Building a FinTech Powerhouse in Brazil: Pedro Góes, CEO of Paytrack, on Travel, Expense & Growth

Brian Samson (00:01.651)
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast. I’m Brian Sampson, your host. First, I want to thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, PLUGG.Tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US companies. If you’re interested in the world of fintech in Latin America, especially Brazil, this is going to be a great episode for you.

I have Pedro Gois, the CEO of Paytrack, and we’re going to have a great conversation. Pedro, thanks so much for joining us today.

Pedro Góes (00:37.89)
Hi, Brian. Thank you for the invitation. I hope we’ll have a good chat here.

Brian Samson (00:44.023)
So as we let off, Paytrack, it’s a really interesting fintech that is for the Brazilian market. Tell us more, like, what does it do? What does the product, products do? Who is it for? All that stuff.

Pedro Góes (01:02.062)
So, Paytrack is an all-in-one solution for travel and expense management. We help medium, large and enterprise companies to spend better their money. So, from the beginning, when we have a booking, travel, so the hotel, the flights, the car rental, from this part to the travel,

until the last part where you have to do the accountability of the expenses related to this travel. And not only travels, but also some department spends, we also help the companies to control, to manage, and to have an easier way to do all of this. As you said, as a FinTech, we also provide cards where the company can use

to manage and to spend their monies. So it’s truly all in one solution for Brazilian and not only Brazilian but Latin America companies.

Brian Samson (02:13.408)
interesting. So your customer base is expanded outside of Brazil.

Pedro Góes (02:17.964)
Yes, yes. We have some customers outside from Brazil. First, of course, there were Brazilian companies that started to use Paytrak in other parts of the world. As we are helping enterprise companies, this is really common. They have subsidiaries around the world and Paytrak usually is the solution for all the companies.

Brian Samson (02:44.969)
Interesting. If I may ask about currency, because it’s much more complicated when you have multiple currencies that are in the system and sometimes you have volatility in currency as well. Can you talk about how Paytrak thinks about that?

Pedro Góes (03:01.294)
Yeah, actually, first of all, Paytrak have to be prepared to work outside from Brazil. So our card solution is able to help companies not only in Brazil, but in other parts of the world. And when we think about a currency here, actually, we see it more as a problem of our customers, because the Brazilian companies that are traveling abroad to do deals

to provide services and stuff like that that are suffering a lot nowadays because of the value of our currency of real, which is our money. So we’ve seen it. We’ve seen that the international travels have decreased a little bit in the last year. But unfortunately, the companies have to do their business and they will have to travel again.

So it’s not that good when you have this occurrence, you know, as we have in it now.

Brian Samson (04:08.853)
Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. you know, I, I’m the first to say, think travel is recovering. People are excited to go to conferences. They’re excited to visit customers. They’re on a lot more airplanes. How did Paytrack navigate COVID? That was a very, very turbulent.

Pedro Góes (04:27.726)
Cool, cool. Yeah, first, it’s true what you were saying. The companies, people realize that, of course, we can do a lot of stuff like we’re doing now in a virtual space. This is awesome. But there are a lot of business services that it’s really important to be connected with your customer, with your partner, and you will have to travel to be there, period.

Brian Samson (04:41.184)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (04:56.014)
and the companies are coming back and the volume of travel inside Brazil is bigger than it was before COVID. So when we were at the COVID, people start to talk, the world will be completely different. Nobody will touch each other again. No, the things are coming back. Companies are bringing their employees to the headquarters again. So we’ve seen this movement.

that a lot of things changed, but a lot of things came back to the regular way, the normal way, the way it were before. So this is one point. The second point about your question, Paytrak has a really strong solution for expense management, right? So during the COVID, a lot of those big companies stopped to travel, but they still had some

expenses to be managed. As we are working with big companies, they didn’t stop their operations. Sometimes they were not traveling by plane, but they were using cars to get to the customer, to do the service and stuff like that. So, of course, that we were impacted as a company. Our revenue had some damage. But as we

Brian Samson (05:57.015)
Hmm.

Brian Samson (06:04.257)
Hmm.

Pedro Góes (06:24.034)
we have a good portfolio as customers and their operations didn’t stop, they just changed it. We could help them to manage that money in the other way. For example, even home office expenses, right? So people were working from home and they had some resources that the company gave to them and we helped the company to manage that.

Brian Samson (06:29.718)
Mm.

Brian Samson (06:41.143)
Yeah

Brian Samson (06:47.211)
like internet.

Pedro Góes (06:52.654)
with the PayTrack card and all the solutions. So again, we were, we suffered, but if we look to some competitors, I have competitors in one side of the market because I have one side which is travel management. On that side, my competitors went down 90%, 8, 90 % of their revenues. There was no revenue stream for them.

And I had all the expense management and software solution bringing money home. So it was a time where we could even close a lot of big deals. Because big companies had a smaller operation, they could change to a modern solution like Paytrak. So as you could see, tried to have a… Of course, it was a huge problem, COVID and…

Brian Samson (07:38.135)
Hmm.

Pedro Góes (07:49.1)
in all the health situation, this is something terrible. But I try to remember as a business, we suffered a lot here as a company, but I try to have, I don’t know, a good point of view. In Portuguese we say to look the glass, you know, it’s half empty or half full, you know, I try to have this half full approach, you know.

Brian Samson (08:12.171)
The glass is full, yeah.

Pedro Góes (08:19.148)
So that’s it.

Brian Samson (08:19.189)
Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. So your business, that like a SaaS model? Like monthly per user? that generally how you’re billing your customers? Yeah.

Pedro Góes (08:31.022)
Exactly, this is the first revenue stream and we’ve got the second and third one which are related with the travel services that are bought inside of our platform like the flight, the hotel booking and stuff like that and there is also a revenue from our card solution.

Brian Samson (08:58.988)
Yeah.

Pedro Góes (08:59.502)
So we have multiple sources which help us to, in a problem like COVID, to be more prepared. And of course, once that things got normal, we could be fast and growth a lot. So that’s the story of Paytrack those years.

Brian Samson (09:09.046)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (09:22.251)
Yeah. Yeah. You know, here in the U S, um, you know, we’ll hear about companies like expense of, you know, that are maybe, for smaller startups, there’s obviously like MX travel and things like that. Um, for most companies that I think are small, um, that maybe don’t even have a software, you know, they’re using like Google sheets or something to

Pedro Góes (09:47.308)
Exactly.

Brian Samson (09:47.927)
Is that the same thing like they graduate from Google Sheets to a company like Paytrak?

Pedro Góes (09:54.72)
Exactly, that’s the same thing. And here in Brazil, when we started eight years ago, we found even large companies still using the Google Sheets, Excel, and stuff like this. So it was a huge opportunity here as a market. And we started as an all-in-one platform. And now eight years after, we’ve seen that a lot of expense management solutions

are bringing travel management solutions or card management solutions. And that’s a really interesting part of the history that we are living in this moment, which is a market that is transforming, is evolving. And we are looking to this bundle solution. So Paytrack has a good position because from the beginning, the thought was to have all the…

Brian Samson (10:41.611)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (10:52.492)
possibilities inside the platform.

Brian Samson (10:55.563)
Yeah, yeah. I want to dive a little deeper into your personal career journey, Pedro. Super interesting. And, for those that don’t know, you’re the CEO of the company, but you didn’t found the company. So that gives like a really interesting kind of insider, outsider viewpoint and a chance to bring a different perspective to the business.

Can you tell a little more about how you got into Paytrack, some of the different roles you’ve had?

Pedro Góes (11:27.404)
Yes, So, well, my story actually starts, I don’t know, maybe 15 or 16 years ago. I started in a law school here in Brazil, a really good law school in Brazil, university, right? And after two years, I used it to follow some business magazines.

and you know, stuff like this. And I read a book which is called, in English, it would be something like, Letters to a Young, Letters to a Young Lawyer, Letters to a Young Engineer, stuff like this. And I read a book about a young lawyer, which he started his career as an intern, and at the end of the life, he became a really big…

Brian Samson (12:06.529)
Hmm.

Pedro Góes (12:25.55)
lawyer here in Brazil, it’s a true story. And the firm that he created was responsible for M &A’s, big M &A’s in Brazil. And when I read that, saw, God, I want to do this, but I don’t want to be the lawyer. I want to be in the business side, know, lawyers, I don’t know if there is some lawyer watching us, don’t take it personal, but my father is lawyer.

Brian Samson (12:51.549)
Thank

Pedro Góes (12:54.68)
Sometimes it’s not that cool. And well, so I changed it. I started to study engineering. I went to France. I came back to Brazil. And I decided to have my own company, my own startup. Now we’re talking about 10 years ago, And well, I created a solution. I got some money.

And we created a solution to help companies to understand their customer satisfaction. But it was a solution for small companies in Brazil. didn’t have that pain. So I learned in practice the idea of a nice to have product, you know, or a vitamin, not a painkiller.

Brian Samson (13:47.671)
Hmm. Yep.

Pedro Góes (13:49.518)
And that was tough. So I stayed almost two, three years in this project. I had just a few customers. And I realized that to have my company or to be an entrepreneur in this technology area, I should have more comprehension about really things that the companies have. So I decided to work in other startups that were maybe some years ahead.

You know, and that’s how I got in Paytrack. When I arrived here, we were less than 20 employees. I think I was 15, 16. Okay. And I came here to help the company because we were getting the first customers and there was a guy doing support. There was a guy.

Brian Samson (14:32.086)
Yeah.

Pedro Góes (14:47.438)
doing the onboard and I would have to do the customer success, right? More or less like that. And I arrived here and the first month they liked me. The founders really liked me and they gave me the support. So I had one person in my team. Now I’m a leader. And the other two or three months I got the onboard team and things were…

Brian Samson (14:54.102)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (15:17.048)
going like this, one year later, I had the opportunity to structure the marketing and sales teams because from the company that I started, NP-Track, I worked in another startup in this meanwhile. In this startup, I was responsible for customer success, but I worked with a product for marketing and sales people.

right? SDR, CRM, stuff like this. So I have more or less a knowledge and I had the opportunity here at Paytrak and I stayed almost three years as responsible for marketing and sales. And that was where the time that Paytrak really could find a growth path, you know? So it was a really amazing job. I did it with a really nice team.

Brian Samson (16:17.111)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (16:17.326)
The manager that was there at the time is still here. Now he is the sales director. So I had a lot of good team with me and good people with me. And that was an amazing time. After this, which is one founder and it was the CEO, she put me to solve…

Brian Samson (16:25.089)
Yeah.

Pedro Góes (16:43.342)
serves problems, then she put me to solve the travel agency problems. So in five years, I run in, I don’t know, seven, eight areas of the company. I put them all together, I split them, I did a lot of crazy things. And at the end of 2023, she invited me to become CEO as the company was in a…

in a how can I say it’s starting to become bigger and it would be important to have all this this kpis process all this structure we should be able to put in the other areas to keep growing you know so that’s more or more or less the challenge so in 2024 my first year as a co we did the

Brian Samson (17:29.909)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Pedro Góes (17:43.246)
a really strong job in this part. So putting all the areas in a more professional perspective. And also it was a year that we did an amazing result as sales. And also it was able to get our partnership with Riverwood. So we had a deal with them. They put money in the company at the end of the year.

Brian Samson (18:04.374)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (18:12.62)
The company always grew quickly and always almost bootstrapped, you know? That’s our story. And now we have more money to really accelerate our growth path. So in three or four minutes, that’s the story, my story and story of Paytrack a little bit that I’ve been able to participate.

Brian Samson (18:19.072)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Samson (18:30.87)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (18:35.425)
YAH!

Yeah. Now when you talked about the founding of the business and so interesting as you took it from, you know, 15, 20 employees and bigger and bigger, almost 400 incredible. Can you talk a little bit more about the funding to get started? was it entirely bootstrapped or was there a little bit of venture money to get it off the ground?

Pedro Góes (18:45.858)
Now we have almost 400.

Pedro Góes (18:57.91)
Yes.

Pedro Góes (19:01.344)
Nice. to talk about the funding, I think it’s interesting before to talk about the founders, Dani Eli and Edson. They are two entrepreneurs here in Brazil. They are amazing people. Edson is the product guy, the ideas. He had this view about all in one solution, bring cards, bring travel. Eight years ago, nowadays it’s

Brian Samson (19:08.289)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (19:30.872)
common, but he had this vision there. We have also strong integration with our customers. ARP, HR solutions. So that’s also a little bit of secret sauce of Paytrack. And Edson brought that from the experience that he had before. 20 years in a big ARP solution here in Brazil. Okay, company. And the other side, there’s Dani, which is

a really saleswoman, a powerful woman. we say like in Brazil, faquanus dentes, when you put the knife in the teeth, you know, and you go there and make the things happen. So these two people decided to abandon their careers in like in good companies, big companies. And…

Brian Samson (20:01.278)
and

Pedro Góes (20:28.724)
started to pay track with their own money. So during this time we had one small funding, right, during this time. Actually two small fundings, but really small, we always had cash flow, you know. But it was more a protection from them. They put their money in the game and worked a lot in the past eight years. We can’t imagine how they work.

Brian Samson (20:48.043)
Mm-hmm.

Brian Samson (20:54.005)
Wow. Yeah.

Pedro Góes (20:58.638)
So that’s what happened. when the… I told you this because when… What happened last year, you know it, worldwide, not just last year, but last two or three years, the venture capital started to realize that not all the projects that have been sold…

They know we’re going to grow seven times, 10 times, 15 times. Our valuation is 15 times the ARR. And you know the crazy thing that happened. It slowed down. And there were few good companies in the market. And I think Paytrack was one of them because we always had a consistent and a relevant growth, always in a…

more or less break even situation, you know. Of course, at the very beginning, the money of the founders, but after a while, we could grow with our customers. So that was something that it was really good in the point of view of the funding, you know. So that’s what happened at the beginning of the year. We weren’t looking for funding. We were, let’s…

do our job, we are growing, we have cash, but companies started to approach Paytrak and I want to understand, I want to know. And at the end of the year we said, okay, I think we’ve got a good partner now. It’s not only the money, they have knowledge to help us to improve our management, you know? And that’s the way we…

That’s the path we took last year, end of the year.

Brian Samson (22:54.987)
Yeah, I think that’s great. think all companies, when they have the preference, they want smart money, you know, and advice, connections, infrastructure, all sorts of things. And I wanted to ask you, Pedro, just as you’ve seen, probably changes in the last, you know, eight to 10 years in Brazil. You know, we’ve had a few guests on that are VCs and they’ve talked about the increase opportunity.

Pedro Góes (23:02.893)
Yeah.

Brian Samson (23:25.311)
more funding is going to Brazil. We’ve had practical venture capital on, we’ve had BBC, Brazil venture capital. Can you talk about maybe how that’s changed over the last decade and are there more investors, are there more startups, ecosystem, what does that all look like?

Pedro Góes (23:43.874)
Nice.

Nice. Well, Brazil is a huge continent, a huge country, sorry. It’s almost like a continent, you know, and which bring us or to the fund, the funding groups bring an opportunity mainly for B2C companies. So that, in my opinion, that’s what I’ve saw in the first maybe five years that you mentioned.

You said about last 10 years, if we get the first five years and even after this, it was mainly B2C companies because Brazil is huge. Any number that you put in the sheets, it will be a lot of money if it work. So I think that’s where the talking about VCs in my weekly experience, I’m not so experienced, but in my…

Brian Samson (24:18.432)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (24:43.032)
my point of view, that’s the first part of the story. And then five years later, it started to achieve more in B2B companies. Also Brazil, when we look about B2B companies, it’s easier to SMB solutions. So that’s another characteristic that we…

that we see here in the investment. Paytrack is a little bit different because our problem is to medium and enterprise companies. So it’s a kind of different approach. And I saw here in Brazil the same thing that happened around the world the last three years that I mentioned before. The VCs started to become more, I don’t know, more worried about

high valuations. So the deals slowed down to understand if the opportunities were real or not. So that’s, I think, quick review of what happened. And now I’ve got some numbers worldwide. It seems that this first quarter, it’s starting back to have more deals.

more money coming from VCs. Of course, a lot of this is about AI solutions. So that’s the new trend, that’s the new buzzword, and the money is flowing over there. And we’ll have to see what will happen in this next… That’s the next chapter of the story, the AI solutions, how they’re going to merge with the…

Brian Samson (26:18.807)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (26:41.08)
the existing business and how it’s going to transform the customer life.

Brian Samson (26:46.987)
Yeah. No, the other thing I wanted to ask you about, and maybe this is more like broadly about Brazilian culture is your perspective on risk taking. know, like you go to San Francisco and everybody’s entrepreneur, you know, like they’re, they’re, they’re, you know, going crazy. Other side of the world, like Japan, you know, it’s much more conservative and, you know, make the safe bet.

Pedro Góes (26:54.796)
Okay.

Pedro Góes (27:04.732)
Brian Samson (27:15.467)
Maybe if you could talk about for those who’ve never been to Brazil, you know, what that culture around risk taking and entrepreneurship is like.

Pedro Góes (27:23.476)
really, really good question. Because when you talk about San Francisco and what we’ve heard here, you went there and you have or you had access to money. So I’m not saying it was easy. It’s never easy. Everybody has a tough job. That’s not the point. But it was easier to get money to start your company, to start your ideas, to…

Brian Samson (27:37.836)
Mm-hmm.

Pedro Góes (27:53.144)
bring things from the paper to real life. In Brazil, it doesn’t happen like this. You have to first bring to real and have something. Of course, there were also cases that people would do good pitches and receive a bunch of money, but that’s not the reality here in Brazil. Here, I see that the entrepreneurs are risk takers. So they are people that…

Brian Samson (27:56.043)
Yeah.

Pedro Góes (28:22.36)
really put their money, put their effort, put their careers, you know, in front of everything to start their business, to try to make something great. So that’s one point. The second point, here in Brazil, we have a government that brings a lot of charges, lot of taxes. It’s not easy.

Brian Samson (28:24.085)
Yeah.

Pedro Góes (28:50.67)
And if you want to do something really in the formal way, you will have to pay it a lot. So, Paytrak did it from the beginning. Everything in the right path, know, but it brought to the founders mainly a lot of cash necessities for something that doesn’t change the life of the customer, you know, it’s money that you’re giving to the government and the government doesn’t help.

that much. I’m not talking about left or right. In general, the government doesn’t help that much. So I think that’s the second point that we have here in Brazil. We used to say here that the government is like your partner, you’re associated in the business. It’s one partner that you’ve got because

Brian Samson (29:21.708)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Brian Samson (29:42.773)
Hmm. Yeah.

Pedro Góes (29:47.086)
30 % of your results you have to give to them. So he’s associated with your business, you know. But he doesn’t bring anything, he just collects. So that’s I think the second point. So people who start business in Brazil, they are a little bit crazy maybe, because it’s not easy. It’s not easy and it’s tough.

Brian Samson (29:55.637)
Right.

Right.

Brian Samson (30:12.385)
Yeah, Yeah, that’s an interesting concept of the silent partner that only collects. Yeah, yeah.

Pedro Góes (30:19.79)
It’s a silent partner. Who are your partners? My company, it’s me, Brian and the government. 30, 30, 33, 33, 33. That’s it.

Brian Samson (30:31.031)
I can appreciate that analogy. think that’s great. Tell us more about, so I’m sure there maybe was even pressure at some time during the journey to move the company to Rio or Sao Paulo or even Florianopolis, but you’re in a city that not everyone knows about. Can you share more about the location and what’s

Pedro Góes (30:59.276)
nice.

Brian Samson (30:59.959)
to grow in that city.

Pedro Góes (31:02.882)
Nice. So our headquarters stay here in Blumenau, which is a city in the south of Brazil, near from Florianópolis. It’s a really German city. So we have the second biggest Oktoberfest in the world. And it’s amazing, really good. You have excellent beers here. And the company started here.

Actually nowadays we have an office in São Paulo because we understood that to be close to big accounts it would be easier, it would be better for the company. So we have 300 employees here, 100 there. That’s the proportion. And it’s interesting, Blumenau, it’s this place of the state, Santa Catarina State.

It’s place where it came a lot of German in the last, I don’t know, 100 years. And they are a people that they are really, really industrial people, you know? So they started companies, some companies 100 years ago, companies that made t-shirts, that made bed sheets and stuff like this. Some of huge companies in Brazil are from here. So…

As those companies started to grow, they needed some technology solutions for the HR, for the ARP. So Blumenau started a technology pool, you know, maybe four years ago. And now the people that worked in those tech companies, tech companies from the other time, started to create their companies.

So Edson, the founder is one of that example. He worked 20 years in a company that has 40 years, more or less, and he started his own company. So it’s interesting because we are from, we’re not from a capital, we are from a small city, but for this story, it’s a city that we have good tech team, talents. Now,

Pedro Góes (33:28.494)
to end this part of the story. Now we’re starting to get some pain points because when we look, for example, some marketing specialist, some product specialist, some enterprise sales, you start to, we have to go remote workforce or some power or stuff like that because we are reaching a roof.

Brian Samson (33:54.081)
Hmm

Pedro Góes (33:57.644)
So that’s the story and the point that we are now.

Brian Samson (33:57.697)
Sure.

Brian Samson (34:02.071)
Sure, sure. As we start to close out the show, Pedro, as a CEO of a successful fintech company, as you talked about implementing KPIs, things that more mature companies are worrying about, what kind of advice would you have for other entrepreneurs, both in Brazil and throughout Latin America, that are trying to build a great company? What are maybe your top two or three pieces of advice?

Pedro Góes (34:30.56)
nice. Two or three pieces of advice. think first of all, they will be like maybe common advices, focus in sales. Sales is the first thing that you have to be looking to. Of course, that you don’t have a good product, you will sell, you’ll do the deal and later…

you have the churn, but it’s better to have this solution and then you will build a better product, then you don’t have sales and you don’t even know that you don’t have a good product. So at the beginning, this is the first point. You have to go out and make deals, purely. That’s the first thing I would say. And after this, understand that sales

Brian Samson (35:12.215)
Yeah.

Pedro Góes (35:30.688)
One part is really, you

run and put effort and put energy. But on the next phase, you have to put intelligence. Because you won’t be able to go from 10 to 80 or to 50 or to 80. You won’t be able just with energy and effort. You have to put intelligence. You have to create a structure that will bring you leads, that will qualify them, that will, you know, so…

I think that’s the second part that you reach a roof really soon after you discover how to do the first sales. And from the beginning, have a good CRM, have a good structure to understand what’s happening in this process. I think that’s the point. And the other parts of the company you will be able to solve after you’re bringing customers.

Brian Samson (36:18.999)
Hmm.

Brian Samson (36:31.403)
Yeah.

Pedro Góes (36:34.122)
everything you solve when you have customers.

Brian Samson (36:37.515)
I think that’s great advice and I think great universal advice. Doesn’t matter if you’re in Chicago or Montreal or Brazil, right?

Pedro Góes (36:45.77)
And try to start with a good CRM. Even if are small, try to start thinking big, the sales, because otherwise you’re going to stop really soon. And that’s it.

Brian Samson (37:00.555)
Yeah. Amazing. Well, Pedro, this has been a absolutely fantastic conversation. I’ve learned a lot about building a real strong fintech business out of Brazil. Thank you so much for being here today.

Pedro Góes (37:18.38)
thank you, Brian. Thank you. It was really good.

Brian Samson (37:22.075)
Let me thank our sponsor, Plug Technologies, PLUGG.Tech. Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America, just like Brazil, to growing US companies. Thanks again, everyone. We’ll see you next time.