João Fernandes, CEO and founder of DocDigitizer, and an alumnus of The Lisbon MBA, spoke last Tuesday at an inspirational talk to students of the Executive MBA, during their final immersion week of the MBA program, sharing his journey and experience regarding professional choices and career path.

 

Coming from an Engineering background, João believes that The Lisbon MBA was the pivotal point in his career and completely changed the course of it: “Taking an MBA is like taking the red pill on Matrix. You start seeing the world as having different shades of grey, seeing different possibilities and also realizing that you might not be right all of the time”.

 

During his first year at The Lisbon MBA he decided he wanted to fully dedicate himself to the MBA experience and decided to quit his job. He was determined to take a gap year, but after only 3 weeks of leaving his job, The Lisbon MBA Career Management Centre was already offering him a position as the CEO of a technology multinational corporation, leader in its sector, NewHotel Software. Becoming a CEO had been his career goal all along and he was being offered this opportunity under the age of 30. He mentioned that, like most people, he had a romanticized vision of what it means to be a CEO and he was driven by the mission of wanting to do a better job than the bosses he had throughout his career until then. But soon he realized that “being a CEO is not what most of us think it is” and after 10 months he left the company. “Most of the time I didn’t have the power to make the decisions I wanted to make, because that power is not really in the CEO, it is actually in the stakeholders, the customers, shareholders and employees. It is also a very lonely position, you are alone in your decisions, you don’t have any backup. You can’t talk about your problems because if you do so you will demotivate the team who looks up to you to have the answers, to define the future. You also think that your time will be spent doing strategic thinking but it’s not. Most of your time you are managing operational issues, the ones no one else wants to do.”

 

João shared with the audience that he doesn’t regret any of his decisions because they helped him get to know himself better, realize what he didn’t want from his career and what his real objectives were. After quitting his job as CEO at NewHotel, he founded his own company, DocDigitizer, whose mission is to transform human-readable content into actionable data for businesses worldwide. At the moment, through his company, João is helping financial institutions to timely approve and distribute millions of euros in direct support to the economy, by overcoming bureaucratic challenges in approving COVID-19 and Credit Moratorium lines, ensuring that money reaches those who need it most.

 

João believes he found his IKIGAI, the intersection between what he loves, what the world needs, what he can be paid for and what he is good at. His advice to students was to find their own IKIGAI, not to think of a professional career as a ladder. “You can take different paths. Don’t climb the ladder blindly and see what happens. Reflect on your purpose and find your IKIGAI”.

 

He also shared his vision as an entrepreneur “if one wants to be an entrepreneur one should make sure that, after identifying the risks and possible pains, one still remains in love with the project and wants to go forward with it. It is like when you fall in love with your partner, you want to make the commitment to stay with that person even after you know his or her flaws. When you know this, is when you are sure the entrepreneurial path is the right one for you. Although I am a very analytical person, in the end, it has always been for me a “gut feeling decision”, I have always trusted my instincts to make the right choice.”

 

It was a very dynamic and interactive session, where students posed interesting and challenging questions to João concerning his entrepreneurial experience, and asked for sound advice on their career development decisions. An enriching discussion also arose on the matter of taking career risks and following one’s personal purpose.