Founder of QI Tech, valued at US$2 billion, says his path began with two companies that didn't take off
In an interview with the podcast Do Zero ao Topo, from InfoMoney, Pedro Mac Dowell tells how he transformed an operational pain of a credit manager into a financial infrastructure
BY THE X-TRADER NEWS NEWSROOM · REPORTING FROM INFOMONEY · 3 MIN
Pedro Mac Dowell, founder of QI Tech, states that the idea of financial infrastructure currently valued at US$2 billion was born from a practical difficulty he faced as a credit manager: using the structure of banks that were not designed to serve third parties. The report was given to the podcast Do Zero ao Topo, by InfoMoney, presented by Mariana Amaro.
According to the channel, more than R$490 billion in payments via Pix pass through the platform, R$100 billion in credits issued and R$180 billion under administration. The numbers appear in the episode description.
A family of entrepreneurs and a start in the market
Mac Dowell says that the entrepreneurial drive comes from the family, who arrived from Europe and started working with coffee and then sugarcane in the interior. He says he accompanied his grandfather on the farm during school holidays to understand planting, harvesting, transport and marketing. At the age of 15, he moved to São Paulo, where he played tennis at a high level. It was through sport that he met Jorge Paulo Lemann, who introduced him to Banco Garantia.
After graduating in administration, he worked at Standard & Poor's, a risk rating agency. He reports that he left the company because he understood that progression followed time served and not merit. On Lemann's advice, according to him, he switched to resource management.
Two attempts to Quatá
The first management company, opened in 2004 with two partners, went bankrupt within six months. Mac Dowell attributes the failure to a lack of alignment between the partners on expenses, a still new FIDC market and a lack of capital: the fund raised R$5 million, and he says that R$20 million would be needed to pay the bills. To this end, he reports having sold the car and almost everything he owned. Afterwards, he set up a credit fund operation at Link, where he remained until 2008 with a small stake and little autonomy.
In 2008, he left Link to found Quatá Investimentos, again selling a personal asset. It anticipated R$28 million from four investors, but the financial crisis reduced the contribution to R$14 million, coming from Lemann and Musnik. With R$400,000 in reserve and a cost of R$40,000 per month, he says he had ten months to prove the model. This time, he says, he structured a company with clear exit rules for partners, with the help of Lemann.
Quatá reached R$2.5 billion in assets under management. Still, in Mac Dowell's assessment, a manager needs at least R$5 billion to have scale, and he was looking for more impact.
The problem that became a business
Around 2017 and 2018, he started thinking about technology. According to his report, to set up credit operations it was necessary to hire a bank, the only one qualified to lend, and the institution's system was not designed to be used by third parties. He saw clear pain there and the absence of companies focused on infrastructure.
In 2018, the Central Bank regulated Direct Credit Societies (SCDs), which it describes as a more accessible type of financial institution, opening with around R$1 million. Mac Dowell, Boazi and Emílio raised R$3 million to found the company. He left Quatá gradually, so as not to upset investors, and says that QI Tech does not use its own capital, only fund resources.
For the investor, the case illustrates, according to the founder's report, the weight of Central Bank regulation in opening new business models and the slow bureaucracy of setting up companies in the country. The name IQ comes from intelligence coefficient, and Tech was added because the company would talk about technology.
Automatically translated from Portuguese.
