Financial influencers face management crises and layoffs after accelerated growth

Companies led by internet celebrities, such as Nathalia Arcuri and Thiago Nigro, are subject to criticism and frustrations from employees; Me Poupe fired about 70 people this Friday the 27th

From 2015 to 2022, the number of investors in stock Exchange increased by 850% to 5.3 million. In the same period, influencers have harnessed the interest of Brazilians in the world of finance and have created businesses that were born in Youtube and today they employ hundreds of people. This is the case with companies like Spare meof the former television journalist of Nathalia ArcuriAnd First Groupby Thiago Nigro (Primo Rico) and Bruno Perini.

Speaking on topics ranging from the simplest fixed income to complex variable income investments, digital influencers have won millions of followers. On YouTube, Arcuri has over 7 million subscribers while Nigro has over 6 million. In addition to talking about finance, the two share public success based on content of interest to Brazilians. They started out with little or no help, with success or failure depending almost entirely on themselves.

As the business evolved, companies began selling courses on financial management and investing, as well as ramped up video production for different platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. As discovered by Stagein this Friday the 27th round of layoffs, Me Poupe fired around 70 people, having had 140 employees at the end of last year, while Grupo Primo, according to LinkedIn data, has 190 people – there were already more out of 270 .

“Me Poupe!, founded in 2015 with the aim of democratizing financial education and helping people take control of their decisions, is undergoing a restructuring that will require a reorganization of the team and investments.

This movement requires other formations and technical skills of the team, which motivated the difficult decision to proceed with the aforementioned layoffs”, informs the company, regarding the layoffs. A new structure and a new business model will be presented for the Arcuri company “in synthesis “.

In April of last year, Grupo Primo went shopping and acquired education firms TopInvest and Edufinance, as well as partnering with cryptocurrency analytics house Paradigma Education. But the euphoria wore off within a few months.

With the rise in interest rates, which has caused a flight to fixed income, companies more dedicated to the financial market have seen a much less optimistic horizon than in the past. For this, for example, Empiricus has fired 12% of its employees. The First Group also entered the statistics. In 2022 alone, 90 people lost their jobs. After the team was cut down, the project with the highest expectations for 2022 in the group, a channel on the metaverse called the Primoverse, was abandoned.

Before the new round of cuts, between the end of August and the beginning of September, Nigro’s company increased the pressure on results. Reports from former employees are that they were encouraged to work from 5am until after 7pm, with no overtime pay. There were also charges for working on holidays and weekends. In addition, the company promoted a collective reading of Christian principles every Monday, always with biblical passages and “employee exposure”.

In the midst of events, partner Joel Jota, a book author and former swimmer, dropped out of the group, citing personal choices. He wasn’t the first. In July, Luciana Seabra left analyst house Spiti, which joined Grupo Primo after XP Investimentos bought shares in the companies and merged operations. Seabra was a partner at Grupo Primo and continued to occupy the board, as well as continuing as a specialist investment fund analyst at Spiti. His departure, however, was less discreet than Jota’s.

In an open letter, Seabra stressed the importance of its independence in advising investments lest it win twice, once as an analyst and once with fund management fees. “I built, with your help, a beautiful house, but on someone else’s land. This was my big mistake,” wrote the analyst. “I don’t believe in serving two masters.”

In the second half, shortly after Seabra’s departure, Primo Rico launched its first investment fund that promises to help achieve long-term financial independence. Seabra was contacted by the report but declined to comment on the matter. Grupo Primo has been contacted and has not returned any contacts from the editorial staff.

Spare me

Me Poupe made its first round of layoffs in January this year, but has been grappling with an employee crisis since mid-2022. The firm has increasingly focused on teaching fixed income investing and ways to obtain extra income, two aspects that have seen an increase in demand in the face of the high Selic rate and the reduction in the purchasing power of Brazilians, eroded by inflation.

But expectations and reality turned out to be very different for those who believed in a good environment to work in, associated with a mission to free Brazilians from debt and turn them into investors. Former company employees spoke to the Stage that the company stimulates a super competitive climate among people and has started to increase the demand for increasingly unattainable goals, despite the fact that the company is not experiencing financial difficulties.

“People are disappointed as soon as they join the company. There are messages like female empowerment and transparency, autonomy, but this doesn’t happen in practice,” says one of the company’s dismissals, after the change of culture that took place last year.

Cases range from neglect and dismissal of mentally challenged people affected by work to the dismissal of pregnant women. “One of the values ​​of the culture is to do more with less and faster than average. It’s like squeezing an orange just to make two glasses of juice,” says another former employee. “HR openly told managers they had a set amount of time to address people’s mental health issues or they should fire them.”

Criticism of Me Poupe has been accumulating on the Glassdoor job platform since August, citing problems in company management, with objectives that change according to Arcuri’s mood – a view shared by interviewees of Stage.

“It seems that Nathalia has been replaced by someone else. At first she was very different. Over time she became a very bad leader. She should have just been the influencer of the company because she doesn’t know how to deal with people,” says a former employee of Spare me. In a note to Stage, sent in September, Me Poupe reported that “it is constantly innovating and improving its business model and making movements towards expansion and better experience, with a focus on promoting autonomous financial management with greater reach and social impact” . “People management is a strategic pillar driven by overall business planning that aims not only at engagement in the talent recruitment and retention process, but above all at accountability of the people who are hired and retained in the company in step with sustainable growth , preventing them from becoming a cost, but above all a constant investment by the company”, declared the company.

professional management

The professionalization of business management is common in family businesses that have grown and are no longer businesses that depend on only one or two people. In the influencer niche, Flow Podcast has hired a CEO who comes from traditional companies, Andre Gaigher.

Sofia Esteves, founder and president of Grupo Cia. de Talentos, says managing people is one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs and that employee turnover in a company tends to impact financial results due to the time and investment required for terminations, hiring and training.

“The barrier to entry into these digital businesses is very low. The good entrepreneur knows their limits and looks for profiles that complement theirs. But success too quickly can be blinding,” says Esteves.

For the specialist, the exaggerated level of funding can occur in companies without defined objectives and processes, as occurs in banks and large companies in the financial sector. Furthermore, there is a tendency for the leaders of these fledgling companies to be greedy and arrogant, thinking that everyone is just like them and that they should be as dedicated as they are to the business.

Source: Terra

Rose

Rose James is a Gossipify movie and series reviewer known for her in-depth analysis and unique perspective on the latest releases. With a background in film studies, she provides engaging and informative reviews, and keeps readers up to date with industry trends and emerging talents.