turned. I also learned the importance of choosing partners and investors and knowing how to leave when there is an opportunity. Vanity and greed often make people miss the best moment to leave.
What motivated you to invest in the healthcare sector and create Superdash?
Health came from personal reflection. From the age of 54 to 55, I was coming out of the scooter cycle completely wrecked: shoulder pain, neck pain, artery plaque, pre-diabetes. I was a regular guy, but until page two.
I realized that my choices were not good. Health became a topic that made sense for me to dedicate myself to, because it could become a business or, if it didn’t, bring me a personal benefit. Unlike mobility, which is a race for market share, health is a long-term bet. You deal with human behavior, inconsistency, self-deception.
I also understood that the gap was not in the data. We already have data: exams, wearables. The gap was in the way people relate to their own lives on a daily basis. I started working with doctors who looked at health from the point of view of performance, not just exams, but sleep, strength, nutrition, mood, stress and relationships.
It was then that I understood that subjective perception is as important as objective data. I created a bot on WhatsApp to ask me every day how I was doing, with simple answers, from zero to ten. This created a daily moment of reflection.
Superdash doesn’t solve anything and doesn’t rule anyone. It shows everything. Shows patterns. And when you see your patterns, you act. Discipline cannot be a burden. Discipline is freedom. Sleeping better, eating better, training better gives you time, health and strength. This is freedom.
Looking at the ecosystem today, what catches your attention most about startups in Brazil?
After the pandemic, when there was a boom in startups and money, a crisis came that tested the quality of entrepreneurs and businesses. I thought there was going to be a bigger bloodbath than it actually happened. The Brazilian market has proven resilient.
Entrepreneurs knew how to adapt to a scenario of little liquidity and restructured their companies to grow in a healthier way. The quality of Brazilian entrepreneurship was called into question and proved its value.
The big change, now almost a cliché, is artificial intelligence. It became a commodity. Everyone uses it, including us. The great revolution will happen when AI is fully integrated into the lives of the end consumer. At Superdash, AI has incredibly boosted the product.
There is still the challenge of liquidity in Brazil. The exit funnel is small. But Brazilian startups are going global. Today, a startup no longer has borders. Those born with this global mentality already come out ahead.
Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing? What are your hobbies?
Sport is my hobby, my passion and my salvation. Through the body, you understand that mind and body are one thing.
I like cycling, surfing, snowboarding, bodybuilding, functional training. If you ask me to skate, I’ll go. Sport connects me with myself, brings me to the present and makes me think better.
The other pillar of my life is family. I have two children, I have been married for 20 years. My life comes down to these three pillars: family, work and sport. And this has a lot to do with solitude: knowing how to say no and dedicating time to what really matters to you.
X-ray – Marcelo Loureiro
An ideal weekend has… sport and sleep
Book you recommend: “Awareness”, de Anthony DeMello
Artist that doesn’t leave your playlist: The Cure
A craze: Include sport in all my schedules
Your best quality: Being honest with myself and always wanting to improve
Content produced by .
