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Part 1- XUA life: amazonian biodiversity meets functional beverages

Back when I used Orkut to keep in touch with my friends from Brazil, a friend left me a message about me on my wall that read: "Alegria de Viver," which has since encapsulated what I've been trying to honor that ever since:  the will to live deliberately and boldly. 

After selling a small innovation consulting business in São Paulo, I decided to take a sabbatical to fully embrace my late traveling grandma's weird side. Somewhere between drinking Maranhão's distilled yucca and Amazon's mouth-numbing Jambú, I decided to create brands to elevate Brazil and its ingredients to where they belong, well beyond cheaply traded commodities that are far too costly to our precious biomes.

I developed XUA as an attempt to showcase the potency of all natural ingredients and their potential as means of enhancing our everyday lives. I have decided against any plastic packaging and source my ingredients from trusted and fair Brazilian partners. I have also made the commitment to start my ventures back in my hometown of Framingham, a thriving female-run city, home to inspiring companies like Bose and Staples and a particularly entrepreneurial  Brazilian immigrant community. 

Obrigada,

Part 2- XUA inc.: investment studio for brazilian founders going global

The tortuous path of starting a beverage brand has been incredibly humbling. Having started, run and sold a consultancy before, I thought I was prepared for what was to come. Like a microscopic version of Steve Jobs with the Hoverboard fiasco, I grossly underestimated how much the already difficult process of starting any business would be compounded by the challenges of a making a physical product and worse, a beverage. Copacker, manufacturing and development challenges, changing FDA regulations, expensive startup costs… and all that before tackling sales. Founders far and wide take this in stride, learn as they go and some of them, come out on the other side. I can’t say it was that easy for me. XUA Life is still in training wheels in so many ways, learning about its consumers, its market and how to generate the impact on biodiversity it came to the world to have.

But as a former business and innovation consultant, having had this hands on experience as a founder of a Brazilian product in the US makes me all the more bullish about what my country has to contribute to the world. It also gave me the fundraising, strategic and practical skills I noticed many Brazilian founders need in order to exponentially grow. Aligned with my identity as an immigrant and with my original overarching mission of bringing the best of Brazil to the world, I’ve started a small investment studio dedicated to helping founders make this global trek.

XUA Life keeps my feet on the ground, helping me best understand founders by dealing with my own company’s ins and outs. XUA Inc. is how I am able to amplify my ultimate goal of bringing Brazilian intelligence, creativity and voice to the world! Thoughts? Get in touch.