Boy who sold coconuts becomes CEO of metaverse startup – 06/19/2023 – Market

Created in 2022 to replace the physical model and decorated apartments, the startup Metamazon Solutions makes a virtual replica of houses and buildings, in which the consumer can interact on any device, or in person, with virtual reality glasses.

According to CEO Alder Lima, 40, technology reduces costs, and architects and engineers can more easily detect design flaws in projects.

The company, already the largest in the segment, was singled out by Exame magazine as a highlight at WebSummit Rio, a technology megaconference, and by Pequenas Empresas e Grandes Negócios, as a bet to improve civil construction.

In his report, Alder says that he faced resistance from entrepreneurs to invest in a business led by an LGBTQIA+ and black person and racism in the technology sector, which is mostly white.

“I am the son of a bus driver and a seamstress, we lived in Alcântara, in the São Gonçalo neighborhood, in Rio. I was always encouraged to undertake because of my parents. We were going through a very complicated financial moment, and the solution was to sell things.

I was the youngest of three brothers, the youngest, and I sold coconut drinks and popsicles. This was a very important trigger for my desire to sell and do something different — I wanted to change my family’s reality.

This became even stronger when a colleague of my mother’s, white, said that ‘Whoever was born to be a floor cloth will never be a carpet’. I remember my mother crying and situations in malls where we were persecuted and, many times, mistreated.

I promised myself that when I grew up, I would leave home and change my parents’ reality, and I would be someone different, I would circulate in these environments.

As my mother is from Minas Gerais and dreamed of returning to her home state, I decided to try life in Uberlândia (537 km from Belo Horizonte).

I went looking for any opportunity that would give me income. I was a telemarketing operator for a few months, I looked for a job with neighbors, and one of them had a company that made chairs and tables for rent at parties. Over time, I opened a ceremonial and events company in Uberlândia.

The business was going well, but had to close due to a supplier who failed to deliver items for several weddings and walked away with the money. I had to pay back all the couples, and I ran out of money.

I had depression, intensified by the separation from my then-partner. Months later, I met an acquaintance who worked at a TV station and proposed that I participate in a project.

There, I encountered even more difficulties due to racism —in a travel program, I started to access places where the black body is not present and is not welcome. Many did not want my presence, nor did the sponsorship work, and the project ended months later.

It was a second blow, I questioned my ability, depression appeared again.

I went to work collecting debts for a technology company, and I grew up there: I held the position of supervisor, worked in HR and was a regional director. I learned what managing was and decided to start a third endeavor.

I set up Ar360, a company accredited by Google that facilitated the creation of virtual tours in the map application, in Fortaleza (CE) and, due to the lack of this sector in the Northeast, it was a success, even in the pandemic.

I was thinking about internationalizing the business, but once again, a blow – an employee diverted money from operations, and debts appeared. I was called a ‘thief’, and they said that ‘it could only be black’ to let such a thing go down the drain.

With no friends and no way to get back on my feet, I even considered taking my own life. I thought about going back to Rio and my parents agreed, if I ‘give up’ being LGBT, as if that were possible.

I became a tech enthusiast, and when the metaverse came along, former clients and colleagues asked me about this new industry. I went to Rio Branco (AC), with the help of a friend, to give a lecture.

With the metaverse boom, I thought about rebuilding my presence in technology with what I already had from the Ar360. Mariana Tavares, my current partner, contributed investments to Metamazon Solutions, founded in Acre.

Despite the high cost, I thought of creating a solution to replace the physical model so that the consumer could enter the decorated room and visualize his possible home without the company spending a lot of material.

And then comes the racism, which prevents us from opening doors with companies, from negotiating with some bosses who simply wouldn’t let me present the project. In one situation, they authorized the presence of Mariana —who is white—, but not mine.

Even with several ‘no’s’, I came to São Paulo, where things changed radically, especially when more businessmen started to look at the initiative and invited us to the Web Summit.

And it was in São Paulo that I understood the weight of racism in my initiatives, especially when I got to know the Casa Preta Hub, from Instituto Feira Preta. There I became aware of how few black startup leaders are and I had contact with other innovative black people.

It is at Casa Preta Hub that, for the first time, I felt like everyone else and realized that many of my falls involved a much deeper issue — racism. It is there that I always make friends, get inspired, motivate myself, and discover that my fight was incomplete because I didn’t think about racial issues.

Metamazon Solutions is a success, even with all the difficulty of being an entrepreneur as a black person and we are in the process of moving our headquarters to São Paulo.

Today I look back and think about how racism puts us in the position of agreeing to certain things in order to fit into society, and this degrades us as black people.

I still haven’t been able to fully improve my parents’ lives, despite the distance for being LGBTQIA+, but now, with stability, I must accomplish this in a short time. From then on, I don’t expect anything but a fight, but unlike before, I manage to join forces with those who are going through very similar challenges.

Here, I have mine.”