João Paulo Poiares Baptista

Managing Director

João Paulo graduated in Economy at Universidade de Coimbra, Portugal. He began his career in 1982 as analyst for the Department of Economy Industry Services (SE) in Macau, which operated as the economic authority of the country. In 1986, after leaving public service as Sector Chief, he joined the consulting firm Asiatec Consultadoria. In 1987 he was invited by Pacific Infotech Corp (PIC), an investment group with focus on technology-based companies, to serve as an analyst in Los Angeles, USA. Between 1990 and 1992, João Paulo, as General Director of PIC in Europe, implemented, developed and expanded its business in Europe, from their headquarters in Lisbon, Portugal. In parallel, between 1989 and 1991, he served as a consultant for Mottahedeh Inc., a leading company in the chinaware sector headquartered in New York City with a subsidiary in Lisbon, Portugal. In 1992, when he left PIC, he developed extensive consulting activities for new businesses in the sectors of IT and telecommunications, as well as in company restructurings.  In 1996 he accepted the challenge of expanding business operations to the Brazilian marked for INESC – Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores (Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering), and for their company, Aitec SGPS. In 1999 he founded MVP – Mercatto Venture Partners Ltda., one of the pioneers in venture capital activities in Brazil. He actively participated on the conception of Projeto INOVAR from FINEP (Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology), being responsible for the idealization of Venture Fórum Brazil and executing nine instances of this event. Also in the auspices of Inovar, he created and developed the first forums in partnership with BOVESPA. In a consultant role to BOVESPA, João Paulo performed strategic analysis, and enabled positioning and preparation of companies for investor presentations under the development directives of the program BOVESPA Mais. João Paulo was also one of the founders of former ABCR – Associação Brazileira de Capital de Risco (Brazilian Association of Venture Capital), currently ABVCap, having served as a Board member for three consecutive mandates. Prior to joining Burrill & Company as a Managing Director and Managing Director for the Latin American operations, he served as a Director of Rio Bravo Venture Partners, an asset management created following the merger of MVP with the Venture Capital division of Rio Bravo Investimentos. He has served as the President of the Investment Commitee of MVP TECH FUND since the beginning of its operations, being directly involved in the structuring of all its investments and is also a Board Member in the fund-invested companies. In parallel, João Paulo was responsible since December 2007 for the investment sector in the entertainment and audiovisual industries, where Rio Bravo serves as the principal investor in Brazil. As an entrepreneur, he has also accumulated critical experience as an angel investor in technology-based companies in Portugal and Brazil.