Founders Interviews — Filipe Nery — Lyzer
First, can you tell us about your professional background and the path that led you to Lyzer?
I studied Media and Cultural Studies and graduated from Universidade Católica. But then my first job was at A Vida é Bela, which was a leisure, travel, and activities company. I started working in the store, but then the owner saw that I was very sales-driven, and very commercial, and made me a proposition.
He said, “You can come to the headquarters, and you can start working on the first package of the A Vida é Bela.” At the time, there was no holiday packaging like it exists today. So I did it, and in about one year, I was head of partnerships, all because he realized that I was very driven and good at persuading people.
I have been working for almost 20 years now. And I have worked in a few companies; some were startups, and others were more corporate. So I have a mixed background in startups and also corporate.
Even though I come from a family of salespeople — my father, grandfather and uncles are all salespeople — I never thought I wanted to be a salesperson, and I never really wanted to be one, but today I am the chief growth officer at Lyzer, but I do more than that.
How was Lyzer born?
I was previously working at another company, Bizay, and I started talking with Makro about a potential partnership related to product personalization, such as dishes, tableware, etc. And in 2019 the head of Non-Food told me that the majority of what they worked with was food and only a small percentage of their business was non-food. This, of course, made me wonder why I was talking to them then, but I thought, since they work more with food, it meant there was also an opportunity there. So I asked the company I was working at, “Why don’t we do something that could help more the restaurants, hotels, etc., besides providing cutlery, dishes, and glasses, we could also help with the food”. I was told that they didn’t know if I was crazy or if there was some reasoning behind what I was saying.
One year later COVID hit and a colleague told me “A year ago or so you said something about food. With COVID, we’re gonna need it”, they said we could try it, so we started and it was the right time. This opportunity gave me the possibility of being something like a project manager.
We started 360Hyper, an online supermarket, a year after creating it, we were already operating in stores and with groups. Makro saw us working on their stores using our technology, our pickers, our drivers, and our operation and challenged us to keep doing what we were doing with 360Hyper, meaning deliver in four hours, doing it also for them, and we accepted the challenge, so that is how Lyzer was born.
Until 2024, we were operating under 360Hyper. Two business models, one the online supermarket, and the second one, this white Label solution. And in 2024, we realized that what we wanted to do was to create a new company or a new brand called Lyzer, that provides seamless access to essential goods.
As I said, it was the right time, but of course, we were also trying to understand the ecosystem and the client’s needs. And also, COVID-19 hit, and it was all at the same time.
How is your product different from the others in the market? What makes it unique?
Lyzer is different because we don’t do only deliveries; we also integrate the suppliers into our system. And our competitors either do the software or the deliveries; Lyzer is the full package.
We go much further than delivering a superficial product; in a way, we productize the chaos that is logistics and deliver this to the retailer as a turnkey solution. We provide a solution, not only the software; we have operations, and we oversee them ourselves.
We felt like if we gave Makro what we had in the beginning, only the software, they would have the same problems in having the four-hour windows. So we joined the expertise of our team and optimized operations. So Lyzer manages the software and the logistics in order to simplify the process for clients. So basically you get two in one.
What has been the most crucial moment in the history of Lyzer so far?
We have had three crucial moments so far. The first one was when Makro challenged us to work for them. The second was when we realized that this would be our business, and we started Lyzer. And the third one is happening now; it’s a major e-commerce partnership that will allow us to grow even more. We are soft-launching our operation with them, but we will launch in the whole country soon. This is going to allow us to grow even more.
If you could go back in time, is there anything you’d do differently?
I think that everything you have done, even the things you did wrong, had to be done in order for you to be better and for you to understand that you are going to have errors. I can not tell you from the top of my head something I would change, of course, there were things I could have done better. Maybe we could have started Lyzer earlier, have the product, and start selling sooner, we could have seen other clients who could have created the products more before.
But, despite this, we still grew a lot and I think we had time to really do something that our clients need.
Do you have any tips or advice for an aspiring founder?
Yes. Sell faster. What I mean by this is that you don’t have to wait for your product to be ready; don’t wait for it to be perfect because it will not be. So start by piloting, try to test it, listen to your clients, and understand the market and its changes. And try to, if needed, accept the course you ended up on, so if you end up doing something you were not expecting, accept it; don’t think, I should be doing this or that, don’t stick to a set vision too much; just go with the flow and be open to changes.
What can we expect from Lyzer’s future
You can expect a lot from the future of Lyzer; One of the goals for this year is to have a product scale ready, meaning that if I want to go to 10 new countries, we could do it.
In terms of expansion, this year, we are entering the Spanish market, and in the future, we will continue our internationalization. For now, our expansion plan is to grow in Europe. Next year, I believe that we will be present in two or three new markets, so we will be in Portugal, Spain, and then two or three other markets.
By 2026, our goal is to make 300 million euros in GMV. Therefore, we are growing a lot; it’s going great so you can expect great things for the future of Lyzer.
Lastly, what has been the most challenging part of growing your startup? And the funnier part?
Creating this company has been a roller coaster. I can tell you that now it’s fun, but that in the start it wasn’t. When we were working on our online marketplace, the COVID-19 epidemic started, and our sales went down. We were losing a lot, and we were not achieving the sales numbers we wanted. During about three or four months, between models, between the online supermarket and what Lyzer is now, we were thinking, “Okay this is going to die.” During that period we were not even earning any salaries, that was definitely a challenging time.
However, I never thought of giving up; my thought process was: “How can we do this?”. You have to face the challenges and difficulties; that is what makes it more fun. You know how there are a lot of adults that play games, like strategy games, that every day just spend their time clicking on a button or screen. Well for me, this is my game, the strategy I think about is my company. I think those people spend a lot of time diverting their energy to other things, but if you are an entrepreneur your energy has to be 100% here, on your project. So for me, playing this game is what is fun, of course, it is a bit tiring sometimes; it can be very stressful, but I like to think of each challenge as a level obstacle, and I develop a plan on how to overcome it. And thinking about it in this way makes it fun for me.
And also it is nice to see what we have built, looking back and seeing how much we grew and the product we have created. So after all those less good times are just part of the process, we have to go down to go up.
