Four years after arriving in Brazil, Factorial ended the last year with growth of 67% in its customer base and 56% in revenue. By 2026, the company plans to triple its size in the country, reinforcing the consolidation of the local operation, marked by strategic autonomy in relation to the headquarters in Barcelona.
“The HR market in Brazil is still developing, and this creates a huge lack of technology”, says Renan Conde, CEO of Factorial in Brazil. According to the executive, demand is high, and many companies are still becoming aware of how much technology can support high-performance teams.
The demand led to the decision to structure a local operation, which today has around 50 people, within a global team of 1,400 employees. Although part of the strategy was to replicate what already worked abroad, adaptation to the Brazilian market came quickly.
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Legal issues, such as time control rules, required technical adjustments, but the main impact was cultural. “In Brazil, HR doesn’t just look at what the law requires. It seeks to create an environment, employer brand, trust”, explains Renan.
This maturity was reflected in the demand for more advanced features. In 2025, Brazil was the market that sold the most performance assessment and climate research modules in the company. “In the past, many companies looked for these tools because they ‘had to have them’. Today, they are much more mature, concerned with the real impact of these assessments on results”, he says.
Mistakes and learnings
Over these four years, one of the main lessons learned was the importance of culture as a foundation for growth. According to Renan, the company adopted a logic of continuous learning from the beginning, with openness to error and a focus on speed.
“It’s okay to make mistakes, as long as we learn something from it. Making mistakes is inevitable, but in the end we have many more successes. Creating this awareness has strengthened the company”, says the CEO.
This vision also led to a change in expansion strategy. After a strongly sales-oriented start, the operation began to prioritize customer experience, product evolution and sustainable growth. “There’s no point in having three or four thousand customers coming in at once if I can’t accommodate everyone well. Today, the focus is on growing consistently”, he points out.
The maturity of the local operation is reflected in the degree of independence. Since 2024, when Renan took over as CEO in Brazil, the branch has had full autonomy for strategic decisions. “I have 100% autonomy. I only formalize and report financially”, he says. According to the executive, this accelerated decisions such as the tropicalization of the product and cultural adjustments.
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One of the most symbolic decisions of the Brazilian operation was the consolidation of the 100% remote model – contrary to the Spanish matrix, which reinforced in-person work to preserve culture.
“In Brazil, this decision made a lot of sense. We operate in cities like São Paulo, with long commutes. We think a lot about quality of life, which is completely aligned with our people-first culture”, says Renan.
The remote model expanded Factorial’s access to talents outside the São Paulo axis. Today, the company holds periodic face-to-face meetings, but the entire work routine takes place in a distributed manner.
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Vision of the future
The company’s global plan for 2026 is to grow three times. In Brazil, the goal is accompanied by greater care with recruitment, culture and onboarding, direct lessons learned from the growth experienced in previous years.
“In the past, we hired very quickly and lost a bit of process and culture”, admits Renan. “Now, growth is much more structured.” Among the priorities is expansion to the 27 Brazilian states through partners, in addition to strengthening existing strategic partnerships.
Factorial, which in 2023 acquired expense management startup Fuell, keeps M&As on its radar, but with caution. “The AI race has changed priorities. We have internal development capacity, so the focus now is not to lose speed”, he explains.
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The company has invested in its own AI, integrated into the platform, with data governance and security, in response to the growing use of open tools by employees. “Brazil is one of the countries that consume the most AI in the world. People use these tools and end up placing sensitive data there. Our proposal is to have an internal AI, with the data protected”, says Renan.
In practice, the technology supports everything from automatic reports to performance assessments, suggesting development plans and alerting managers about possible signs of emotional exhaustion in teams. “AI does not replace the human side. It supports decisions that positively impact people’s lives”, he concludes.
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