High-Impact Entrepreneurship

CLICK HERE to read the full Endeavor Insight report, “Emerging Market Entrepreneurs Have Emerged: A look at the fastest growing entrepreneurs in Endeavor’s portfolio”

Seventy-one percent of the fastest growing Endeavor Entrepreneurs believe they differentiate themselves by focusing on their customer and his/her needs. They share a highly consumer-centric vision that informs both their strategy and business model.

Clearsale is a Brazilian e-commerce fraud management company. While the online market is clearly growing rapidly, Clearsale’s founders, Pedro Chiamulera and Bernardo Lustosa, still entered an extremely crowded and competitive market in which numerous companies were going after the same potential clients. To differentiate themselves, Pedro and Bernardo identified a pressing customer need for a better solution. “We realized that customers were overwhelmed by IT programs. We used to provide a web system and fraud score for customers to self-manage it. We realized that when you give a lot of IT tools to a business you are giving them more problems than solutions.”

As a result, Clearsale went from selling the software to managing all the fraud prevention for their customers, integrating the customers’ databases and making the decisions on whether a transaction is approved or not. In part due to this better understanding of customer needs and motivations, Clearsale has increased revenues by 144% on average yearly from 2008 to 2011.

This customer centricity is, in Bernardo’s words, what led them to their success: “Solve your customer’s problem, regardless of whether you are profiting or not in the beginning. Always build solutions that make sense to the final user, and adapt your product for the customer; don’t just make products and try to sell them.”

Want to hear more about the fastest growing entrepreneur’s tips for success?  Read the full report here.