DJ (1997-2003): My first passion. To scratch my own itch (wanting to play), some friends and I started organizing illegal parties that grew into an amazing community and became legendary.

Later, I won the house music DJ championship at Kiss Fm Nyc, played in several clubs, and even got featured in a couple of magazines. When my daughter was born, I wanted a different lifestyle, so I decided to hang up the headphones.

Drop Bodyboard Wear (2005 - 2007): Learning design and marketing, I started selling bodyboard clothing on internet forums.

Somehow, it blew up and ended up in real stores all over Portugal. Who would've thought, right?

Drop Bodyboard Wear became an underground “legit” brand, even sponsoring some pros. It created a bigger itch (owning retail), and using the learning, created the next venture with my girlfriend: a designer concept store.

Miyuki (2007-2013): A concept store that gained national and international attention. Made all the mistakes in the book, almost went bankrupt several times, learned a bunch aka - had the perfect motivation to learn (learn or burn).

We were too early on many concepts, including e-commerce before it was cool or adopted in Portugal (2008). A few years later, saw e-commerce businesses with half the sales we had five years prior, getting huge funding.

Eventually, we got it running, but when we did, I was over it and left. My girlfriend turned wife stayed with it but eventually sold the assets and closed it down.

Miyuki Studio (2007-2021): Back before "digital marketing" was the cool thing in Portugal i was picking up all i was learning to promote Miyuki Concept Store and helping several big business transition "tradicional marketing" to the internet.

It helped us keep the store alive many times and was great for me and later my wife to transition from closing the store.

In 2014, I decided to pick up all the knowledge and value we were creating for our clients and launch my own product: a personal growth platform.

Dharma5 (2014 - till now): Started Dharma5 by putting my credit card down and inviting two friends. It was a blast from day one.

Good timing, a great business model (I was used to create digital business models for several clients at Miyuki Studio or at startup events), great digital marketing execution (again, it was my bread and butter at Miyuki Studio), and a lot of love for the “niche.”

Fast forward to 2017, and we even attracted  venture capital backing, all from our growth and unit economics, zero “I know a guy.” I didn't, and I'm not very good at ass-kissing/political stuff.

Nevertheless, VC was a mistake. At least the type of VC. Priorities got messed up, scaled hiring badly (learned I'm very bad at doing this), and started banging heads.

If with Miyuki, I learned the importance of the business side, here I learned the importance of having the right partners, team (with training, eventually you can only make 1/10 cats bark) and being good at managing (firing fast, praise, etc) specially when things start going south, including stakeolders.

Covid-19 would put the final dent in the business as we were heavily investing in the events part of the business and everything got stalled for two years.

As the remaining cash got burned, some had to go, and some silently disappeared and were never seen again.

Eventually, I would get back 100% of the business back in Dec 2023. Let's see if I can create a success story from a broken ship -> to be continued.

Collectors Bridge (2014): My buddy João Diogo invited me and some other friends; we wanted to create an online platform for collectors, and Collectors Bridge was born.

We bagged the "Best Business Plan" at a Coimbra University competition, but in reality, João deserves most of the credit.

Eventually, the platform would shut down, but his dream would metamorphose into "a real world" museum for what really is his passion, Gaming/Sinclair computers.

When in late 2023, I decided to pick Dharma5 up, I remembered him, and this story inspired me a lot. Let's see.