Peixe Urbano Founder: “Perhaps Groupon Thought It Was Fine to Arrive in Brazil With Fake Deals” [Video]

Jul 29, 2010

Peixe Urbano means, in Portuguese, “Urban Fish”. That’s a fun fact.

Here are a few more: Peixe Urbano is a Rio-based Groupon clone that’s doing very nicely indeed by tailoring its service precisely to a Brazilian audience. The site offers 30 deals a week, across multiple cities. According to the company’s own numbers, they’re averaging a little over 1000 purchases per deal: 30,000 sales a week. Peixe Urbano takes 50% commission on every sale. The site’s popularity is growing fast amongst traders too: 300 companies a day apply to have their deals sold through Peixe Urbano.

Brazil is one of the more interesting emerging markets: the number of venture capital firms there is growing, as is the number of interesting tech startups emerging. It was for those reasons (and more) that Sarah chose to visit the country as part of the research for her forthcoming book on entrepreneurship in emerging markets. And it was for those reasons that we were keen to invite Peixe Urbano founder Julio Vasconcellos to be this week’s guest on Too Long; Didn’t Watch.

We asked Julio about the startup climate in Brazil and demanded that he respond to those who say the country is little more than an incubator for scammers and copycats.Video below.

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Peixe Urbano

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Jake

This is the second highly positive post about this company. What’s the vested interest? There are literally hundreds of group buying sites all over the world, but for some reason TC decides to post repeatedly about this one. What’s the deal?
http://www.paulcarr.com Paul Carr

This is the first time either Sarah or or I written about them as far as I know. They were the first daily deals site in Brazil.
http://www.kupikupon.ru Djas

Recently payed attention to the Russian fastest growing http://www.kupikupon.ru (means buy coupons) Funny domain name)) Liked their design, they change background picture for every deal. They offer deals in 18 cities of Russia and entered Ukraine, Latvia, Kazakhstan and Belarus
Vitor De Mario

Well, I’m from Brazil, and from what I can see they’re growing *really* fast. At least as far as my circle of knowledge goes, anyway.

As Paul just highlighted, they were the first daily deals site here. Looks perfectly fine to post about them.
http://www.buzzurbano.com Oso Trava

Julio: Way to go bro!! Amazing what you are doing down there. When I heard you were leaving SF to do this i know you would hit it big. Lets hope BuzzUrbano follows in your footsteps.
Oso
Silvano

I really love to see you guys talking about brazilian companies here. Personally I wasn’t aware of Peixe Urbano, but I see they have services for my town (Florianópolis, Santa Catarina).

The brazilian market doesn’t have the necessary investment. I can guarantee you: as it grows, you’re gonna change your mind about copycats.

Sarah, Paul,
not sure if this company is already in your plans, but you should talk to the guy behind http://www.bookess.com.br/

He is a young guy that started his own idea and was lucky to get investment from Angel investors.

Definitely worth the visit.
Jose da Silva

If you notice on Julio’s LinkedIn profile, in addition to being the founder of Peixe Urbano, he is also Facebook’s country manager for Brazil. Rumor has it that Julio is misrepresenting Peixe as being a Facebook backed company. Consequently, merchants are signing up with him under false pretenses. It seems that Julio might want to think twice about drawing unnecessary attention to his own practices in Brazil…
Richard

What do you mean? That merchants are signing up with Peixe because they think they are signing up with facebook?
http://www.superlatido.com Matt

Não vou gastar meu vasto inglês aqui. =P Parabéns ao Peixe Urbano. Foi o primeiro a copiar direito o modelo do Groupon e dou moral demais pra isso. ;)
http://readwriteweb.com.br Diego Gomes

Sou fã do peixe. Parabéns pessoal.
abs,
Jose da Silva

That is exactly what is happening. When other clones are attempting to sign up businesses they are getting the response, “I’ve already signed up with Facebook” in reference to Peixe Urbano.
Paul

Right, yeah, don’t forget the business that think they’re backed by Google and Microsoft and Apple altogether. Yep, it’s really happening, and Obama is getting impeached and Bush is returning to the White House.