Creating a billion memorable experiences in healthcare.
This is the dream of Brazilian entrepreneur Antônio Ermírio de Moraes Neto. After leading Vox Capital, the pioneer Brazilian VC fund focused on impact investing, he moved to the Bay Area to study and is now launching his new venture XP Health, a startup aimed at leveraging top quality medical expertise and machine learning to create the best express experience in vision care inside companies.
One of “25 Brazilians to Watch”, by the Financial Times, and among the 100 Most Influential People in Brazil, Antonio talks about social impact, entrepreneurship, his international documentary showcasing alternatives to current capitalist structures that tackle social inequality.
BayBrazil: What was your inspiration to launch Vox Capital?
Antonio: My main inspiration was my personal dream and goal to impact 1 million people in 10 years, that I set myself when I was 20 years old.
BayBrazil: What are the main challenges in creating Brazil’s first impact investment funds?
Antonio: It was a massive challenge, in the first place because no one believed in us. In fact, looking back, it was a pretty wild (or even crazy) idea: 3 young entrepreneurs, with little investment experience, trying to raise a $30-40M venture capital fund to do impact investing in Brazil. But eventually, hard work and resilience made us go through the toughest moments and make a dent in Brazil’s impact investing sector.
BayBrazil: Since you started working with social impact, how did this field develop in Brazil comparing the rest of the world? Are there statistics about social impact entrepreneurs in Brazil?
Antonio: Since 2009, when we stared Vox Capital, Brazil has taken a relevant role in the international impact investing sector. For example, the Brazilian Impact Investing Task Force was able to directly influence public policies and large corporations in the country and was invited to be part of the Global Impact Investing Steering Group, initiated by Sir Ronald Cohen with the G8 countries.
BayBrazil: What do you look for in a company when evaluating an investment? Any advice for social entrepreneurs?
Antonio: Being now an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and seeing the fierce competition here, my main advice for you to differentiate yourself is: get out of the building, get to know deeply your users/beneficiaries and solve problems that (really) exist! So many companies and social projects get started based on superficial problems, that our society doesn’t really need to be solved. Focus on novel solutions for the biggest challenges of our century.
BayBrazil: What tech innovation do you believe brought the most positive social impact?
Antonio: Thinking about the past, the econometric studies show that broadband connection and mobile phones had the highest impact in GDP per capita within emerging countries. Looking ahead, artificial intelligence (machine learning and deep learning mainly) will have the biggest impact, especially with applications on healthcare, education and financial inclusion.
BayBrazil: What are the interesting areas going forward in the social impact industry?
Antonio: I’ve been totally nosing down on the healthcare industry, so I’m very biased in this direction. Here, digital health, advanced diagnostics, artificial intelligence for imaging diagnostics and telemedicine are some of the areas I’m particularly interested in.
BayBrazil: The documentary A New Capitalism shows that profit and social impact are possible. What inspired you to produce the documentary? What are the outcomes you hope the movie will achieve?
Antonio: My early dream of impact 1 million people was also the inspiration for the movie. With Vox, the portfolio companies have impacted over 3 million people. Now, with A New Capitalism we can’t get the data of how many people watched the movie on Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. But it is very gratifying to know it is available in 195 countries for over 120 million Netflix members. More importantly, is to hear from so many people how the documentary changed their mindset about profit and impact and how inspired they were while watching.
BayBrazil: Tell us about your new endeavor, XP Health.
Antonio: XP Health has as a long term dream to create a billion memorable experiences in healthcare. And this because today healthcare – worldwide – is mostly a broken process: many times inaccessible, not transparent, costly and with dramatically bad user experience. We are starting with vision care, creating the best and most convenient experience for patients to take care of their eye health. It could be the difference between seeing or going blind.
BayBrazil: What attracted you to Silicon Valley? Do you have plans to go back to live in Brazil?
Antonio: To achieve this new and incredibly challenging goal, there’s no better place than Silicon Valley. Of course, with the exception of China, there’s no other place that is so competitive than here. But that’s a big part of the fun of creating something really novel that has never been done before. Yes, my family and I will go back to Brazil, eventually.
BayBrazil: What was your inspiration to launch Vox Capital?
Antonio: my main inspiration was my personal dream and goal to impact 1 million people in 10 years, that I set myself when I was 20 years old.
