Meet a Microsoft BizSpark Ambassador: Brazil's Carlos Eduardo Pinto, Pratical One
BizSpark has grown so big that now it's time to say goodbye to a rather limited blogging strategy. It used to be that we would run a couple of interviews every week and then have guest blogs from about three or four Microsoft staff and some startups each month.
But BizSpark continues to grow at triple digit percentages each year. It's successful. People know it's successful, so....
The BizSpark story cannot be just one point of view, and it isn't. With about 50,000 startups in it, it only makes sense to have ambassadors in almost every country we are growing in to showcase what they see in the countries where they innovate and iterate their products and companies. Welcome to our new program. We will be putting blog posts up every week from over 20 countries, where entrepreneurs and developers are creating new stuff. We will have blog posts from Uganda, Tunisia, Brazil, Korea, Mexico, and more.
Today, we turn to Brazil, and Carlos Eduardo Pinto, who has been consistently providing reports from Brazil for his startup Pratical One, which is in the shipping and logistics category. If you think you have a hot startup, and you want to have your startup showcased, or if you want to have your views on the market in your area showcased, you should join Microsoft BizSpark, offering free software, support and visibility for thousands of entrepreneurs around the world.
BizSpark: What was the most difficult challenge your business faced this year?
Carlos Eduardo Pinto:
In 2012 we are facing our first year at Pratical One, what make it a bit harder because there are some questions without answers, such as: early in January we still did not know the value we added to customers; and the software was on it first steps, as we were developing basic functionality and fixing problems.
BizSpark: What problem are you facing now?
Carlos Eduardo Pinto:
Pratical One has shown progress. We know better our place on business world, how to deal with our customers and how to advance on the software. Actually, we face a problem of lack of time because we have limited resources (people) to get things done. There’s a lot of good things happening but we are only two partners (my partner as general manager and selling and me as IT manager and a little bit on marketing), one IT developer and one financial intern.
BizSpark: Who are the people you work with, and can you introduce them to our community?
Carlos Eduardo Pinto:
My partner is Rejane Scholles, who has worked logistics for more than 20 years. She lives in Florianopolis/SC (city in the south of Brazil), which is one of the most exciting cities to a startup in Brazil. In Maersk Line, the biggest container shipping company in the world, Rejane was responsible for the sales department, moving forward on operations and so on.
In 2008, she went to a company called Santos Brasil to implement a cargo shipping terminal at Imbituba.
I also had work for Maersk, where we met. A few years later, Rejane sent me a message, inviting me for a happy hour. In that occasion she told me about the project and invites me to start it together, so Pratical One started to grow.
BizSpark:
What does something in your business vertical need in order for the product to be successful?
Carlos Eduardo Pinto:
Cost reduction in response of an efficient progress. My customers are going to evaluate things such savings, performance increase or better process response time. I need them to understand that my product can be successful to them on these terms .
You can find Carlos on the web here:
And if you want to look into the shipping and logistics software that Pratical One offers you can find them on Facebook here.