This Entrepreneur Built A $3 Billion Business By Empowering Remote Teams Globally Marcelo Lebre has engineered his way from being turned down for a $20k investment from a startup accelerator to raising half a billion dollars for his growing remote work platform. On the Dealmakers Podcast Lebre talked about building engineering teams, going remote and remote first companies, interviewing and performing due diligence on your investors, and never trading in your intensity for any misguided promises of stability. Listen to the full episode for all the details here. Building Engineering Teams Marcelo Lebre was born and grew up in a small village in northern Portugal. After college he moved to the country’s capital, Lisbon, in search of more opportunities and exposure. His grandfather was the gadget person of the family. He was one of the few in the area to have a computer. From the time he was six years old Marcelo remembers being fascinated with that Spectrum. Although he didn’t speak English, he found a book with pictures on how to begin programming, and just got started breaking and building things. Eventually, during his Master’s degree he became frustrated with the lack of usefulness and practicality of what he was studying and learning. All the time, he was still having fun with computer based projects of his own. After completing his thesis on sensor networks, and the internet of things, he joined the workforce. First as an engineer, then leading and building engineering teams. A complex task, which certainly laid the foundation, and prepared him for the company he operates today. Which has 1,000 team members, and builds all of their own tech. Even in 2010 he said that startups really weren’t a thing in Portugal. It would have been seen as too risky, and not very well accepted in the culture. Still, wanting to push himself he joined a consulting company. Then, still wary of switching jobs in less than six years for the sake of his resume he was enticed to join a…
