João Rios

João Rios is an advisor to CEOs and founders. He spent twenty-five years inside the problem he now works on: he started at fourteen, selling advertising space on websites he built himself, and went on to more than forty businesses across six countries — Brazil, the United States, Germany, Italy, China and Argentina — in sectors with nothing in common. One operation reached 6,000 employees. An e-commerce company he founded in 2012 has served more than 150,000 customers and is still trading today. He left his last executive post in 2016.

Since then he has advised more than 1,100 founders and executives, from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 leadership, always under confidentiality and always by referral. He has never used a client as a trophy. His thesis: success is being paid for with the founder's own life, and no one puts that invoice on the spreadsheet. He promises process, never outcome.