Cristiano Rocha is a seasoned engineer who started his career as a Master’s Student in Artificial Intelligence. Fresh out of university, he bootstraped his first company for about 8 years, back when venture capital in Brazil was almost unheard of. As a young founder, he established a reputation as a knowledge management evangelist and community management especialist.

Almost by accident, Cristiano also became an expert in M&A, when he merged with another 2 companies in order to gain strength and get funding. This 3-way joint venture was called Affero Lab, which grew into the largest Corporate Training company in Latin America and was eventually sold in 2015.

A hiatus got Cristiano into angel investing, but he missed the thrill of building. About a year after the exit, BizCapital was born to help Brazilian small businesses fund their operations in a fast and simple way through an online lending platform. And this time, they decided to play the traditional stage-financing VC game.

In this episode, Cristiano compares his fundraising experiences and shares a few lessons he's learned as a second-time founder. Stick around to learn:

• How you can think of M&A as a viable growth strategy
• The thought process behind going down the venture route
• A few good practices around managing communities
• And how technical founders can not only build the best products, but also the winning products

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