Who’s Bel Pesce? The same question crossed my mind when I got this link to the site of this book: A menina do vale.
Turns out that Bel is a 24 years old girl from Sao Paulo, Brazil and now she is living the dream in Vale do Silicio. Sounds good and simple, right? «Girl from Sao Paulo living in Silicon Valley». But the incredible story is more than that; at 17 she made her way to MIT -with a mix of hard work and a miracle-, and from that day, her life changed.
A great student who worked on Google, Microsoft and Deutsche Bank in Wall Street, she described her experience working at this big companies like:
I enjoyed very much all of that, but the realization of what I wanted to do in my life came with the MIT 100K Entrepreneurship Competition.
And then, her first startup came to life; she made a team to create MeshPhone, this project was meant to increase the coverage of mobile phones in rural areas in Africa, and they did it. But telephone companies were not so happy, since MeshPhone didn’t charge for the services, yet so, a great idea to solve a problem of communication.
Then she continued this entrepreneurial path joining Ooyala, where she had the opportunity to become Product Manager and lead two engineering teams:
When I interviewed, there were 20 employees at Ooyala. When I left, there were about 200.
As she described on her site, after one year and a half working at Ooyala, she wanted to dedicate full time to a company since day 1, helping it to make it grow, and the opportunity showed when she met Meyer Malka and Wenceslao Casares, and Lemon was that company. They launched their product on October 13th 2011.
She’s young, but all her experiences in the entrepreneurial world, led her to write the book «A girl from the valley: How entrepreneurship can change your life.»
In 80 pages, divided in 18 chapters, she gave tips, share advices, and talks about leadership, networking, team work aided by software like Workpuls, business plans and even how to be patient and humble. My favorite one, chapter 10: Get used to learn from your mistakes.
Is a really entertaining read and above all, inspiring. Because it’s not a book about HOW TO… (insert here the following phrases: make it in Silicon Valley, be a succesful entrepreneur, become rich with a startup, etc.), but a look into the entrepreneurship through personal experiences, and the best of all, you can download it for free on the official site A menina do vale, available on Portuguese only.
If you want to know more about Bel Pesce, visit her site or follow her on Twitter @belpesce, she has lots of interesting things to share with all entrepreneurs or those who are planning to begin their own startups. Read the book, I bet you’ll find great tips and even identify yourself with that girl from the valley that make her dreams come true with her heart and mind.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffM1sIvhCtc[/youtube]
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