The beginning of Totoy is nothing glamorous and perhaps that is exactly why it works so well as a business story. Before becoming one of the most watched children’s content in Latin America, the company was born on the edge, without money, without a structured plan and with an eviction letter at the door.
“The first capital we contributed was the resources we stopped paying our rent”, says André Vaz, CEO and co-founder of Totoy. The executive participated From Zero to Topa program that tells the story of successful entrepreneurs.
Living in New York, he and his wife, psychologist Isa Vaal, decided to invest everything in the project, including what they didn’t have. “Two months later our eviction letter arrived”, recalls Vaz today in a good-natured way.
Today, Totoy is one of the largest entertainment companies in the world, with billions of views on the internet, present in 230 countries and being translated into more than 30 languages. Furthermore, the brand reached Netflix’s Top 10 Global.
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From rock bottom to first turnaround
Before Totoy, André’s entrepreneurial path had already begun. And along with it came the much-feared bankruptcy. And it was precisely this collapse that changed the way of doing business.
“I had an already scaled, successful business and I failed that company. When we fail, there is a very important thing that fails with it, which is the ego”, says Vaz.
Without the capital to produce animation, the solution was to improvise using what I had at home. The first videos were made with simple toys, indoors. Six months later, the surprise came.
“Google called us saying that we had become an international case. No team, no investment, no structure. Just execution”, says the co-founder.
Differentiation became a brand
A project that was born out of improvisation, survived at the limit and always scaled based on purpose. So much so that one of Totoy’s best-known assets came from the founder’s personal experience.
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Before creating the company, André tried to pursue an artistic career in the United States and Brazil, but faced rejections linked to his accent.
“I didn’t pass because of my Brazilian accent. Then, in Brazil, I didn’t pass because of my Minas Gerais accent”, he says.
What seemed like an obstacle became a creative signature. Today, he voices the character José.
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“The accent that rejected me became José’s voice, translated into 30 languages and watched all over the world. Success is not the result of what we want. It is the result of who we are”, defines the CEO of Totoy.
To find out more details about Totoy’s challenges and trajectory, see the full episode on . The program is available in its podcast version on the main streaming platforms such as , , , and
About From Zero to Top
The Do Zero ao Topo podcast 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.
