The Operating System Powering Brazil’s SMB Economy

This is the kind of founder story I never get tired of telling. You know the type: an entrepreneur who starts with one vision, pivots multiple times, and eventually builds the infrastructure layer that an entire ecosystem depends on. Someone who faces the moment when everything they’ve built isn’t working—and has the conviction to burn it down and start over.

That’s exactly what Tiago Dalvi did with Olist. What began as a single shopping mall store now processes R$60 billion annually across Brazil’s merchant ecosystem. But this isn’t just another scale story.

Dalvi’s path—from physical retailer to Walmart distributor, to failed marketplace, to today’s comprehensive B2B operating system—offers tactical frameworks that apply far beyond e-commerce. From his visceral test for product-market fit to building investor relationships that survive multiple pivots, Olist’s playbook is relevant to anyone building in fragmented, underserved markets.

The timing makes it even more compelling. Five years into Olist’s journey, Dalvi realized his customers’ needs were far broader than just marketplace sales. They needed logistics, e-commerce platforms, ERPs, CRMs—the full operational stack. Rather than chase incremental improvements, he made the strategic decision to transform Olist from a marketplace store into the comprehensive operating system SMBs actually needed. The result is a company that doesn’t just serve merchants—it’s become the central nervous system of Brazil’s small business economy.

In this conversation, we dive into the operational frameworks, M&A strategy, and long-term thinking behind that transformation. Whether you’re in B2B SaaS, fintech, or any market where complexity is the barrier to adoption, there are lessons here worth stealing.

Let’s get into it.

PRODUCT-MARKET FIT HURTS WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE IT

Olga Maslikhova: Most founders talk about product-market fit in abstract terms. How do you actually know when you have it versus when you're fooling yourself with vanity metrics?

Tiago Dalvi: The way I think about product-market fit is in my stomach. When you don't have it, you feel it—it's painful, hard to breathe. When you have it, you're excited. Everything changes.

But to be pragmatic: product-market fit is all about retention. Customers love your product, tell great stories about it, can be critical of it—but they cannot live without it. The way you find it is being super close to the customer, listening genuinely. Otherwise, it's impossible to improve.

VANITY METRICS DON’T PAY THE BIILS

OM: You’ve executed multiple major pivots. How do you know when to keep pushing versus when it’s time to pivot?

TD: It comes down to focusing on what sustains the business, not vanity metrics. Page views don’t pay the bills. What matters is profitability, revenue, retention, and unit economics. Those are the signals. If they’re strong, push through. If not, be flexible enough to change. Our story has always been about that balance—resilient enough not to break in tough moments, but flexible enough to shift when the model wasn’t working.

OM: What drove the decision to pivot from a marketplace store into a full ecosystem?

TD: We realized merchant pain was far bigger than just selling online. They needed logistics, their own e-commerce storefronts, ERPs for inventory and accounting, CRMs for customer management. It was fragmented chaos. On average, a small business relied on 12 different providers to stay afloat—an impossible task for an unsophisticated entrepreneur.

That’s when we made the call to build an ecosystem. Acquiring Tiny (ERP), Venda (e-commerce), and Pax (logistics) turned Olist from just a sales channel into the operating system for SMBs. We became the central spine of their businesses. Looking back, it was the single most important business decision we ever made.

THE THREE PHASES OF BECOMING A MULTI-PRODUCT COMPANY

OM: Moving from a single product to an ecosystem isn’t a natural transition for most companies. What did you learn about managing that complexity?

TD: Running a single-product company is simple - every function aligns around one product and decisions are clearer.

Expansion breaks that simplicity. To build an ecosystem, you need to create real innovation capacity—spaces where new products can start small, operate with semi-autonomy, and prove themselves before being pulled into the core.

If you don’t protect that process, the gravitational pull of the original product—its teams, priorities, and revenue streams—will smother anything new.

We lived this in three phases:

1. Single company, single product

2. Multi-company, single product. (post-acquisitions, still not fully integrated)

3. Single company, multi-product. (a convergent ecosystem with unified billing, support, and tech)

That messy middle phase lasted about two and a half years. It wasn’t wasted—it was the learning curve that taught us how to become a true multi-product company.

THE BALANCING ACT OF M&A

OM: What did you learn about integrating founders and teams post-acquisition?

TD: Every company after an acquisition is, by definition, a different company. The way they managed before—reporting, ceremonies, org structure—all of that changes. The key is giving founders inspirational roles at the start, but also aligning them to where the combined business is headed.

One big learning: start with the ICP. Understand what customers value most about the acquired product, protect that at all costs, and then capture synergies everywhere else.

Another learning: don’t delay integration. In the early years we waited two years before converging products. Now every acquisition comes with a 90-day integration plan, fully aligned to our platform vision from day one.

OM: How do you balance preserving what made the acquired company successful with driving synergies?

TD: That’s the hardest part. Protect too much and you never capture synergies. Move too fast and you break what worked. The balance comes from sequencing. We always start with the back office—understanding deeply how the ERP, e-commerce platform, and logistics product work. Only after that do we connect them at the application layer.

The real unlock is technical infrastructure for convergence: single billing, single support, single sign-on. Once that’s in place, intelligence flows cross-product and customer journeys feel seamless across the ecosystem.

THE REAL EDGE AT FUNDRAISING

OM: Investor loyalty through pivots is rare. What gave your backers the conviction to stick with you?

TD: Two things: relationships and transparency. Almost all our investors came in after 6–12 months of building a relationship—understanding who would sit on the board, how they could add value, and whether our visions were aligned.

And we’ve always been radically transparent. In our second year, we were growing 20–25% weekly, then suddenly lost 80% of revenue because of a database deadlock—right in the middle of raising our Series A. I called Redpoint immediately and explained the situation. Their response: “Tiago, we trust you. We’re with you. We’ll help you through this.” Three months later, we were back to growth.

OM: That’s a masterclass in crisis management. What’s your philosophy on investor selection?

TD: I see investors as step functions to the next challenge. My focus is always on the cycle ahead—what capabilities or perspective I’ll need, and which partners can help pave that way. I’d never optimize a round for valuation or the biggest check. It’s about alignment and value, not size.

THE MARATHON MINDSET

OM: How do you think about building a high-performing board?

TD: First, you need people who complement you and challenge you—not board members playing politics or posturing for other directors, but people who give honest opinions. Just as important: alignment. Board members represent the business as much as the founder does, so they must share your vision and purpose. Without trust, it doesn’t work.

OM: How do you think about exits?

TD: We’re not building for an exit; we’re building for optionality. A company with strong economics and a loved product has multiple paths—IPO, M&A, or long-term independence. The key is to keep that optionality alive by constantly evolving and not becoming complacent.

I always remind my board: I’m here for the marathon, not the 100-meter sprint. Building the foundations of a lasting company takes time. Now, with maturity, capital, a great team, and a strong product, we’re in the best position in our history to build something truly meaningful.

For me, an exit is never the goal. It’s simply the consequence of having optionality.

THE FOUNDER’S GUIDE TO LEADERSHIP

OM: What leadership lessons stand out from your journey as a solo founder scaling to this level?

TD: Five key ones:

1. Purpose sustains you. From a mall store to Olist, the mission never changed—help SMBs succeed. A clear vision is what carries you through painful moments. It’s never just about money; it’s about being attached to something bigger

2. Time discipline. Time is the only non-renewable resource. It took me years to realize my time is mine, not someone else’s. The goal isn’t to pack your calendar with meetings—it’s to spend time on what truly moves the business forward

3. Leaders need domain expertise. Titles don’t make leaders—expertise does. A marketing leader should be known for marketing knowledge. Managing people matters, but the real impact comes from deep context and sharper decision-making

4. Scale yourself through great people. Early on, I tried to be in every meeting and decision. That was a mistake. The best way to scale is to bring in people better than you—people who challenge you and push you to grow alongside them

5. Do the right thing. At our scale—transacting R$60 billion and serving 50,000 merchants—ethics isn’t just the baseline, it’s a responsibility. Leading with integrity sets the example Brazil and Latin America need more entrepreneurs to follow

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THE BRAZIL ADVANTAGE

OM: You’ve spent time in Silicon Valley but built in Brazil. What advantages do Brazilian entrepreneurs have?

TD: Brazilians are trained by volatility. Interest rates, inflation, shifting regulations, global competition—it’s a constant state of flux. Navigating all those variables builds resilience and creativity, and that differentiates Brazilian founders globally.

OM: Another factor is structural. There’s no such thing as pure SaaS in Brazil—you always need a service layer because the infrastructure isn’t there. But that’s also where the opportunity lies. As tech stacks commoditize, the real differentiation comes from distribution, service, and execution. That shift is global, but Brazilian and Argentine founders are already wired for it—they’ve had to be world-class operators just to survive here. And Brazil is no longer just about domestic markets.

TD: Exactly. It’s a misconception that Brazilian companies only build for Brazil. Today we’re seeing global cases: Pipefy, VTEX, Wellhub, Nubank. These aren’t just local champions—they’re proof that Brazilian companies can scale worldwide.

THE END OF MANUAL COMMERCE

OM: How do you see AI reshaping commerce and your industry specifically?

TD: Think of it this way—what defines a human is having a brain to make decisions. Businesses today don’t have that. They’re static. Every choice—pricing, inventory, logistics—depends on the entrepreneur. We believe in the future, businesses themselves will have a brain. They’ll think, decide, and act on behalf of the owner.

In Brazil, e-commerce is just 15% of a $2 trillion retail market. The biggest barrier isn’t demand—it’s complexity. Catalogs, pricing, payments, logistics. AI is the catalyst to cut through that complexity and unlock adoption.

Looking ahead, commerce won’t rely on interfaces. No more click-and-wait checkout flows. Transactions will happen in the backend, powered by agents working alongside you throughout the day. That shift—from manual decisions and interfaces to autonomous, intelligent commerce—is the wave that will reshape our industry.

RAPID FIRE

OM: Most underrated or under-the-radar tech company in Latin America?

TD: Two come to mind—Pipefy and Contabilizei, both born in Curitiba. Pipefy is already global, so it’s not exactly underrated, but still a great example.

OM: Popular entrepreneurial advice you strongly disagree with?

TD: That raising money equals success. It doesn’t. Success is building a product customers love and can’t live without. Capital is just a catalyst—it can accelerate your path to success, or speed you straight into a wall.

OM: If you had to bet on one emerging trend shaping e-commerce in LATAM, what would it be?

TD: The connection between offline and online. The POS and in-store experience is still decades behind. With so much retail still offline, bridging that gap is a massive opportunity.

OM: What’s a founder trait you believe is underrated but critical for success?

TD: Resilience. Schools and résumés don’t prepare you for frustration or the painful moments of building. Every founder faces them. Managing your ego and pushing through is what separates those who endure.

OM: What’s the smartest pivot you’ve ever seen a startup make?

TD: I won’t claim Olist’s was the smartest, but pivoting from a marketplace storefront into a full-stack operating system was transformational. It changed my life—and the lives of many in LATAM.

OM: What’s a problem in the Brazilian startup ecosystem no one is talking about?

TD: The bridge between early and late stage. Early-stage capital is vivid, but late-stage liquidity is still thin. 

OM: If you weren’t building Olist, what problem would you be solving instead?

TD: Probably something in sports. Retail around running in Brazil is stuck in the ’90s—buy shoes in a store and that’s it. But there are running clubs, recovery clubs, communities. Connecting all that—like Strava plus retail plus community—is a huge opportunity.

OM: What’s one question you wish people asked you more often?

TD: What’s my purpose? People ask what success means. For me, being branded a unicorn or raising $300M isn’t success. Success is building something that changes the reality of entrepreneurs we serve.

OM: What habit or routine has had the biggest impact on your productivity?

TD: Running. I work out every day, but marathon training changed how I think about discipline. It forces me to structure my diet, my sleep, my time with my kids—and it mirrors the endurance you need to build a company.

OM: What’s one life principle you want to pass to your children?

TD: Respect, honesty, ethics. I want them to be the kind of people who can sleep well at night because they’re living by example.

THE J CURVE HALL OF FAME

Since you made it this far, you might want to check out:

Our most-watched episode so far this year:

The newsletter issue I keep revisiting: How to Win Mid-to-Large B2B Customers in Latin America - The complete playbook for mastering fragmented payments and working-capital cycles to win mid-to-large B2B customers in Latin America—strategies every founder navigating high-friction enterprise markets needs to know.

Thanks for reading,

Olga 

 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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