The J Curve Insider: The WhatsApp Bet That Paid Off

It’s rare to meet a founder who bootstrapped for two decades—then brought Warburg Pincus, SoftBank, and Microsoft onto his cap table. This week, I sat down with Roberto Oliveira, founder of Blip, the company powering billions of conversations across WhatsApp in Latin America. We covered a 25-year founder journey that began with mobile phone booths and evolved into one of Brazil’s most powerful AI platforms.

This one’s about product timing, strategic architecture, and building a truly global company—starting from Belo Horizonte.

Let’s get into it.

UNLIKELY ORIGIN STORY.

Olga Maslikhova: Before Blip became what it is today, you were selling mobile phones from a university booth in Belo Horizonte in the late ’90s. How did you go from that to building a global conversational platform?
Roberto Oliveira: We started with just R$1,500 and a rented booth inside a university campus. We sold our first phone before we even finished setting up. That mobile business—TakePhone—eventually led us to a ringtone download platform in 2001. At our peak, we were powering 250,000 ringtone downloads per day. We grew 250% year over year for five straight years.

SOLD IT. BOUGHT IT BACK. DOUBLED DOWN.

OM: Then you sold it in 2005—but you bought it back in 2008. Why?
RO: The iPhone killed the ringtone business. The acquirer, Faith Japan, did a $1.5B IPO on the ringtone consolidation thesis. But when smartphones allowed users to upload any MP3, and copyright enforcement ramped up, the business collapsed. Their valuation dropped from $1B to $70M, and they wanted out. We knew the platform and the team were still strong, so we bought it back—cheap.

BETTING ON WHATSAPP BEFORE IT WAS COOL.

OM: When did you realize the next big wave would be conversations?
RO: In 2014, we saw the rise of WhatsApp and asked: what if it became an open platform? Most people thought WhatsApp would kill our SMS business. But we bet on the opposite: if WhatsApp opened, brands would need infrastructure to manage conversations at scale. We built that infrastructure—and in 2018, WhatsApp opened up. We were one of the first platforms invited to the beta.

OM: And growth followed?
RO: Instantly. From 2018 to now, we’ve grown over 100% year over year. Today, we power billions of conversations across customer support, marketing, and sales. Our clients include major banks, telcos, utilities, and retailers. WhatsApp is not just a channel—it’s the AI-first interface of the internet in Brazil, and increasingly across LATAM.

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE BOT. IT’S ABOUT THE CONVERSATION.

OM: Let’s talk AI. Everyone’s building “agents” now. What’s your take?
RO: People confuse the back-end AI agents with the front-end user experience. We coined the term Intelligent Contact back in 2014. It’s not about the AI—it’s about solving a user’s problem. Sometimes with people, sometimes with automation, and increasingly with AI agents. But the goal remains: deliver a great experience.

OM: What’s your moat in this new world where intelligence is getting cheaper?
RO: Architecture. Everyone talks about AI, but few understand how hard it is to process billions of contextual conversations in real-time. We built Blip with a “from-the-user-back” approach. We don’t replace CRM, support, or sales tools—we orchestrate them. That makes us flexible and future-proof. Our clients can plug in OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta’s Llama, or whatever comes next. At Blip, we’re obsessed with short feedback loops and infinite learning.

AI IS CHEAP. EVOLUTION IS NOT.

OM: What’s your thesis on where AI and software are headed?
RO: AI is eating software. And yes, developers will be replaced—not all, but most coding tasks will be automated. But the key isn’t intelligence, it’s evolution. Intelligence without evolution is useless. Our mission is to help brands create interfaces that learn—constantly—from user behavior.

OM: And this drives your go-to-market?
RO: Exactly. Blip helps brands sell, support, and engage on WhatsApp. Conversational commerce— is exploding. Brands are using WhatsApp to personalize, segment, and close. Campaigns like Click-to-WhatsApp (on Meta, Google, TikTok) are outperforming traditional funnels. Conversion is higher. CAC is lower. And most importantly—it meets the user where they are. And because we start with use cases, not platform pitches, we land fast and expand organically. Think: start with customer support, then layer on sales, then marketing.

OM: What’s your advice to founders building in today’s AI world?
RO: Start from the user. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Focus on orchestration, not replication. And surround yourself with technical co-founders. Building a true AI platform is way harder than making a ChatGPT demo.

LATAM FIRST. GLOBAL NEXT.

OM: So where’s Blip going next?
RO: International. Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Spain. When I meet clients there, it feels like Brazil five years ago. Same questions, same pain points. Our goal is to replicate our playbook globally. WhatsApp has 2.7 billion users—that’s a global runway.

WATCH OR LISTEN TO THE J CURVE EPISODE WITH ROBERTO ON SPOTIFY:

SOFTBANK, WARBURG, MICROSOFT: BUILDING THE DREAM CAP TABLE.

OM: You bootstrapped for 20 years. Then you raised from some of the best. What changed?
RO: We were cashflow positive from day one. We didn’t raise because we had to—we raised because we saw the opportunity to scale with the right partners. In 2020, Warburg Pincus made a move while most firms were still frozen by the pandemic. That conviction stood out. SoftBank followed, bringing deep networks across global tech. Microsoft came in next—not just as an investor, but as a strategic partner in AI.

We’re not operating in a small niche. We’re sitting at the intersection of $1.5T contact centers, $5T commerce, and $1T+ software development. Investors didn’t just buy into our numbers—they bought into our vision of building the operating system for the AI-first internet. They believed this wouldn’t be just a big company. It would be a category-defining one.

FINAL TAKEAWAYS.

✓ The future of commerce won’t be clicked. It’ll be messaged.

✓ Architecture matters: Blip wins by orchestrating systems, not rebuilding them.

✓ Conversational commerce isn’t the future in LATAM—it’s already the standard.

✓ Bootstrapping for two decades gave Blip leverage to choose investors, not chase them.

✓ AI is abundant, but evolution speed is the real moat.

✓ Personalization and trust will define the next wave of brand-consumer relationships.

✓ LATAM is leading in messaging innovation—and exporting the playbook globally.

 P.S. If this issue was valuable to you please share it with a founder who needs to hear it. Let’s build LATAM’s next tech leaders—together.

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