x
Alexandre Rohlfs
Co-Founder, Zibly
Alexandre Rohlfs Aragao, a Babson College alumnus, shares his intense journey into entrepreneurship after working in VC firms and an operational role at a New York hedge fund, an experience he called "an MBA for real".
Validate before you build. After launching in May, Alexandre ran 100 dog-owner interviews, learned his product-recommendation angle had no moat against Amazon, Chewy, and OpenAI — and scrapped the entire build.
Problem-first beats company-first. The rebuilt Zibly pairs AI preventative dog care with a real business model: Alexandre got licensed as a P&C insurance broker and partnered with Kangaroo Insurance in Miami.
Hire believers, not salaries. His team of five includes a developer he met at Web Summit Rio, and early prototypes were built fast on Lovable before committing engineering resources.
Operations is the real MBA. Three years running ops at hedge fund SPX Capital taught him more than any classroom — including how to relearn finance in Portuguese.
