Hello everyone! Here follows my candidacy for the upcoming Grant Committee Elections!
Name:
Luiz Octávio Gonçalves Neto
Timezone:
GMT -3 / Brasil
English proficiency:
4 based on the IRL proficiency levels
Committee Position:
Business Expert
Qualifications:
- Educational Background and Certifications
- Background in Economics, Civil Engineering, and Business Management.
- Certified Innovation Consultant, having trained over 1,500 individuals in business development and innovation strategies, including Design Thinking and Design Sprints.
- Professional Experience and Achievements
- Managed over 120 team members simultaneously and scaled business operations to exceed 7 digits in revenue.
- Successfully executed a turnaround for an engineering company with more than $20 million in yearly revenue and 200 team members.
- WEB3 Founder invested by Animoca Brands
- Co-founded and exited eight businesses across various segments, from a Martech company to an Açai Shop.
- Industry Engagement and Leadership
- Speaker, mentor, and judge at over 20 conferences and summits, such as WebSummit Rio, MMA Innovate Blockchain Rio, and Rio Innovation Week. Served as a judge on the Hult Prize and SEBRAE Startup Day.
- Deep relationships with LATAM builders and a worldwide network in the web3 community.
- Launched an accelerator program for web3 companies during ETH.Bogotá in collaboration with the Filecoin Foundation, attracting over 30 venture capitalists.
- Startup and Business Development Expertise
- Trained over 100 companies in Business Development, including global tech companies like TOTVS.
- Angel investor and advisor in the startup ecosystem, providing both funding, guidance and support on traditional and technology investments.
- Moonbeam Builder, having onboarded over 100,000 individuals (200,000 on backlog using batch precompileand other MB solutions) in recent months.
- Onboarding relevant companies such as Grupo Rão (one of the biggest franchises in Brazil with over 200 stores and 20 brands), Adriano Imperador (reputed Brazilian soccer player), Curta (Biggest gaming youtuber agency in LATAM), MOS.GG (50k MaU Streamers solution) and developed partnerships with Brinks, Mastercard, AB Inbev, Empiricus, and a diverse set of other market leaders
- Blockchain and Web3 Innovation
- Full-time blockchain builder since 2019, with building experience in Ethereum, Polygon, and Moonbeam.
- Experience in evaluating business models, financial models, go-to-market strategies, product development, and market analysis within the blockchain and web3 sectors.
- Diverse Work Experience
- Held positions at renowned organizations such as Red Bull, the United Nations, and DoritosFuture Research for German KfW, as well as leading LATAM Leadership Training for Coca-Cola.
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Background
I have been a huge fan of Polkadot since early 2021, when the parachain auctions started. My connection with Polkadot and Moonbeam has always been as a user and not as a builder, which was mainly focused on L2’s.
In September 2023, I met Thiago, and that’s when Moonbeam became a big part of my day-to-day life. By November, my team and I were fully into it — studying, experimenting, and developing on Moonbeam. We started giving back too, offering feedback and bringing our own solutions to improve things.
We’ve also made APIs to help traditional web2 businesses move over to Moonbeam, and recently, we launched a blockchain-based SaaS for creators and their audiences. We’re regularly getting big brands, gaming communities, and influencers onboard, making Moonbeam a key part of what we do.
But it’s more than just building. I’m constantly in talks about new projects in the ecosystem, introducing potential partners and businesses to the network, and diving into other apps within the ecosystem. It’s about growing with Moonbeam, from just watching and investing in Polkadot to really contributing to the ecosystem.
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Experience :
Being impartial and putting emotions and personal options aside in order to take the best course of action is a skill required to be successful in any field, let alone in business development.
That said, during my career I’ve had several opportunities to train and execute on these skills. Being a judge for Startup contests such as Hult Prize ( https://www.hultprize.org/) was one. Besides hult prize, I’ve been evaluating and helping in decision making for investments in a big range of ideas and projects.
A good example would be during my period leading the turnover of a 20M ARR engineering business. During that time, I had to manage expectations, needs and ideas from two different inventors groups that were in fighting terms when I assumed. They didn’t speak to each other and having each 50% equity in the business I had to run decisions by both of them.
To succeed in the endeavor, I had to understand and listen to both parties, be impartial, and negotiate the best scenario for both, without benefiting or harming either side. It was a time-consuming and complex process - coupled with the fact that the business required important and swift decisions, the ability to find unbiased solutions for broad and fair acceptance was essential.
Motivation:
I met Thiago from the Grants Committee back in July 2023. From that point forward, we started a relationship with Moonbeam Foundation that supported us in a lot of ways to accelerate our product development and market launch.
In Moonbeam we’ve found a reliable partner that, differing from other foundations we had contact with, took the time to understand and support us in every way we needed.
We also found an infrastructure built to a lot of our needs, focused on being able to scale to millions of transactions and that understood the potential Brazil represents in the web3 global scenario.
My motivation is to help the Moonbeam community to select and keep supporting the best builders out there, while making sure we get the absolutely best deal flow possible – not only from LATAM, but world wide.
I want to give back to the community that is actively supporting us and to make sure we are able to keep selecting, supporting and attracting the best talents out there.
Also, evaluating and helping business is one of the activities I draw the most joy from.
My goal with this candidacy is to actively support Moonbeam in finding, evaluating and supporting its next batch of market leaders.
Conflicts of interest:
· I don’t have any conflicts of interest as for now. I’ll be fast to point it out if any ever occur
Availability:
I honestly don’t track the amount of time I work with projects I’m involved in. 10+ weekly hours are fine and you can be sure to find me during the night and weekends making sure we deeply and fairly evaluate each and every opportunity presented to the committee
Supporting Information:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/luizoctaviogn/
Thank you in advance for the time dedicated to review my candidacy. I remain at your disposal for further inquiries and if there’s any support I can provide meanwhile.
Best regards,
Luiz
