Check Chapter 2 - Catching Stars
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It took me 34 years to find the courage to start writing and sharing my opinions and experiences in public. However, I believe, this is the right time to start a new chapter in my life.
My career has been a crazy ride so far. If you look at it, I only started working 14 years ago, although it feels like I already have at least 30 years worth of experience.
Since I began , I discovered so many passions and gained a bunch of different skills.
My degree was in Industrial Design and my master’s was in Marketing Management. During the learning process, I fell in love with branding, human behavior, and business management. I then decided to study 3D ,Compositing, Web Design and I also took PHP classes.
I truly believe all of these experiences helped me build what I think is my most successful project so far — Trojan Horse was a Unicorn.
The THU 2013 Experience from Trojan Horse was a Unicorn on Vimeo.
Yes, Trojan Horse was a Unicorn was created after 14 years of a few victories and a lot of losses.
I worked in different fields, from culture, to sports and education. Some of my victories included founding a company (Docta), buying another one (BLKO), and co-founding another four (Kombio, Yellow Mammoth, Trojan Horse was a Unicorn, and Odd School).
I also had the honor of being part of the Management board of Vitoria de Setúbal, the sports club from my home city. I was one of the youngest managers in the history of the Portuguese premier league.
Then came the failures. I went bankrupt by the age of 27, had to close down two companies, Docta and Kombio, and sell my share at Odd School.
During all these stages, I met incredible people who inspired me and made me a better person and businessman, like my lifetime business partner David Ramalho, THU’s co- founder Inês Santos Silva, or, more recently, my mentor Scott Ross.
I made a lot of mistakes and dealing with these mistakes was the hardest part. I failed so many times, but I learned from what I did wrong and used all this knowledge every time I started a new project or had a new idea. And yes, several times I thought about giving up. A lot of times I thought about how easy my life could be if was working at someone else’s company, without all the concerns related to running my own business.
So why am I writing all of this now? Because with THU I felt it was important to explain my background to everyone, and try to explain why THU had the success my other projects didn’t have.
THU is a combination of everything I learned in all my career so far. Even if I didn’t expect the success we’re having, I was confident about what we were doing because of my past experiences. However, now the funny thing is that THU grew into areas and fields I myself have no experience in, which means, almost everything I do today, is completely new to me.
2016 is a new chapter for me, but this time, I want to be open about it and share this process with everybody and, hopefully, help someone learn from my achievements and my mistakes.
Trojan Horse Was a Unicorn is only possible because of the support of many friends that I call “Tribe”. So it’s my turn to give back, by sharing with everyone who is interested, what it’s really like to build THU 2016.
For the next 6 months, I’ll be publishing some articles on Medium (a really cool tool). Be sure to check them out and share your thoughts with the THU tribe.
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