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Rows Success Story. 10 OOTB questions to founder Humberto Ayres Pereira
Rows recently raised $8.7 million in funding. Success story to Humberto Ayres Pereira in 10 out-of-the-box questions
We have already published an interview with one of the founders of the startup Rows.com. Let me remind you about Rows.
Cloud platform-based spreadsheet app Rows has secured $8.7 million in funding to accelerate data integrations, enhance its AI capabilities, and grow its market presence. The funding round was led by Indico Capital Partners, with participation from existing investors Cherry Ventures, Accel, Lakestar, Armilar Venture Partners, and others.
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Rows offers all the functionalities of Excel and Google Sheets, along with its unique interface. The platform is trusted by notable companies including AWS, Hewlett-Packard, Prisma Media, and Mercado Libre, thanks to its user-friendly experience, impressive charting tools, built-in integrations, AI co-pilot, and strong collaborative features.
Let's see what two founders need to be similar or different in order to found and successfully operate a startup. Our interview with another Rows founder
I asked 10 out-of-the-box questions to startup founder Humberto Ayres Pereira to better understand his experience and journey to success.
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Humberto Ayres Pereira, Founder & CEO at Rows.com
1. If your startup were a character in a movie, who would it be and why?
Rows.com is like Deadpool. Spreadsheets never really die — like the character. There's also a kind of shared humor component, Deadpool who stands against everyone else, and spreadsheets that are the most successful ugly duckling of the software world. Finally, to build a spreadsheet platform, you really need to adhere to Deadpool's motto: "Maximum effort!". (Check second 50 of this video).
2. What unconventional or unexpected experiences in your life have influenced your approach to building this company?
Reading lots of books on Ads and the history of Marketing has made us obsess about our brand and communications. That's how we ended up rebranding to Rows.com, or doing a Billboard in front of Microsoft's and Google's office.
3. If you had to pivot your business model tomorrow, what completely different industry would you explore?
For a completely different industry, I would pick robots. I think an automation revolution is going to happen in the next 20 years. Batteries capacity is growing while cost is shrining to zero, and a lot of investment is coming that way. There's also AI exploding. We need a few improvements into actuators (the limbs and muscles) and we have robots!
4. What’s a surprising or counterintuitive belief that you hold about your industry?
Spreadsheets will be a winner in the software race.
Non-engineers need a software to manipulate and visualize data.
When humans colonize Mars, we won't take 200 frontend and 50 backend engineers with them.. we will take spreadsheets.
5. How do you ensure that creativity and innovation are continuously fostered within your team?
Mostly, we do Hackathons. Hackathons are permission-less innovation. That's how we shipping our successful AI Analyst feature.
6. If you could spend a day shadowing any other startup founder, who would it be and what would you hope to learn?
If I could, I would try to spend it next to the computation teams that work on Excel. They have been improving their computation engine for 30 years, and we could learn so many shortcuts to things we have to rediscover everyday.
7. What was the most unusual or memorable feedback you received from a customer, and how did it impact your business?
To be honest, the most memorable feedback was when a friend of mine who is a big Microsoft Excel user, and who actually earns a living as a spreadsheet consultant, used Rows in a relevant project in the US.
He was pretty happy about the product, figured it out himself, and just shot me a WhatsApp message "I get Rows now".
They're a paid customer now!
8. In what ways has failure or a major setback contributed to your current success?
We have gotten many pieces of the software wrong. We built too much automation, too little data exploration UX, etc.
That forced our company into fast iteration mode, revising everything, from product to process to team.
As a result, we are now much more agile and stronger as a team. Also less BS.
9. If you could go back in time and give your pre-launch self one piece of advice, what would it be and why?
Focus on the UX of Data first, worry about automations and computations later.
Having Data is only a step, making sure the experience of search, connecting, requesting, preparing and rendering data, and then automating it, is a LOT of work.
10. What book, film, or piece of art has inspired you the most in your entrepreneurial journey, and how?
The Disney movie Ratatouille.
There is this speech by a character, Anton Ego:
"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends."
This pretty much sums up how we should approach criticism and stoicism. Things are hard, but that's why we do them.
Thanks Humberto for the interesting and truthful answers.
Contact me if you're a startup founder, if your startup has raised over $4M, if you want to talk about a new round, an achievement or a new milestone [email protected]
Let's tell your story for thousands of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and enthusiasts.
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Lina M.,
CMO and Co-founder at Parsers VC
[email protected]
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