Brazil (is not) for Beginners

In this episode of Brazil (is not) for Beginners, Isaac Matzner sits down with Juliana Wainstein, a lawyer and member of the compliance team at FAS Advogados - part of the CMS group - for a timely conversation about corruption, organized crime, and the growing importance of compliance in Brazil’s business environment.

The backdrop for this conversation is hard to ignore: Banco Master, Carbono Oculto, and the recent designation of the Brazilian criminal gangs as a terrorist organization by the United States, have proven that organized crime in Brazil is no longer just on the streets; it is infiltrating the heart of the financial system. Isaac and Juliana discuss how the sophistication of modern money laundering - where fintechs, logistics networks, and complex corporate structures, are used as fronts for illicit operations - is helping put compliance front and center for companies operating in Brazil.

The conversation moves from the mechanics of how organized crime infiltrates legitimate businesses, to what a real compliance program looks like in practice, and since it’s 2026 to the role AI is playing on both sides of the equation. Juliana also makes a case that many companies miss or chose to overlook: compliance, done right, is not a cost or a constraint, it’s a competitive moat, and one of the best tools a company has for long-term success in Brazil’s complex business environment.

Other key topics include:
How Carbono Oculto worked - from gas production to fintech pocket accounts - and what it revealed about the convergence of licit and illicit operations
Why logistics, payments, and financial services are the sectors most exposed to criminal infiltration
Cash payments as a red flag, and the double-edged nature of Pix in the compliance landscape
The PCC’s US terrorist designation and what it means practically for Brazilian and American companies doing business together (OFAC, SDGTs, the 50% rule)
How vulnerable people are recruited into financial crime: fake account openings, stolen credentials, and the debt cycle inside Brazilian prisons
What a real compliance program looks like - from diagnosis and risk matrix to training, whistleblower channels, and culture change
Why compliance should start at day zero, regardless of company size
The ‘broken windows’ logic of compliance culture, and why the little habits matter as much as the big policies
How BTG and other large institutions are using AI to accelerate KYC - and how deepfakes are being used on the criminal side
What foreign companies consistently get wrong when bringing compliance programs to Brazil - and how to localize them properly
And much more…

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In this episode of Brazil (is not) for Beginners, Isaac Matzner sits down with Mayra Iguchi, partner at HIP Hotels to learn about the Brazilian luxury travel market. With over 20 years in the travel industry, Mayra has had a front-row seat to one of the most significant shifts in Brazilian consumer culture: the evolution of the affluent Brazilian traveler from someone checking landmark boxes in Paris and New York to someone seeking unique experiences like booking remote game lodges in South Africa or a multigenerational family trip that offers a local taste of Egypt while meeting the needs of a large and diverse family.
HIP, a representation company that acts as the local sales arm for international luxury travel brands looking to reach the Brazilian market, has a deceptively simple model: be the expert in the room that international brands don't have locally. Understand the agents, know the clients, speak the language — literally, if possible — and above all, be patient. Mayra walks us through how the company was built at the intersection of two growing forces: international luxury brands eager to tap into Brazil's expanding middle and upper class, and Brazilian travelers increasingly willing to prioritize experience over familiarity. In 2024 alone, Brazilian travelers spent $28 billion abroad. The forecast for 2030 is $44 billion.
The conversation covers a lot of ground — how Brazilian travelers think about luxury, why multigenerational travel is one of the fastest-growing trends, the role of the travel agent in an age of AI and information overload, and what international brands consistently get wrong when they try to enter the Brazilian market. The lesson that comes up again and again: relationships first, business second. And for those willing to invest in both, Brazil rewards loyalty in kind.
Other key topics include:
How HIP's business model works — and why Mayra spent her early years explaining it before even talking about the product

The shift in the Brazilian traveler from 'checking landmark boxes' to seeking authenticity and immersion in travel

How Brazil is emerging as a luxury travel destination

Multigenerational and 'nostalgic travel' — going back to countries of origin as a luxury experience

The installment payment culture (parcelamento) and how it expands the Brazilian luxury travel market

Why the travel agent remains essential in an era of information overload, especially for affluent clients

How AI is reshaping the industry — useful in the back office, but keeping human connection front and center

And much more…

In this episode of Brazil (is not) for Beginners, Isaac Matzner sits down with Stefan Rehm, co-founder and CEO of Intelipost. German by birth, Brazilian by choice, Stefan arrived in São Paulo in 2012 with a one-year visa, no Portuguese, and a mandate to scout e-commerce investments for a Berlin-based VC fund. Fourteen years later, he's still here and running one of Brazil's oldest and most enduring tech startups.
The story of Intelipost starts with a wine company, a warehouse, and a Friday night Excel spreadsheet. Embedded at Evino as his fund's forward-deployed logistics expert - a title he gave himself - Stefan discovered that nobody in Brazilian e-commerce could tell you, with any precision, the actual cost of shipping or where a package was during the delivery. Stefan built a workaround . The market came to him. And when his boss asked whether they should invest in logistics or just solve it themselves, they chose to invest in him to solve it. 
What followed was two years of product-building with three early customers - Evino, Amaro, and Petlove - before a competitive scramble between two emerging ecommerce giants handed Intelipost its first enterprise contract and its first real inflection point.
The conversation covers the full arc: How Stefan ended up in Brazil, the early startup scene with its  focus on ecommerce and the gap between German and Brazilian logistics in 2012, the foreign founder advantage in a market that rewards fresh eyes and forgives naivety, and what it actually means to build a company for 14 years when you thought you were signing up for two. Stefan also reflects on the laws that didn't "take off," the hallway conversations where deals are really made, and his advice for anyone thinking about starting something.
Other key topics include:
Why Brazil in 2012 looked like a once-in-a-generation bet - and how that wave felt from the inside

The foreign founder advantage: how arriving unbiased, and being forgiven for not knowing the rules, created real opportunity

A logistics 101 - from Roman generals to Correios, and why e-commerce changed everything

The two problems Intelipost was built to solve: 55% cart abandonment and 70% of customer complaints about tracking

How a Friday night Excel spreadsheet became a company - and why the market came looking for the spreadsheet

Building with early customers iteratively: Evino, Amaro, Petlove, and what signing a contract before you have a product actually means

The impact and challenges of success across enterprise breakthroughs and rising customer  expectations

How the pandemic took logistics strategy from cost center to strategic boardroom agenda item

The law that didn't take off - and what that story reveals about doing business in Brazil

The cafezinho, the hallway, and why the real decisions in Brazilian business happen between the meeting and the elevator

Advice for founders: start with a problem you've felt, not a sector you've researched

And lots more!

In this episode of Brazil (is not) for Beginners, Isaac sits down with Guilherme Hannud, international trade veteran, serial entrepreneur, and author — a man who has spent 55 years representing Brazilian businesses across more than a dozen countries and helping foreign companies find their footing in Brazil.
Guilherme’s story starts early: washing cars at 12, raising 27 caged birds in a São Paulo apartment, and then landing as an exchange student in a Norwegian farming community of 633 people in North Dakota — an experience that would shape everything that followed. By the early 1970s, he was in West Africa with a list of 100 products from a delegation of African businessmen he’d met at a dinner by chance. Instead of selling them the products, he asked a different question: why not help build the industries to make them locally? That instinct — rooted in what he calls freedom over dependency — became the philosophy behind a career that took him through Senegal, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, and beyond, representing Brazilian manufacturers at a moment when Brazil was just beginning to discover its own industrial identity.
The conversation moves between decades and continents, but returns again and again to the same ideas: that lasting business relationships are built on honesty and exceeding expectations, that trade is really about bringing different civilizations into contact, and that Brazil’s greatest untapped resource is the 40 million people still outside its formal economy. Guilherme also shares the story of the Life Recycling Association he co-founded 23 years ago — a model that turned social inclusion and waste recovery into a profitable enterprise, without subsidies.
Other key topics include:
Brazil's industrialization in the 1960s and '70s — and why the shift from exporting coffee to manufacturing changed everything

How a chance dinner with an African trade mission in 1972 launched a career in West Africa

Why building industries in partner countries creates more durable business than simply selling products

The cultural distances that make international trade harder — and more rewarding — than domestic business

What Brazilian companies need to understand before going abroad, and what foreign companies miss about Brazil

Why Brazil is a medium and long-term strategic partner regardless of short-term political or economic turbulence

The Life Recycling Association and turning social inclusion into a sustainable business model

And lots more…

In this episode of Brazil (is not) for Beginners, Isaac Matzner sits down with Roberto Giannetti da Fonseca, economist, trade diplomat, and one of the most seasoned voices in Brazilian international trade. With a career spanning half a century — across both government and the private sector — Roberto offers a rare firsthand account of how Brazil's economic relationship with the world has evolved, and the forces that will shape it going forward.
Roberto graduated as an economist from USP just as the first oil shock hit the world economy, and found himself on what he calls a "trade battlefield" — a generation of Brazilians called upon to build a trade surplus and keep the country solvent. What followed was 50 years on the front lines: co-founding Cotia Trading with his best friend and growing it from zero into Brazil's second-largest exporter by 1985, just behind Vale. From airlifting chilled beef to Nigeria and building Guaraná bottling plants to compete with Coca-Cola, to selling Brazilian steel to a pre-industrial China, Roberto's early career reads like an adventure in global commerce.
The episode moves through Brazil's most turbulent economic decades — the debt crisis of the 1980s, hyperinflation, the Collor Plan, and the Plano Real — with Roberto as both a witness and an architect of policy. He eventually joined the FHC government as head of CAMEX, Brazil's foreign trade policy body, where he created APEX, championed floating exchange rates before they were popular, and used export taxes on raw leather to force-build a domestic shoe industry. The conversation closes with Roberto's vision for Brazil's role in the 21st century: food superpower, biodiversity guardian, and emerging energy giant — and the infrastructure gaps that still stand in the way.

Other key topics include:
How the 1973 oil shock turned exporting into a patriotic mission for Roberto's generation

Building Cotia Trading from zero into Brazil's second-largest exporter in under a decade

The Nigeria chapter: airlifting beef, building 79 cold stores, and launching Guaraná to beat Coca-Cola

Selling Brazilian steel to China in 1985 — when Beijing still ran on bicycles

Why hyperinflation quietly destroyed Brazilian export competitiveness from 1987 onward

The debt crisis, the moratorium of 1987, and Roberto's case to European ambassadors in Geneva

The Collor Plan, the Plano Real, and the three pillars that finally stabilized the economy

How Roberto went from loudest outside critic of FHC's exchange rate policy to head of CAMEX

Creating APEX and using an export tax on raw leather to build Brazil's shoe industry

The case for open economies — and why protectionism makes industries lazy

Brazil's three missions for the 21st century: food superpower, biodiversity guardian, energy giant

Why cultural fluency — not just market knowledge — is non-negotiable for anyone doing business in Brazil

And lots more!