07/21/2024 – 7:02
Before he was 10 years old, Antônio Moraes, now a college student, was already selling candy at school. As a teenager, he learned to program and, as a hobby, started to customize blogs. During the pandemic, he developed an app that helped him lose 20 kilos in six months. Today, in his third year of Computer Science, the 24-year-old has turned his ideas into a business and has already received support from Microsoft to scale the event ticket sales platform he created with the help of the lessons learned at the Institute of Technology and Leadership (Inteli), a college created by André Esteves and Roberto Sallouti, partners at BTG.
The startup Qual é Boa, with 3,000 users, is one of the first “offspring” of Inteli, an initiative created in 2019 by bankers to help reduce the shortage of technology professionals in the country. The first class, in 2022 with 155 students, will graduate at the end of next year and, in addition to entrepreneurs like Moraes, will bring young leaders to the market for the country’s leading companies. Around 230 students are already doing internships at companies such as Uber, Amazon, Ifood and BTG itself.
The college was conceived from a donation of R$200 million from the Esteves family, with the ambition of creating a cutting-edge team at the intersection of technology and business, a kind of “Brazilian MIT”.
“Our goal is to be recognized as one of the best computer science schools in Latin America,” says BTG president Roberto Sallouti. Every month, Sallouti participates in a presentation of the project to businesspeople, executives and those interested in meeting and “adopting” a student on their journey.
The idea for the college came from the realization of a shortage of qualified technology professionals in Brazil, based on interactions between BTG executives and businesspeople. Of the 8 million students enrolled in higher education, only 1.8% are studying engineering or computer science, of which 53% drop out halfway through their degree.
The results that are beginning to be collected are gradually making it clear what this means. In addition to the 300 prototypes developed by students for the market, Inteli’s curriculum includes at least three startups and 15 scientific articles registered. More recently, the first patent was registered: a project developed by students reduced the implementation of a management system (ERP) in medium and small companies from six months to two months.
Projects are the centerpiece of the teaching methodology. Every ten weeks, students study a case study in partnership with the market. For example, second-year computer engineering students developed a robot for Gerdau to assess structures in confined spaces. For Dell, a team created a game aimed at training the new business model.
“In the projects I had done, it was just me working on technology with other people. At Inteli, every ten weeks I have the opportunity to work with a different group of people and complete a project from start to finish. I know how important this is in the market,” says Moraes.
Selection
To make this possible from the first year onwards, the selection process tries to identify those who already have a life “story” to tell, which includes honors and merits obtained along the way, in addition to an approach to identify achievements in a relative way, that is, not only where one is in isolation, but how far one has come to get there. The selection test is 90% focused on skills related to the exact sciences area, with the exception of a writing test.
The current ratio is 10 candidates per vacancy. And the high bar for entry already sets the tone for the weight that will be imposed on the exit. “At Inteli, we don’t teach leadership. They are very used to working in teams, making pitches, presentations and putting together projects. They end up leaving ready to lead, to enter the market playing, without needing to warm up,” says Maira Habimorad, president of Inteli.
The spirit of “getting started” has even subverted the original curriculum. The idea was that entrepreneurship lessons would only be taught from the fourth year onwards, but the creation of the startups shows that students did not want to wait. Despite the early start-up, Inteli is still preparing a reinforcement to strengthen the entrepreneurial side of students, with an incubation phase for those who want to start their own business right there.
There are also talks with funders to participate in the students’ entrepreneurial development. Among the venture capital funds (company participation) in negotiation are names such as Y Combinator and ACE. In addition, there are prospects of interaction with BoostLab – BTG’s startup support arm – and, most likely, some support from the bank’s own partners. “They love to get involved,” says Maira. “They recently wanted to learn about some startups from Inteli and loved what they saw.”
Postgraduate
The college’s project is beginning to mature on other fronts, not just in terms of student results. With the recent creation of the Adm Tech course, which combines Inteli’s two central fronts (business and technology), the undergraduate options have increased to five in total: Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering and Information Systems complete the list.
The first postgraduate course in cybersecurity is expected to be launched by the first quarter of 2025, in partnership with the Institute of Technological Research (IPT), which owns the building that houses Inteli, at Cidade Universitária. The course will last 15 months and will not require prior technical knowledge.
“There was a lack of a course that addressed cybersecurity with a focus on business,” says the president of Inteli. “Technology professionals tell us that the same difficulty they had in finding programmers five years ago is seen today in cybersecurity.”
According to her, the topic is a recurring theme in the breakfasts that Saloutti holds for leaders and the market to get to know Inteli. At the meetings, it is the president of BTG himself who welcomes the guests early in the morning and leads the tour of the building after the presentation. During the visit made by Broadcast reporters, managers and the president of a large healthcare company were present.
At the end, participants are invited to support the project, mainly through donations for scholarships – individual support for students amounts to approximately R$119,000 per year, which includes everything from monthly tuition to transportation, English classes and computer assistance. Donors include the MRV Institute, Gerdau and the Telles Foundation, as well as BTG itself. More than half of the students are scholarship holders, from 95 cities in Brazil.
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