01. Rafael Sanches (Anycart)
Rafael Sanches is the founder of Anycart, an online grocery service that makes it easy and affordable for consumers in more than 3,400 cities in the U.S. to shop for groceries and cook the meals they love. Before founding Anycart, Rafael built and sold Allthecooks, one of the biggest recipes apps in the US, to Cookpad, the biggest recipe website in the world.
In this episode, Pedro asked him:
- You graduated in Computer Science in Universidade Estadual de Maringá (UEM). Were you interested in computers and technology since you were a kid?
- When you were a teenager, you created PicMix, a photo-sharing app similar to Flickr. How was it?
- After graduating, you decided to move to Milan, Italy, instead of moving to São Paulo. How was that decision? Were you afraid of not making it there because you were raised in Brazil?
- After working in Milan for a while, the company you worked at acquired an American company, so you moved to the Valley. How was the process of moving from Italy to America?
- Before building your first company, you developed an app that enabled users to set up custom notifications from Craigslist. Did that experience influence the entrepreneur you'd become later on?
- Years after the Craigslist app, you started Allthecooks. How was the transition from being a developer who was concerned with reducing server costs to becoming an entrepreneur who was enthusiastic about scaling a company?
- 2 years after starting, Allthecooks had millions of users and was the most popular recipes app in the US. It was wildly successful, but I'm sure you're a much different entrepreneur today. What would you do differently if you were back then with the knowledge you have now?
- Who were the mentors and which were books that guided you while you were striving to rank AlltheCooks on the top of Google Play and Appstore charts?
- How was the decision to sell Allthecooks to the biggest cooking recipes website in the world?
- After selling your first company, was it obvious to you that you should build Craft Log, your second company, or did you consider getting a job at one of the big techs, for instance?
- On Craft Log, you operated differently. You raised US$600k at the start and you hired employees, for instance. How different was your mindset as a founder this second time?
- How was the decision to pivot from Craft Log to Anycart?
- How did you manage to sleep at night, raise your son and build a family in California amid this whole trajectory of building, selling, and pivoting companies?
- Who are the mentors and which are books that help you the most today as Anycart's founder?
- Anycart is still in its early days. How do you picture your next few years running it?
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