Episode 7 - Dr. Newton Campos, Managing Partner of Newton Equity Partners

Dr. Campos is the Country Director of IE University in Brazil, Professor of Entrepreneurship at FGV EAESP, Visiting Professor at IE Business School (Spain) and ITA (Brazil) and Founder and Managing Partner of Newton Equity Partners, a company that invests in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) via Search Funds worldwide.

Professionally, Newton's life is driven by reshaping Capitalism through entrepreneurship and technology, preparing leaders to thrive relentlessly in their quest to solve local and global business, environmental and social challenges.

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Transcript

00:00:02 NICK LALL
through Acquith and Podcast. I'm here today with Dr. Newton Campos.

00:00:09 NICK LALL
He is the country director of IE University in Brazil, a professor of entrepreneurship at FGBA, ESP in Sao Paolo, a visiting professor at IE Business School in Spain and founder and Managing Partner of Newton Equity, a company that invests in SMEs via SearchFunds worldwide. Professionally, Dr. Campos' life is driven by reshaping capitalism to entrepreneurship and technology, preparing leaders to thrive.

00:00:38 NICK LALL
working relentlessly in their quest to solve local and global business environmental and social challenges. So I was really interested in talking to you because I was drawn to SearchFinded Entrepreneurship not only to the financial returns of high expected value due to lower risks compared with other entrepreneurship, but as an MBA grad, I also have somewhat become dissolution with a lot of the other options out there and the opportunity to grow up business, go businesses that are participating in the Main Street economy was exciting for me, but that being said, compared with other options out

00:01:13 NICK LALL
there in the startup protects world where there's a lot of focus on green energy and ESG and impact investing and so on. I haven't seen so much in terms of social or environmental impact via SearchFunds. So I think I'd like to start out just understanding a bit better how you see entrepreneurship reshaping capitalism, particularly SearchFund Entrepreneurship and what value you think it

00:00:38 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:00:53 NEWTON CAMPOS
of high

00:01:01 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:01:22 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:01:40 NEWTON CAMPOS
Hi Nick, hi everyone. First of all, I'm very pleased to be here with you to discuss and share

00:01:47 NEWTON CAMPOS
I love studying capitalism as a

00:01:51 NEWTON CAMPOS
I think it's a fascinating system and unfortunately it's a bit unsustainable by nature. Although I criticize capitalism, but I'm not saying that I'm against it. I do think we can reshape it and we can improve it and actually now is the time to do that.

00:02:11 NEWTON CAMPOS
The century is the century where we have to do that. We have to start doing that in our generation and the next at least couple of generations have to fix this problem with this current

00:02:23 NEWTON CAMPOS
amazing system. I'm a fan of capitalism despite of my criticism and I just think that we can, you know, all of us, we can somehow have a role in improving it. In my case, I just realized that I could use

00:02:39 NEWTON CAMPOS
venture capital, entrepreneurship and ultimately search funds and entrepreneurship to do this. So that's how I exercise, you know, this part of my

00:02:53 NICK LALL


00:02:54 NICK LALL
And so when it comes to search funds, I was wondering what role you see these family businesses or small businesses you talk about in these countries that you're investing in them and how what role that they play in that reshaping of capital is on

00:03:00 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:03:12 NEWTON CAMPOS
see. Well,

00:03:14 NEWTON CAMPOS
in most economies in the world that have that adopt capitalism, you have a large number of small businesses

00:03:23 NEWTON CAMPOS
Depending on the country, you might have 70, 80 percent of the economy run by small and medium-sized enterprises. So the SMEs, they have a very, very, very important role in our economies. And the way I see is that we

00:03:39 NEWTON CAMPOS
to update at least part of these SMEs through entrepreneurship through acquisition. And then search funds can be a really, really nice tool to take young people, you know, willing to change to improve the world. And instead of creating things from scratch, where I think it's also nice, you know, some of these people don't feel so comfortable in creating things

00:04:05 NEWTON CAMPOS
And for those people, I think entrepreneurship through acquisition is an amazing solution to find small and business enterprises that are out there in the market. The ones that have, of course, a potential to thrive. And basically to, you know, together with partners, investors, to make a great job in bringing those small and medium companies to the 21st

00:04:29 NICK LALL
when you're investing in searchers or in acquisitions that the searchers have found, what do you look for in terms of determining whether this is a search or a business that really can create impact? And maybe you could give a few examples of what that impact could look

00:04:45 NEWTON CAMPOS
these are the, these are great questions. You know, a lot of people ask me, how do you select your searchers, right? Because of course, each one of us who invest in search fund, we have our own thesis. And that passed by selecting the right people.

00:05:01 NEWTON CAMPOS
that I love about search funds is precisely the role of the searcher or the entrepreneur is a very, very important

00:05:09 NEWTON CAMPOS
search fund a lot from private equity, from

00:05:13 NEWTON CAMPOS
where of course you do have people as an important ingredient, but in here is

00:05:19 NEWTON CAMPOS
that's why usually I position search funds like somehow in between private equity and venture capital because you have

00:05:27 NEWTON CAMPOS
aspect of the company that you acquire and the venture capital aspect of the entrepreneur invests. And in this case, of course, each one of us believing something. In my case, I believe that the searchers that

00:05:42 NEWTON CAMPOS
so that have this really deep call for building something, for setting up something in a new way, for developing a new product, for exploring a new market, for finding now new suppliers, developing new suppliers, and so on, and so forth, which are the roles of a typical classic entrepreneur. I love to work with entrepreneurs. And so in search funds, I try and my team, we try to do the best to locate within all the people that want to become searcher in a certain

00:06:16 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:06:17 NEWTON CAMPOS
are more entrepreneurs. And not only that, I think we added an aspect in our case that is, okay, entrepreneurs are not enough today for this century because last century they were enough, but this century they're not enough because if you create something, you build up something that is amazing, but it's destroying the planet, it's destroying the air, it's destroying the rivers, you're not amazing anymore, you know, a hundred years ago you were amazing despite of that, but today no, it's like come on, you're destroying the water, I drink, you're destroying the air, I breathe, so

00:06:50 NEWTON CAMPOS
you're not a nice entrepreneur. So in our case, of course, we look forward to locate entrepreneurs that are also very, very responsible and aware of the role in this new century, a century of, you know, not contaminating things. And that's just for saying of the aspect of the environment, if you go all over ESG and all the aspects of ESG, in emerging economies, for example, we have a huge problem with bribery and corruption.

00:07:19 NEWTON CAMPOS
so this is also a big problem that we have to solve this century, and I believe that entrepreneurs

00:07:27 NEWTON CAMPOS
great job in building up companies that don't have to be corrupted, you know. And so to provide you with a few examples that I've seen or I invested myself, for example, a couple of searchers that are, you know, everyone who invested in them and work with them are very happy here from Brazil. They acquired a very small company that rent laptops and smartphones.

00:07:52 NEWTON CAMPOS
mostly B2C. And one of the opportunities for growth that they saw in the very beginning when they acquired was, well, maybe if we do B2B, we could grow faster, right? Actually, the owner who saw the company to us and to them, ready mentioned that.

00:08:09 NEWTON CAMPOS
this was, you know, a typical pivoting that we do in many startups and many projects that in this case worked very well as well. And then, but we were not satisfied of just growing the company. You know, this was, even for them, was not enough.

00:08:24 NEWTON CAMPOS
wanted to grow the company responsibly. And so just to make a long story short, this company today is not only the largest in the country, but by far the most responsible company in the segment. So, you know, we extend the life of all the equipment for much longer

00:08:42 NEWTON CAMPOS
they used to be by the industry. So instead of, you know, having a, let's say, shelf life of eight years for a laptop, we managed to have a 10 year, 11 year shelf life to rent a laptop. So, you know, diminishing, diminishing our impact in, of course, in the environment.

00:08:59 NEWTON CAMPOS
not only that, we also recycle a lot, you know, all the equipment in a very, very systematic way, which are making us to receive, you know, recognition and awards in this area. And not only that, all the other players in the market, they're, wow, now we have to be like that. Because otherwise, you know, these guys are the leaders and they are now, you know, showing how to do this.

00:09:24 NEWTON CAMPOS
one way of doing that is precisely to extending the life of the equipment and properly having them back home to recycle them properly. And now we are even offering the recycling service to other companies. And so this is what I think is fascinating, you know, about this whole thing is being able to take companies that are existing, that they exist.

00:09:47 NEWTON CAMPOS
been doing a job for many years, 20, 30 years. And, with new mindset, new, you know, approaches, we can make these companies, not only not only very big and impactful as a business. also in terms of impact for

00:10:03 NEWTON CAMPOS
Yeah, sorry, if I spoke too much, but I said, connect the example to the

00:10:03 NICK LALL


00:10:05 NICK LALL
I said,

00:10:09 NICK LALL
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think that's, that's amazing. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's great to see your own entrepreneurial journey in Brazil. And I didn't mention previously, but I mean, you're not only have you lived all over the world, you're investing in search funds and many different markets from the United Africa, the Japan.

00:10:19 NEWTON CAMPOS
you

00:10:23 NEWTON CAMPOS
from the United Africa, the Japan. Yeah, if in myself, sometimes I just had a meeting with Japan now, like before talking to you. And it's great, you know, this searcher is coming across many different businesses in Japan.

00:10:37 NEWTON CAMPOS
one of them is to help, you know, recent born babies and their mothers. And it's an amazing business. It can be improved a lot because the 30 year old business that has been done, you know, this more or less the same thing for 30 years.

00:10:50 NEWTON CAMPOS
we were precisely exploring what can we do with that business, right, for the 21st century. If done a great job for the 21st, 20th century, but what can we do now? And we're exploring, for example, the possibility of the company is a specializing in recent moms and babies. And we were thinking, can we adapt some of the products and services to the elderly? Because they also need diapers, they also need care, they also need, you know, and this is big trend all over the

00:11:19 NEWTON CAMPOS
all gonna be old soon. And we will need this care. And so we were exploring this possibility. And imagine if we take a company that lived by serving, you know, babies and now can also serve

00:11:34 NEWTON CAMPOS
from the point of view of impact to

00:11:38 NICK LALL
No, absolutely, is

00:11:42 NICK LALL
true. I think a lot of value that touches people's lives are in these sort of businesses rather than I mean, you hear all the exciting startup ideas that are more in the media and so on. But yeah, a lot of times more, you know, businesses like this actually do have a big impact.

00:11:58 NICK LALL
certainly there's a reward for that financially as well. Exactly. Yeah.

00:12:02 NICK LALL
I've been I just started your book, the the myth of the idea. And in from what I've read so far, you talked a lot about how innovation comes rather than having an idea comes from people who are working within an industry and our understand the market that they're in. And then with the resources they have, they innovate

00:11:53 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:11:55 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:12:01 NEWTON CAMPOS
Exactly.

00:12:29 NICK LALL
out of necessity or just when they see a something that could be solved in a different way. I was wondering how that applies to search for entrepreneurship like when you invest in entrepreneurs, are they people who have are you looking for people who have industry expertise or market expertise or is that something that can be picked up along the way?

00:12:37 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:12:48 NEWTON CAMPOS
Yeah, you could, you could, but not not not necessarily because you know, these whole concept, this whole book, what I tried to do was to make the concept that I'm really passionate about, which is called effectuation. For those of you passionate about entrepreneurship, you should definitely should check should check

00:13:05 NEWTON CAMPOS
and basically I tried to, you know, just make effectuation talk to Ling startup, basically, that's what I tried to do this book. And and by saying that, what I was trying to say is that, you know, 90% of successful businesses they don't come out of a great idea. Some of them yes, but these are, you know, marginal, most amazing businesses that have come across all over the world, they came through the life of a person.

00:13:33 NEWTON CAMPOS
these opportunity crossed the life of the person. So, you know, the, the, if you, if you, if you, let's say, could summarize effectuation in a short way, is like the end,

00:13:47 NEWTON CAMPOS
at great are doing the best they can with the limited resources they have, right? And in here, what I, what I saw in search funds that also made me a compassion about is that, you know, in startups, usually the level of resources you have access to are so limited, so limited, that of course, 95% of the times

00:14:09 NEWTON CAMPOS
even in the few cases where you get financed and you have capital for some reason or the other, and you have access to some financing, even with the money, the money is not enough to buy all the resources you need to make that happen, you know? And so there is a big, let's say misconception on the power of money to actually make something work, right? If it was just by money, Google plus would have succeeded and not Instagram of Facebook,

00:14:42 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:14:43 NEWTON CAMPOS
plus had billions and billions and billions of dollars behind and it still didn't work, you know? So it's not just about the money. And when I come across search funds, what I like is that when you're acquiring a company, you're not just, you're not just acquiring a

00:14:58 NEWTON CAMPOS
acquiring all sort ofchain of companies are becoming particularly much right of using those resources of that company you acquire. And those resources include a lot of stakeholders. Not it does not include only the employees or the collaborators, include also the suppliers, the friends, the partners, the

00:15:17 NEWTON CAMPOS
money to use. One more thing that I the regulators, and so on and so forth. So it's a much better platform for you as an entrepreneur

00:15:26 NEWTON CAMPOS
to start seeing what can you do with the birds you have in hand. In this case, the company is just acquired. Then just with a startup with five people and no resources at all.

00:15:37 NEWTON CAMPOS
And even if you have money, this money run really fast. And in one or two years, you're out of money. And usually to build up a company, you usually need seven, eight, nine, 10 years. And if Capro don't follow you or you don't break even fast, you won't make it. And so that's why I became a fan more and more. I become every day more a fan of search fund. And that's how I correlate that with my book and

00:15:48 NICK LALL


00:16:05 NICK LALL
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Definitely, I think I'm most, yeah, I think as he said, the most startups. I mean, it takes at least seven years before there. You know, multiple a lot of times. So yeah, yeah. Why not take over a business that's already making money and you can innovate while

00:16:10 NEWTON CAMPOS
I think as

00:16:17 NEWTON CAMPOS
yeah,

00:16:21 NEWTON CAMPOS
you know. Even in search funds, even in search funds, what I see is that in the beginning, you don't have so much room for

00:16:29 NEWTON CAMPOS
know, because you painted that of the acquisition, you're learning about the business, you are, you know, like discovering the possibilities. And so you don't have yet room to innovate in the

00:16:42 NEWTON CAMPOS
one, two or three years, I would say. But then, you know, after you, you're already

00:16:48 NEWTON CAMPOS
with the business, with the people, with the customers and so on and so forth, then if you are an

00:16:54 NEWTON CAMPOS
you won't be satisfied. You're saying, okay, now I understand this whole thing. Now I know everyone. Now I know the industry, the segment and so on. And how can I use my background, my history, my network and these environment that I

00:17:10 NEWTON CAMPOS
right? So that's why I'm not so concerned with the past background of the search. Of course, some degree yes. If he or she worked for consulting or for bank or for private equity, et cetera, something comes. If he or she is an engineer or a lawyer, you know, there's something

00:17:32 NEWTON CAMPOS
But, you know, these will only have used usually after two or three years after

00:17:38 NEWTON CAMPOS
Because during this first two years, it's mostly technical job of being a manager and it's a highly,

00:17:46 NEWTON CAMPOS
on hard work

00:17:49 NICK LALL


00:17:50 NICK LALL
Sure, no, that's really interesting. I

00:17:53 NICK LALL
an example of this already talking about the search fund in Japan that you're working with. But I was wondering in terms of innovation in the companies that you invest in, how hands on are you in terms of providing support, acting as, using your research as a professor to help the search is drawn to the industry

00:18:12 NEWTON CAMPOS
Yeah, you know, of course, you might imagine my time is really limited. So it's hard to think in a way, I keep thinking about that on how to scale

00:18:25 NEWTON CAMPOS
At the moment, I don't have this problem because I've done 15 investments around the world so far. And I talked to about, I don't know, a hundred to 150 searchers per year,

00:18:39 NEWTON CAMPOS
And I can

00:18:41 NEWTON CAMPOS
If search fund goes mainstream, which might happen in the next years, then I will for sure have a problem in the sense

00:18:51 NEWTON CAMPOS
I will have to talk to, I don't know, instead of just a hundred to 500 searchers per year and maybe, and maybe, you know, like support 60 or 70 searchers and then time becomes a constraint. So it's not only a matter of assembling a team around me, which I'm doing and I think helps. But also, you know, making the processes around the search

00:19:14 NEWTON CAMPOS
much more automatized and scalable. So I give an example. I just last year spent like a whole week in a studio recording a course on Udemy, on fundamentals of search funds.

00:19:27 NEWTON CAMPOS
So, you know, that's typically, it's a three hour course, but that's typically, you know, a kind of conversation that a searcher would have with me on a chat like this, right? And, but that's now a course that I spend some time, you know, and it's there. So three hour course where after that, you know all the all the basics of

00:19:48 NEWTON CAMPOS
And now it was contacted by another platform saying, oh, would you be willing to do a more advanced version of that? So yeah, sure. So

00:19:59 NEWTON CAMPOS
we have plenty of to be able to, you know, to supply the demand. And I'm, think I'm ready for that. But, you know, for the counseling and board meetings and so on, I don't know. I think that's more human thing. And that's, that will have to be done by a team of people that believe in the same dreams, you know. This team I'm assembling right now.

00:20:20 NICK LALL
Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's exciting to see the development of the, the search fund you can assist on, I think. Yeah. Yeah, these sort of courses and someone in startups there there, but it's, yeah, I think it'll, it'll, it'll, as you said, as search funds become more mainstream, it'll, there'll be more tools to automate and at least save some time. Yeah, that's, that's really cool that you are

00:20:22 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:20:26 NEWTON CAMPOS
Yeah,

00:20:33 NEWTON CAMPOS
as

00:20:43 NICK LALL
the same values, I

00:20:44 NEWTON CAMPOS
Oh, you're too, you're too with this, these amazing

00:20:48 NICK LALL
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so, yeah, hopefully. No, I mean, yeah, it's, it's great. I

00:20:55 NICK LALL
that both of the more we can do to spread search funds as an alternative career path. And I really think that if it can be something that is also viewed as a way to create social and environmental impact that will just be amazing. And I think it will create a lot of impact because it's something that's much more tangible and so on.

00:21:14 NICK LALL
I think that something like to focus on more, which you did, you started going into was the, the you are working a lot of these emerging economies. I was wondering if you could talk a bit more about your international experience, how that informed you and then also how you see search funds developing in these countries, because it is still, I mean, it's new everywhere, but

00:20:53 NEWTON CAMPOS
I

00:20:56 NEWTON CAMPOS
can do to

00:21:08 NEWTON CAMPOS
create a lot of impact

00:21:24 NEWTON CAMPOS
talk a

00:21:34 NEWTON CAMPOS
it is

00:21:40 NICK LALL
concept.

00:21:43 NICK LALL


00:21:43 NEWTON CAMPOS
Yeah, no, let me see. One thing that, you know, really caught my

00:21:50 NEWTON CAMPOS
I did my MBA some 20 plus years ago was that I would say, I don't know, 90% of the cases were from the US. I studied in Europe, but you know, the cases were typical, you know, HBS cases and from US

00:22:05 NEWTON CAMPOS
is not the

00:22:07 NEWTON CAMPOS
I teach those MBAs and I try not to use so many American

00:22:12 NEWTON CAMPOS
But you know, that that influenced me a lot during my PhD, because then in my PhD, I said, you know what? I will study entrepreneurship for emerging economies because it's so different. It's so different that, you know, those cases, half of those cases don't apply that I had in my, you know, in my MBA back then. And so what I decided to do was precisely to study entrepreneurship in emerging

00:22:31 NICK LALL


00:22:40 NEWTON CAMPOS
teaching there for more than 10 years now and one of the things that really still catch my attention is the number of opportunities in emerging economies. It's that they are huge, you know, I

00:22:55 NEWTON CAMPOS
the level of development of most industries in emerging economies compared to developed economies, there is a huge gap. And of course, there are reasons for that. And there is a lot of obstacles. That's why you don't have all the, all the, you know, products and services that it would like to have. But also there are a lot of

00:23:16 NEWTON CAMPOS
And so, you know, depending on how you enter in a market and reach market and with, you

00:23:23 NEWTON CAMPOS
you enter, you might, you know, have a really, really great impact in that specific geography. So, you know, I tried to combine those two things and say, okay, don't invest only developed economies as

00:23:39 NEWTON CAMPOS
invested in

00:23:41 NEWTON CAMPOS
to do a my portfolio, half, half, half in strong currencies and half in emerging economy currencies. But what I see out of this practice so far is that larger opportunities are in emerging economies, usually. I mean, you do have opportunities in developed, of course, but usually the growth you expect from a company acquire in Europe or in North America is usually on average is smaller than the growth you would expect in an emerging economy.

00:24:10 NEWTON CAMPOS
And that's I think the

00:24:12 NEWTON CAMPOS
it, you know, is you to locate a nice market, a nice searcher. And then, of course, locate a nice company to acquire with and with nice co investors. And then, you know, the

00:24:25 NICK LALL


00:24:26 NICK LALL
And in terms of the searchers that you invest in in the emerging markets, I'm assuming they would be people who are already from those countries are living there or what, what you look for in the searchers that you've been invested

00:24:36 NEWTON CAMPOS
in. Yeah, most of them is a good question because you see searchers, for example, from emerging economies looking for companies and developed economies. I see I see a good number of those, but you rarely see a searcher from a developed economy searching companies in a developing economy.

00:24:55 NEWTON CAMPOS
So that happens because, of course, as developing The institutional framework is less developed. People are it's hard to navigate and so it's easier a person who is in a more Mass-seeing environment to perform in a more organized environment than one that is used to perform in an organized environment to move to a disorganized environment, you know?

00:25:17 NEWTON CAMPOS
that. So but you know usually what we investors usually we tend to do is to invest in Nationals of that country. That's the most standard way of doing so you've got invest in Egypt usually I just invested a couple months ago in a searcher from Egypt and he's Egyptian and he grew up in Egypt You know, but he also had some international experience and now he's right now searching for a company to acquire in Egypt So and the same in all the other countries Invest usually the nationals are from those countries.

00:25:48 NEWTON CAMPOS
course, I would understand

00:25:51 NEWTON CAMPOS
now there is a searcher. I didn't invest in him But I've searched from Portugal trying to locate a company in the UK and his amazing searcher I think he will succeed and you you see those patterns also taking place and I could eventually support some of those Searchers as well. It's just that today my practice is very limited to my own very limited resources and so I'm very picky and Usually out of I don't know 15 searchers that I talk I invest in only one so far today

00:26:21 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:26:21 NICK LALL
Sure, and and you are raising your own fund to yeah have a to be able to invest

00:26:28 NEWTON CAMPOS
this was you know last year I took a week off to the you know to the to the jungle here in Brazil just to stay I like to do that sometimes and I spent a week I wrote my book this way by the way in this very same place It's a you know a hut in the the top of a mountain a very isolated area

00:26:46 NEWTON CAMPOS
place to be and I last year I did that again just to think about search funds Would be my role and what I'm doing with all that and the fund came I wouldn't say came in that week But it became really strong in that week in

00:27:04 NEWTON CAMPOS
that if my dream is to support

00:27:09 NEWTON CAMPOS
to have a big impact

00:27:12 NEWTON CAMPOS
to

00:27:13 NEWTON CAMPOS
sustainable capitalism Then I have to accelerate my impact, you know to help them to make more impact and so if I was going to grow organically with my own limited resources I Calculated that in five or ten years time. I would have impacted let's say I don't know

00:27:33 NEWTON CAMPOS
50,000 people and I didn't like the number, you know, I said no 50,000 in among 10 billion. It's not enough So I said if I want to accelerate that an impact I don't know 500 million people

00:27:46 NEWTON CAMPOS
300 million people or 100 million people or one billion people I need capital, you know

00:27:54 NEWTON CAMPOS
as I've been researching and working with private equity and venture capital for some many years I know there are plenty of capital that has been misused in the world plenty, you know So why not, you know, collecting some of these capital to do, you know, this Practice and that's how I you know, just decided okay. I will fundraise and I'm doing that right now and And then I'll find some LPs some investors that will that will perform these let's say Task with me along with me. I already have a number of them, you know

00:28:31 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:28:32 NEWTON CAMPOS
but I didn't finish I still I don't know when I'm gonna finish. I'm not in hurry I want the best investors that dream the same dream I'm

00:28:43 NICK LALL
to that last point in terms of the investors are there is there any criteria you look for like in terms of their expectations for an exit or there

00:28:54 NICK LALL
you mean

00:28:54 NEWTON CAMPOS
investors search for investors.

00:28:57 NICK LALL
who will invest in your fund like okay Okay, okay.

00:28:59 NEWTON CAMPOS
okay Okay, okay. Yeah, well these yes, these investors the ones I'm looking for all of them basically they have they're usually they are family offices and they they generate They generate their resources through interponorship. So this is the characteristic that I I'm looking for I want Families or resources they the fund is not big.

00:29:23 NEWTON CAMPOS
I don't think it's it's a big it's gonna be so hard to raise Of course first time fund is always hard always hard, but in this case, I don't know I see I see the project very rounded and I'm looking for families that have a You know the origin of the resources come from

00:29:43 NEWTON CAMPOS
many of them and that they believe in the they want to believe and they want to invest in the new generation of Entrepreneurs, I think that's the best connection I can make is a you know intreponereal money investing in entrepreneurs Right and an acquiring small family businesses or small businesses from Emily's that are also entrepreneurs. So it's like, you know, it's it's feeding the system by itself, you know,

00:30:07 NICK LALL
Yeah. And I think those would

00:30:10 NICK LALL
to work with like they'd

00:30:12 NEWTON CAMPOS
that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And they see and they see the power of real economy

00:30:18 NEWTON CAMPOS
the investors, there are more, you know, opportunistic investors, you know, they're just looking usually for return. And that's their main focus by far. And I'm not saying I'm not looking for return. I think returns I'm having so far and investments are made are amazing. Last time I calculated was like 50% a year. So I'm very happy with my own, you know,

00:30:42 NEWTON CAMPOS
that we I can pass some of that return to fund.

00:30:47 NEWTON CAMPOS
not my main goal. And that's that's not the main goal of vending entrepreneur, you know, that good

00:30:55 NEWTON CAMPOS
I know they're hard to come across a surcher that or entrepreneur, sorry, that that ultimately would just want to make

00:31:03 NEWTON CAMPOS
Definitely. The money is a

00:31:06 NICK LALL
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that's

00:31:06 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:31:10 NICK LALL
When we were talking, you spoke about life as a millionaire and not as a millionaire. Maybe you know, you know, you

00:31:10 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:31:19 NEWTON CAMPOS
I mean, the

00:31:19 NICK LALL
I

00:31:21 NEWTON CAMPOS
see me, but I I'm almost 50 years old. And but I don't know why maybe genetics keep myself relatively fresh, you know. And so most people say I don't look like I'm

00:31:36 NEWTON CAMPOS
And and so I'm saying that because I lived with this guy. Yeah. I never lived so many things in my life. So many things already. Of course, 50 you lived many

00:31:47 NEWTON CAMPOS
you know, I feel like I gain, you know, like an extra life from the video games, you know, it's like, oh, you've

00:31:55 NEWTON CAMPOS
you know, I've lived in so many places and I've done so many things like, wow, I got an extra life, you know,

00:32:02 NEWTON CAMPOS
game. And so once in my life, I was, I was a millionaire. And so what I told you that day is that, you know, I thought that being a millionaire would be incredible back then.

00:32:16 NEWTON CAMPOS
not, let's say myself a millionaire, but I was working with my dad. I wasn't in my early 20s. And we we managed to develop a product that was amazing and became the reference in the market was a

00:32:29 NEWTON CAMPOS
software everywhere, everywhere. He became the standard of the industry. And so, you know, and I was the, he's accountant. And so we have just a small business regular as usual. And suddenly this business started to make money and money and money and money. And it was, you know, the bank account every day I would look and there was more money in it. And so it's like, wow, this is really crazy. And so for, I would say, some five years, let's say, more or less, we lived like millionaires, right, our

00:32:58 NEWTON CAMPOS
what I found out was that it was not as good as I imagined, you

00:33:03 NEWTON CAMPOS
difference would be so much bigger than I thought

00:33:07 NEWTON CAMPOS
I became a bit disappointed, you know, of course, traveling business always and eating the best restaurants is

00:33:14 NEWTON CAMPOS
And having the access to the best hospitals, this is always great. But it was not much more than that, you

00:33:22 NEWTON CAMPOS
not so much more than that. And so I was like a bit disappointed like, wow, it's this, it's like this to be a millionaire or the son of a millionaire.

00:33:31 NEWTON CAMPOS
know, I thought it would be more exciting, you know, of course, it can do different things, but travel to different places. But, you know, after a couple of years, it's enough, right?

00:33:41 NEWTON CAMPOS
so we ended up having big problems with this company. And eventually this business went bankrupt some years after. And so we stopped being millionaire after some years. And we just came back to be normal, you know,

00:33:56 NEWTON CAMPOS
class people. And but what I think that taught me a lot, you know, that whatever I was searching for was not the money. It was something that it was much more related to building things, to solving things, to love. Love is amazing, you know. And when I say love in the in the ample in the in the wide meaning of it, you know,

00:34:21 NEWTON CAMPOS
life, but love your work, love your friends, love, you know, your city, love, you know, it's it's really powerful. And so if you build yourself career or life or, you know, find jobs that allows you to love, that's what actually is it's great, right? And so at these search funds history, what I embarked precisely because I think that not only of course we can make money.

00:34:50 NEWTON CAMPOS
are I am make money, I cannot

00:34:53 NEWTON CAMPOS
of that, we can do things that we

00:34:56 NICK LALL


00:34:57 NICK LALL
mean at the end of the day, And money's one thing to focus on, but like, your human and life is lived through human

00:35:05 NEWTON CAMPOS
Yeah, and time flies. And I'll be dead in 30 years. Exactly. If I'm lucky, if I'm lucky, I'll be dead in 30 years. So it's like, now I'm starting to consider to count my age reward. I know, I'm

00:35:19 NEWTON CAMPOS
So it's like, now I'm 30 and next year will be 29, you know? And then 28 and then 27, because these are the last, I don't know, 30 years that are ahead of me. Yeah. And it's funny to think this way.

00:35:32 NICK LALL
Well, you never know. Maybe it's like, well, it should be better 50 years, 100 years. I don't

00:35:38 NEWTON CAMPOS
know. I don't know. I don't know if I want to leave the 100

00:35:41 NICK LALL
Sure. Sure. Yeah. There's something about life

00:35:45 NEWTON CAMPOS
finite. Yeah. And it's

00:35:48 NEWTON CAMPOS
But anyway, you know, it's funny how to connect all of this in this case, specifically with search

00:35:56 NICK LALL
So I guess you did mention that impacting 50,000 out of 10 billion didn't seem enough for you.

00:35:56 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:36:05 NICK LALL
let's say 30 years from now, you've accomplished everything you wanted to accomplish and made the impact you wanted to make. What would that look like if you could? If you could.

00:36:07 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:36:14 NEWTON CAMPOS
Yeah. Yeah. Well, if I could

00:36:18 NEWTON CAMPOS
here with you, it would be maybe, I don't know, in 15 years from now, maybe 20 to have a really, really great, amazing platform to support family businesses and

00:36:32 NEWTON CAMPOS
to update their

00:36:35 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:36:36 NEWTON CAMPOS
And at a

00:36:39 NEWTON CAMPOS
And then after so many years of

00:36:44 NEWTON CAMPOS
being improved in practice and pushing capitalism to perform better, you know, every day with those people along, along with those

00:36:55 NEWTON CAMPOS
Maybe what I would love to do perhaps is to take some years off just to write or to think and to

00:37:05 NEWTON CAMPOS
what comes after

00:37:08 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:37:09 NEWTON CAMPOS
know? And for the next, I don't know, 100 years from now or something like that. And then I think would be satisfied to, you know, after, if I'm able to dedicate and the last 10 years of my life writing or recording something related to that thinking, you know, and how humans will have to coordinate better, you know, in the next 100

00:37:32 NEWTON CAMPOS
a harmony

00:37:34 NICK LALL


00:37:35 NEWTON CAMPOS
think that

00:37:38 NICK LALL
Amazing. Yeah. The fascinating discussion really was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for

00:37:43 NEWTON CAMPOS
No, no, you're welcome. You're welcome. Was it pleasure? Sorry if I was too theoretical or too academic, but it's part of my practice.

00:37:52 NICK LALL
No, I mean, it's actually, it's nice because sometimes these conversations can kind of get repetitive where I'll talk to a searcher and I'll be like, what's your industry thesis and so on. It's nice to get something else. You're welcome. It was a pleasure.

00:38:07 NICK LALL


00:38:09 NICK LALL
I will maybe take me a couple of weeks to edit it, but I'll send it to you and then once I get your approval posted.

00:38:16 NEWTON CAMPOS
I hope it was something like you expected or your audience would expect.

00:38:23 NICK LALL
No, I think people will really enjoy it. And again, I think it's a really important topic. Yeah. Very cool. Very glad to have you on.

00:38:26 NEWTON CAMPOS
a

00:38:29 NEWTON CAMPOS
Very glad to have you on. Now, thank you. Thank

00:38:32 NICK LALL


00:38:32 NICK LALL
And let's keep in touch.

00:38:34 NEWTON CAMPOS
Absolutely.

00:38:36 NICK LALL
Let's definitely keep in touch. Count on me for any other thing. I'll do that. I'll do

00:38:37 NEWTON CAMPOS


00:38:41 NEWTON CAMPOS
okay. Okay. I can look for a if you want a discount code. I know I might have that if I enter in

00:38:50 NEWTON CAMPOS
if you want. Sure. That'd be great. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And send to you. It's I think it's a code that you put there and I don't know what percentage of discount it gives. Sure.

00:39:03 NICK LALL
I find the highest one. Yeah. No, that would be great. I appreciate it. Yeah. I appreciate you being on this.