This resulted in interesting experiences, global business in nature, and a virtual
company structure all of a sudden very important. This transformation led me to make
unconventional choices, such as relocating to Brazil, where I chose to reside for over a decade.
In Brazil, I began advising sovereign wealth and hedge funds to invest in Brazil’s residential and
commercial real estate industry. We actually executed some of the largest transactions in the
real estate sector during two distinct phases of Brazil’s economy from 2010 to 2020. One
specific transaction was wildly successful with a 40%+ IRR.
In addition during this period, I was blessed to meet my wife. We started dating and as she was
capable, available, and cheap as she worked on her PhD, she took over the finances of the
company. She now runs operations and has been a total lifesaver. She was the core of
restarting my life and I could not be happier with this large team.
Meeting Brazil Where It is At!

Upon the successful transaction mentioned above, my business partner and wife Beatriz was
very forceful that we need to build a recurring revenue business. We studied various industries
in Brazil and elsewhere including but not limited to solar energy and data centers. However, at
the end of the day, we decided that we had to shift our focus to Brazil’s competitive and strategic
advantages, agriculture. As we moved the family to Spain right before Covid, we also desired to
build a business that could tie Europe to Brazil in a meaningful way.
AgDev
This evolution resulted in AgDev. There is a significant desire among climate-oriented investors
to prevent deforestation. There are unique financing opportunities, largely in credit, to
export-oriented farmers in Brazil to finance the expansion of their production to meet global
demand. The bridge to make this happen is our degraded pasture finance program where we
loan money to farmers to restore degraded pasture and the farmer pledges to not clear native
vegetation. While this is a business I am passionate about and I believe will scale, I am certain
that it would not have occurred without the above meandering journey. In addition, in my
entrepreneurial career it is the first business where I can truly say it has global impact as
large-scale prevention of deforestation while at the same time meeting the global demand for
calories has real meaning, impact, and legacy value.

In the midst of this transformative phase, I embarked on a remarkable personal journey. Met a
wonderful woman from a place that I did not even know existed prior to meeting her, the Canary
Islands of Spain, gratefully she is a decade younger than myself which allowed a new father at
45 years old to end up with four kids 🙂 Together, we embarked on the incredible adventure of
building an international business, raising four children, all born at home with three of the
children just born with wife, kids, and yours truly. We live with an adventurous flair, which
includes driving and camping around Europe in a 9 seat VW van (we all sleep in the van)
embracing the spontaneity of the open road and the joys of camping.