Felipe David Quit Banking to Reinvent the Lab Coat - Here’s Why!

In this episode of The Quest for Success Podcast, we sit down with Felipe David, founder of BIP, a medical apparel brand revolutionising what healthcare professionals wear. From his childhood in Brazil to investment banking and entrepreneurship, Felipe shares how discipline, personal struggles, and family influence shaped his journey. He reveals how BIP blends function and fashion to fight burnout in the healthcare industry, and why true success is emotional, functional, and societal. Whether you’re scaling a mission-driven business or just curious about purpose-led innovation, Felipe’s story is a masterclass in listening to customers, building with empathy, and staying grounded while aiming high.

Key Takeaways
   - Success is functional, emotional, and societal
   - Discipline from childhood shapes entrepreneurial resilience
   - Family influence can be the foundation for business ambition
   - Investment banking offers a toolkit for smart decision-making
   - Healthcare is ripe for innovation—and demands empathy
   - Listening to users is the key to great product design
   - Burnout in healthcare is real and must be addressed
   - Balancing mission and margin is a founder’s tightrope
   - Manufacturing globally requires quality control and trust
   - Direct sales fuel connection, feedback, and loyalty

If you're building something to make life better for others - this one’s for you.

Follow BIP:

• Intsagram: https://www.instagram.com/use.bip/
• Website: https://usebip.com/ 

#Success #Entrepreneurship #HealthcareInnovation #MedicalApparel #Startups #Leadership #FamilyBusiness #CustomerFirst #ProductDesign #Resilience #DirectSales #BusinessStrategy #QuestForSuccess

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Transcript

Dylan Pathirana (00:56.206)
All right. All right. Welcome back to the quest for success podcast. And thanks so much for tuning in once again today. We're incredibly excited because on the show today we have Felipe David and he is a Brazilian entrepreneur who's really reshaping what medical professionals wear. again, he's one of my classmates from Harvard OPM and Felipe it's nice to have you on our podcast.

Felipe David (01:23.361)
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Dylan Pathirana (02:49.831)
So Felipe, this podcast is all about success. And so we need to start with a fundamental question. And that is, what does success mean to you?

Felipe David (02:59.884)
Well, for me, I guess it has three components. You start with the functional part of it, so being able to provide a good house, good food, good education to your family. Then on the emotional side, being loved and being well regarded by the ones that you love and you want to be close to.

And then thirdly, I would put a more broad sense, so being able to achieve something that is bigger than ourselves, both for society, philanthropy, you can do whatever it suits you. So I guess that's my definition of success and this is what I'm looking for.

Dylan Pathirana (03:52.755)
And I suppose for us to understand the man who's sitting in front of us right now, we need to kind of go back to the early Felipe and understand a little bit about your childhood and kind of how you grew up and how that's shaped who you've become today.

Felipe David (04:07.586)
Good. Well, it's almost like a session of therapy, right? Well, I've lived my whole life in Brazil, São Paulo, which is the largest city of Brazil. And my early days, I think we could define them between school and tennis. I've always played tennis. My parents are doctors.

Dylan Pathirana (04:11.445)
That's it.

Felipe David (04:36.054)
definitely going to talk about it because this is a lot to do with my new business. They have always taught me the value of hard work. Even though I was raised without any issues, especially considering the Brazilian reality, I had good education, had good healthcare, etc. My parents always taught me the value of hard work.

And I think that playing tennis has always, has also been pivotal to this mindset because you know in tennis you are alone, you have to beat the opponent, you have to beat yourself, you have to be better than him and also yourself, your previous point, you have to always be thinking about what did I do wrong, how can I be better in the next point, etc. So this...

8 year old, 9 year old focused kid playing tournaments. This has, I think this has had a great impact on my life. I also had an event when I was 7 or 8. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. This also has a

huge impact in my life also coming on the discipline side because you know back then we didn't have insulin pumps. I know you guys interviewed Chris, he's also a diabetic and this brings a great impact in your life also right in the sense of you have to do the blood measurements 10 to 12 times a day, you have to take insulin shots.

Dylan Pathirana (06:17.172)
Mm-hmm.

Felipe David (06:32.13)
five, six times a day. You cannot miss the night insulin shots or the morning insulin shots. So there's no way for you to be unscheduled, right? You cannot just go to a friend's house and say, I wanna sleep here. No, you have to come back or you have to bring your insulin gears, et cetera. So this also shaped me quite a bit and...

Dylan Pathirana (06:47.54)
Mm-hmm.

Felipe David (06:59.658)
So I guess the three things in the sense of being very disciplined, working hard, very focused, both in the three components are parents, tennis, and diabetes.

Dylan Pathirana (07:14.42)
And are there any particular traits that you think you have learned from your parents?

Felipe David (07:21.644)
Well, definitely the value of hard work and the value that there are no shortcuts. My father always liked to say that you cannot skip a phase. know, you have to, even though you know you want to go from one to four, you have to go through two and three before you achieve four. Otherwise, there's no way to get there.

Dylan Pathirana (07:49.78)
So did your parents, Philippe, work for themselves or they work for a hospital?

Felipe David (07:58.093)
Both. So my father is a nephrologist and as a nephrologist he worked both, they both work at the largest public hospital in Brazil where they do research, where they...

Dylan Pathirana (07:59.015)
Okay.

Felipe David (08:19.18)
bring their service to the population for free. Brazil has the free program for healthcare in the Western world. And so they work at this hospital doing research and having the population there. And my father, he also ran his own private clinic. So he had a dialysis clinic.

So I guess that's where my entrepreneurial side also comes from. I had the privilege of helping him in this journey some years ago. And he also had his own private office, consultation office. So they had this dual way of working.

Dylan Pathirana (09:12.02)
So how did you actually help him? Any particular way that you helped him?

Felipe David (09:18.868)
Yeah, it's a funny story, you know. So my story is pretty simple. I studied in the same school my entire life. Then I went to university to business school and I decided I want to work with finance. So my first job was in investment banking at JP Morgan doing &A. So I was an intern there and you you work crazy hours.

I know you guys had Hafa, he said 16 hours a day, I he was being polite. I did something once, not just once, but what they call it's the magic roundabout. You go home, you take a shower and then you do the roundabout and you come back. Then I decided I want to work with, not on the sell side, so not selling companies, but...

Dylan Pathirana (09:53.396)
Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (10:04.378)
Jeez.

Felipe David (10:15.092)
analyzing the companies to see if they were as good as the sell side was selling, managers or even business people. And then I went to work for a Brazilian asset management that was starting their equities division. They had a big hedge fund and they were starting an equities division. And that's when I started to read more about Warren Buffett.

And on those early days, this is 2012, I remember I decided to look the largest investments from Warren Buffett. And one of the largest investments was a company called Davida, which is the largest dialysis player in the world. And then I called my, well, when I saw this, I thought to myself, Warren Buffett only invests in good businesses.

So dialysis must be a good business. My father owns a dialysis clinic, but he never told me it's a good business. Let me call him. And then I called him and I said, hey dad, Warren Buffett invests in dialysis. He said, I don't know, I can't believe. You say he only invests in good businesses and it's not a good business.

And then I told him, you know that on this matter, I trust more Warren Buffett than I trust you. So I'm going to investigate the issue. And then it's also fun because this is going to come sometime. Maybe there is a difference between being a doctor and being an entrepreneur and being a businessman. And my father takes pride in being a doctor, not a businessman. And from that call, just, this is to 2000.

12 maybe 13 I decided I wanted to help him to grow the business and I did my some some tricks not necessarily hard ones just the sense that there are different payers and you have to prioritize the ones that are paying you better so you have operational leverage because it's the same costs but you have a higher ticket and

Felipe David (12:29.962)
I take a great pride of being able to help him. We grew the business eight times in five years. So it was a fantastic run. And then five years on, Brazil opened the investment world for healthcare because until 2017, I think.

Dylan Pathirana (12:38.334)
Bye.

Felipe David (12:59.936)
If you were a foreigner, you could not own a hospital or a clinic in Brazil. Nothing related to healthcare. You had to be Brazilian to have the control of the company. And with this, the largest dialysis players in the world came to Brazil and I helped him not only grow the business, but also to sell it. So we did a, that's when my investment banking,

Dylan Pathirana (13:05.844)
Mm.

Dylan Pathirana (13:23.336)
Amazing.

Dylan Pathirana (13:29.126)
expertise. Yeah.

Felipe David (13:30.688)
exactly expertise came through and also my investment expertise. it was phenomenal run and I'm very proud to have helped him grow the business and then sell it.

Dylan Pathirana (13:45.46)
And what was it like working with your dad side by side, trying to grow something which he'd been working on for most of his life?

Felipe David (13:52.545)
Well, I guess you can tell me how it is, It's... Yeah, it's fun. I mean, there were periods that were really hard, right? I bet you can relate. When you basically sort of lose your dad to have a boss or have someone that you're constantly struggling with because...

Dylan Pathirana (13:54.803)
Hahaha

Yep, it's got challenges, right?

Felipe David (14:20.866)
You want to go in one direction, you want to go the other direction and you have this conflict. But at the end of the day, it's super...

Super proud, right? It's hard to describe a better feeling than doing something that becomes great, not only for you, but for your loved ones, right? So at the end of the day, I'm super grateful that I had the opportunity to help him and take it to another level, right? Eight times in five years is...

Dylan Pathirana (14:39.22)
Mm.

Dylan Pathirana (15:00.372)
Amazing. when was this, when did you exit?

Felipe David (15:01.408)
It was really good.

We sold the business in 2019, 2020. Yeah, just before COVID. Yeah. And it was actually, we signed and we closed the deal at the same day. And it was one day before my birthday. And my mother...

Dylan Pathirana (15:08.557)
wow, just before the COVID?

Dylan Pathirana (15:22.676)
Happy birthday. That was a great present.

Felipe David (15:27.812)
Her birthday is one day after my birthday. So we have now the 29th, the 30th, and the 31st dates to celebrate.

Dylan Pathirana (15:36.148)
Amazing. So did your dad buy your Ferrari or something just to celebrate?

Felipe David (15:41.272)
Not at all. Come on. It's Brazil and it's not software. So it's not like 30 times revenues,

Dylan Pathirana (15:51.934)
Yeah. And I want to know like what was the transition like going from, you know, hardcore investment banking to then going into like a more family business kind of scenario. And do you ever want to go back to the investment banking side of things?

Felipe David (16:12.098)
Great. So I'm sorry. I don't think I explained it right. It was a side job. I was I was still working on the investment world. So I worked in investment banking for less than a year. Then I transitioned to the buy side. I work at this firm for one year and a half. And then I was hired for this other firm where I really spent my whole career, almost 10 years. I started there as a

Dylan Pathirana (16:20.373)
right.

Felipe David (16:40.758)
recent graduate and i ended as the second largest partner together with another one in this equities fund in brazil one of the largest equities funds of brazil independent equities funds of brazil we managed over i guess it depends on the effects right but something like four billion at the top u.s. twenty billion reais

And so this made us pretty big, top three, top four. And this whole period working with my father.

was on the side of working at Constellation, which is this fund that I spent 10 years. So basically I would work there, I don't know, from 8 to 10, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. And then I would start working on the spreadsheets with my father. I would try to convince him to change the payer from payer A to payer B. And on weekends, of course.

And the selling process was also very intense because I ran the financials and my older brother who is a lawyer ran the contracts. So we did an &A boutique in-house exactly. But this was always on the side. I was still working on finance and on this therapy session.

Dylan Pathirana (17:59.132)
in house.

Felipe David (18:12.118)
You know, I think I started my career in banking and then I went to the buy side because I really wanted to learn what makes a great business great, right? Why does some business thrive? Why do other business fail? And I think my whole career was in the investment world was about that, right? Learning.

Dylan Pathirana (18:37.14)
Mm.

Felipe David (18:38.592)
Why does some companies work? Why do other companies don't? And even going to Harvard was the same, right? I think this is a continuous learning. It's not like you plug in a software or you read a book and then you know how it works and how it doesn't work. But I guess my big passion on learning is on that topic. Why do some companies work and why do others don't? And I guess I was prescientious enough to say,

Dylan Pathirana (18:49.661)
Absolutely.

Felipe David (19:08.022)
You know, I have been working for over a decade learning. Now it's time to put in practice. And that's how I decided to shift the third part, sell side by side and now entrepreneur.

Dylan Pathirana (19:21.288)
Yeah. So that curiosity that you had to learn about the business, you mentioned about reading a book and that came way before that, right? When you were quite young. You know why that curiosity just came? Because you're coming from a very medical professional background, Anything inspired you to do that?

Felipe David (19:34.957)
definitely.

Felipe David (19:48.729)
I guess I always wanted to be successful. I don't know why, but something related to seeing big entrepreneurs in Brazil. Back then, we didn't live in such a globalized world, right? So seeing some big entrepreneurs in Brazil and looking and saying, I want to be there. I want to be that guy. I want to create something that is bigger than myself.

It's actually funny, I met a friend, a tennis friend the other day and he told me, do you remember when we were about 10, I would tell you, you're gonna be a successful guy, you're gonna be an entrepreneur and you're gonna fund me because I'm gonna be a tennis player. Because he played tennis better than myself. And so I don't know, I don't know how or why.

Dylan Pathirana (20:38.324)
You

Yeah, it's funny.

Felipe David (20:48.184)
But it just, it is the way it is. I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, a businessman, someone, something related to business to probably to create something that is bigger than myself.

Dylan Pathirana (21:01.734)
And then so you've sold the family business. Can you take us to that kind of headspace there? Like what were you thinking in that time and why did you end up in medical garments?

Felipe David (21:14.208)
Well, I guess when we sold the business, I was super happy to provide liquidity to my parents and help them to achieve something that they actually had, but they just didn't know. It was in the form of a company, not in the form of money. Then we had the second challenge, right? Because

If you don't have this background of investment, which was their case, how do you sort of learn to see the money coming up or down every day with stocks or even fixed income? And the second challenge was six months later, we had COVID. So can you imagine you have never seen

a fluctuation on your P &L and your money, etc. And then all of a sudden everything falls 20-30 % and you have to be cool. So there were lots of challenges and at the same time I was working and the stocks were all coming down. So it was a pretty intense moment.

Dylan Pathirana (22:14.386)
Money.

Dylan Pathirana (22:21.512)
Mm-hmm.

Felipe David (22:40.14)
You know, this is something that both my parents always said. We are hard workers. I remember as a young kid, my father and my mother telling me this. It doesn't matter if we're to, I don't know, ski. It doesn't matter if you're going to the best school. It doesn't matter if we're able to provide you a good restaurant. We are hard workers.

We are people that wake up every morning, we go to work, we come back late, we dedicate ourselves to work. So I think this work ethic has always been something that is running through the family. All my brothers, they are also very hard workers. We are four men. And this is something that really, I really appreciate that we had.

since we were little kids and I hope when I become a father one day I can pass this to my little ones as well. And I'm sure your father does the same with you.

Dylan Pathirana (23:49.524)
Absolutely. And so, so take us through the founding story of BIP. I want to, I want to know how, it came to be.

Felipe David (24:01.014)
Yeah, well, you know, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, right? Even though I didn't go to medical school. And I think this is the biggest realization I had. So I was working in finance for more than 10 years already on this fund for about eight years, eight and a half. And it was late October, 2021.

I have the exact date because I remember when I saw it, I started texting a lot of people. But I was doing research and I was in charge of several sectors in the fund. One of them was healthcare, the other one was retail and consumption in general. So I was doing research on...

companies outside of Brazil to sort of get ideas. And remember, 2021 second semester was the peak of the bubble, right? So valuations were super high. Companies that were not trying to make their temp larger were losers. So you had to innovate all of the time. And I was doing research on companies outside of Brazil. And I...

got to know this company, this American company called FIX and I started doing research on the segment and then I discovered that FIX existed, GENU existed, lot of other companies, Charismatic existed and there was this whole segment of medical apparel that was a non-topic in Brazil.

Actually there were some companies in Brazil already doing this but on a different segment. were too geared towards fashion or too feminine. Nothing related to sort of being like the Nike or Lululemon for healthcare. And I remember when I saw this ecosystem, I called my father and I asked him,

Dylan Pathirana (26:06.014)
Mm-hmm.

Felipe David (26:15.85)
where do you buy your lab coats? And said, there's this nurse on the floor. She has a sister. Her sister does the lab coats and she puts the name, she puts the logo of the hospital. And I said, well, but how is the fabric? It's okay. And how is the, do you have pockets, et cetera? there are two pockets. Do you like it? It's.

it's good. I said okay. Then I called my brother and it was the same thing. one of my brother was in his twenties, my father in his sixties. Of course, very different realities. And I was surprised that they both gave me the same answer. My brother is someone from the university, my father is someone from the hospital. And when I asked them, do you like

your clothes, your current clothes and they said no, it's okay. But when you ask them another question, wouldn't you like better if you had some place to put your phone? Wouldn't you like better if you had some place to put your stethoscope, your wallet, your key cards? Oh, that would be nice. And then I decided to investigate further. So I guess this whole analytical part of me.

you know, trying to figure it out. How many doctors are there in Brazil? How many dentists? How many hospitals? How many medical schools, etc. And to my benefit, this was my work. So I already had a lot of those numbers because we were investing in universities, we were investing in hospitals, in healthcare, etc.

So I had the privilege of being able to gather all this information very quickly. And between October and January, it was decided, this is a good business. This is a big opportunity in Brazil. Then I had to leave that idea sort of aside between around April, 2023 for other reasons, personal and on the work.

Dylan Pathirana (28:07.486)
data.

Felipe David (28:33.366)
And when I came back to Harvard in September, October, right, I bet you can remember, we had to do a presentation for OPM 1 on a program, one of the classes, we had this challenge called OPM Idol. And it was the first time I presented to the world the idea of building a medical apparel company with

Dylan Pathirana (28:50.324)
Yep.

Felipe David (29:00.812)
that blends functionality and style in Brazil. this was the first idea, doing this in Brazil. And to my surprise, people from Poland, from Switzerland, from the UK, from Australia came to me and told me, your idea is pretty nice. While you were pitching it, I...

talk to my friend, my father, to my son, to my daughter, to someone that I know back then in my country. And the same reality that you presented in Brazil happens in Australia, in South Africa, in Switzerland, in Egypt. And I said to myself, wow, so we have a global opportunity. It's not just a Brazil opportunity. And from then,

Dylan Pathirana (29:44.828)
Mm-hmm, yep, I remember, yep.

Felipe David (29:57.369)
I decided that I wanted to build a company that would blend functionality and style for healthcare workers, but not only in Brazil, globally speaking. And I came back from Harvard in November 2022 with this idea in mind.

in 2023, I'm going to create this company. didn't have a name back then. It didn't have a prototype. It didn't have a supplier. It didn't have anything. But the idea was embedded in myself already. And this was when I decided I want to build something. And that's the journey that I have been doing ever since.

So in 2023, I built the company. the brand, I did a lot of interviews with suppliers and I found a very good one that has been helping me ever since. And it's the only supplier that we have for the clothes. We have several suppliers for other topics. And in July 1st, 2024,

is the day that we open the website for sales and we have been doing sales ever since. That's it.

Dylan Pathirana (31:19.796)
Awesome. That's awesome. And I want to go back to a point you mentioned there before of your customers don't really see it as a problem. Like it's a good enough industry. And I want to know what that's kind of taught you about innovating in the space where your customers don't actually see the problem you're solving as a problem.

Felipe David (31:44.013)
You know, Steve Jobs, didn't like market research because he would always say that people don't know what they want until you show them what they really want. to me, this is the same topic, right? No one ever told us you don't need a phone that is wireless, right? But when he...

provided us with one, we said, wow, I don't want anything else but this. And on this industry, I think what happens is the same. Imagine you are a doctor or nurse or physiotherapist, whatever. You're working so hard, you're studying so hard for your patient. Medicine in Brazil, probably through.

a lot of countries. go for six years on the university. Then you go for two years of residency, for general residency, and then you go for two years to specialize on a subject. So you go 10 years of studying. I don't think healthcare workers really think about, okay, so this clove could be...

more functional, more stylish, et cetera. They were just focused on the patient. But when you show them, hey, your lab coat is not waterproof. So it means that if blood comes from your patient, you're gonna have something in your clothes for the entire period until you wash it. And then you show him or her.

By the way, this lab coat is waterproof, so now you don't have to worry about it. They go, really? This is amazing. So I think it's about doing the right questions. So it's not about how do you like it or not. It's about how would you like it if what you're wearing could have this. This is something that changed me. And the other thing is about providing them the feeling.

Felipe David (34:05.452)
And this is what you could have. I like to make an analogy where healthcare workers are high-performance athletes, but they are running on flip-flops. They're not running with running shoes. And then you come up and you show them a high-performance running shoe where you have air, where you have everything that helps them through their journey.

Another thing that caught my attention while I doing research, so this is one topic, the topic that they were satisfied, but they didn't know that it could be much better. Another topic that really struck me is in almost every country, healthcare workers are the category. I don't know how to say it, but the...

Healthcare workers are the ones on the professional side that suffer burnout the most.

Dylan Pathirana (35:08.592)
Mm-hmm, okay.

Felipe David (35:10.304)
And it's pretty obvious, right, when you think about it. You're dealing with lives, long hours, not everywhere you have high payments. they are the work class that is having burnout the most. And my goal with BIP is to be an ally at their journey. So providing them...

Dylan Pathirana (35:12.744)
Yep, yep, they work long hours,

Felipe David (35:39.501)
gears on we're starting with clothes but the goal is to go to other categories accessories shoes etc to help them on their journey to feel better because you know when when you dress well not only good looking but you have the right pockets you have the right fabric for the temperature that you where you are where you are

when you dress better, when you feel better, you are better about yourself, you can work better. So that's the whole concept of being an ally at their journey and helping them beat burnout and of course everything else that comes related with being better served at their work.

Dylan Pathirana (36:32.616)
And you've mentioned a few times, but how do you look at or how do you approach balancing style and functionality?

Felipe David (36:42.124)
Well,

You just, and this is what we did. This is what I did from.

November 2022 to July 2024. You just go and you study and you study and you study. What do the customer need? Right? So what we did is I did a prototype and I went to medical schools because I needed a lot of people to provide me feedback.

So I did this prototype and I went to one of the most prestigious medical schools in Sao Paulo. I literally entered my Instagram and started texting students, hey, you study here, I'm building this brand, I would like to have feedback on the product, can we have a coffee? And then we did this with hundreds of students.

and we asked them, how do you like this bucket? What do you need? Do you need a bigger bucket? Do you need a smaller bucket? And you start to learn the little things that make the very big difference when they are combined. And this actually became a slogan in the company. We bring a solution in every detail because when we got to the final product,

Felipe David (38:16.738)
the students provide me this feedback. were like, wow, you thought about everything. And really, we really did. But it was from their feedback. giving them a fabric in a pocket where they can clean their glasses or their mobile, it came from the feedback of, hey, sometimes I'm...

I just have my glasses dirt because I don't have any place that I can just get them clean. Or giving them a zipper pocket because we heard so many times I have lost my earring, have lost my wedding ring, have lost my necklace, etc. because I put them on a pocket and then it falls.

hearing this feedback is how we got them with the functionality part and the stylish is just you know they're wearing this super large baggy poor fabric clothes and then you bring them with something that has a nice touch, nice feel you really

Dylan Pathirana (39:30.332)
Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (39:36.052)
Mm-hmm.

Felipe David (39:44.482)
you feel like you're being hugged by the lab coat or the straps. So that's how we did it.

Dylan Pathirana (39:48.03)
Mm-mm.

You want to feel like you want to wear it, right? Yeah.

Felipe David (39:53.753)
Exactly, exactly. There is this thing that we were the first ones to build a waterproof lab coat and the first ones to bring a stethoscope pocket for the students and for the doctors because they typically wear the stethoscope here, right on the neck. But imagine having this for 6, 10, 12, 16 hours.

it starts to bring weight then when you do like when you need to to to grab something on the floor it falls it breaks so from this feedback and i have to to give this one to my brother he was the one that suggested me we we put a small pocket here so that they can fit in the the round part of the the stethoscope and

It brings relief to their neck. It brings relief so that it won't break. So very small things. Virgo, who used to work for LVMH, he would say that innovation is 3%. So the small things that you do in a product that already exists, and lab coats have been there for two centuries, and you make all the difference.

Dylan Pathirana (41:14.663)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Dylan Pathirana (41:18.75)
Yeah, so all these innovations, all these solutions, you did like, know, when people requested, you kind of start kind of adding those features into your original design? Is that how you went about? Yeah, so where this product manufactured in Brazil or somewhere outside?

Felipe David (41:37.942)
Exactly.

Felipe David (41:43.532)
No, we're currently manufacturing it in Vietnam.

Dylan Pathirana (41:46.642)
Okay, so you go into more mass scale production.

Felipe David (41:50.881)
not only mass scale production, and this comes a lot of peculiarities, right? So the small details. I learned that there are basically two fabrics in the world or two types of fabric. One of them is plain fabric. The other one, I don't know the term in English, but...

you can figure it out it's something like this they're playing fabrics where the fabric goes like this and there are the other ones where the fabric goes like this

Dylan Pathirana (42:22.312)
Okay.

Felipe David (42:29.268)
For waterproof, so that you can have a waterproof, so that you can have some of the functions that we wanted to build in the product, we needed to have plain fabric. And Brazil is not good in plain fabric. It's only good on the thread. So we decided after interviewing 10, 12 companies, okay, we need to go abroad. And then through OPM, I had...

this privilege of finding someone in Vietnam to build the product, to manufacture the product for us. if you look, the best brands from Nike to sports brands, active wear, Nike, Lululemon, Alo Yoga, all of the brands, they are producing in Vietnam. So we are leveraging from the best.

machines, the best techniques to make the best product. And then we imported and we sell it in Brazil. But the design, everything is from us.

Dylan Pathirana (43:36.306)
Yep. Yep. And you seem like a very purpose driven company. I want to understand how do you balance mission and then the commercial aspect, like the commercial side of things.

Felipe David (43:50.049)
Yes, well, I guess we're learning on that part and we're continuously learning. But of course, you want to build the best product and this comes on an expense, It's not always marketable because it becomes too expensive. So we launched this set of products, the scrubs, top and bottom.

Dylan Pathirana (44:08.22)
expensive.

Felipe David (44:18.824)
lab coat male and female so we have different and by the way it's not it was not like that always because it was usually the same for men and women and

Dylan Pathirana (44:29.234)
Yep. Yep.

Felipe David (44:34.006)
So now we are in the second phase of we learned maybe we don't need 12 buckets, maybe eight buckets is enough. So we're creating new products to provide new prices also. And it's super fun, It's like I heard this from another entrepreneur the other day. It's like playing a video game.

where you go from face to face and then you have to continuously keep going to get to the big boss.

Dylan Pathirana (45:11.432)
Yep. Yep. And I suppose what does success look like for BIP when you, when you think about the future, what are you aiming for?

Felipe David (45:28.768)
I want BIP to be recognized globally for healthcare workers as the brand that brings them the best solutions for their day-to-day work.

Dylan Pathirana (45:42.804)
So, Philippe, at current present, do you have any competitors doing similar kind of products?

Felipe David (45:53.783)
We have, well, globally speaking for sure, we have the ones that I've mentioned in the US that brings functionality and style. In Brazil, we have competitors in the same segment, but they're going on a different approach, more towards fashion and feminine. And, well, this is a big market, right? This number always strike me.

There are 120 million healthcare workers in the world. Just for comparison, I recently read a book on Brooks, the running company, and the CEO mentions there are 150 million runners in the world. So think about how many brands you know for running and how many brands you know for healthcare workers. And so I'm sure there will be other companies coming on the market.

Dylan Pathirana (46:39.868)
Wow. Yep.

Felipe David (46:51.98)
Competition is good. It makes us want to be even better. But this is the market environment today. There are some companies in the US doing the same thing. In Brazil, they're more towards fashion. And we want to be the first ones in a lot of countries.

Dylan Pathirana (47:14.068)
So where are you right now apart from Brazil?

Felipe David (47:18.54)
We're currently in Brazil. We sold already to 26 of the 27 states in Brazil. on geography speaking, geography wise, we're bigger than Europe already because Brazil is a huge country, right? And we did some sales for international customers in Switzerland, in Peru, and in Panama.

Dylan Pathirana (47:26.889)
Nice.

Felipe David (47:48.281)
We have potential customers in a country in Europe. We're talking to them. We do direct sales, right? So we serve, it's a direct consumer business. We serve the doctor, the nurse, the speech therapist, the physiotherapist, the veterinarian. We serve them directly. In Brazil, we have also served hospitals and clinics. So we did the B2B business already.

And Sam Altman has the saying of first you build a product and then you build a company. So we're nine months and 14 days old. So we just conceived the baby, We just had the baby. The baby's just born, has just been born. And now we are in the phase of building the company. We have the product market picked.

Dylan Pathirana (48:34.842)
Yep.

Felipe David (48:46.794)
over 1000 customers, hundreds of positive feedbacks. We had three returns ever since we launched the company. Two of them were size based. So the XL was too large and the, sorry, the XL was too small and the extra small was too large. And one was because the client decided that she didn't need a lab coat.

Dylan Pathirana (48:53.598)
Wow.

Dylan Pathirana (49:02.772)
Mm-hmm.

Dylan Pathirana (49:14.324)
That's awesome.

Felipe David (49:14.648)
She tried and said, no, I actually decided I don't need a lab coat. So we built this product. really super proud of building a great product. We're super proud of the operational excellence that we're providing to customers. I did a delivery in Sao Paulo in less than 14 minutes. So between the person purchased online and arrived at her home in less than 14 minutes.

Dylan Pathirana (49:41.906)
Amazing.

Felipe David (49:43.639)
This is fun actually. I showed the message to the largest food delivery company in Brazil. I showed the message because the person who received the customer, she said, this is faster than this company. And I showed the message to the CEO and he said, how many minutes? 14. Okay, so my new goal is 13 minutes. Thank you for providing me this.

Dylan Pathirana (50:08.661)
So, Philippe, this is an awesome story. So currently you mentioned that you're selling directly to healthcare workers. What's your plan in the future? What's the distribution model going to be? Like, especially in other markets, which you may not be able to directly sell. You're looking for distribution, distributors. What's the distribution model going to look like?

Felipe David (50:39.478)
Well, never say never, right? So I guess we're going to have to learn how each country works. But ideally, we want to be the ones that are selling direct to the customer, direct to the professional. So the doctor, the nurse, the speech therapist, the physiotherapist, the veterinarian, or direct to the hospital, to the clinic, et cetera.

If we can, the goal is to never have an intermediary between us and the one that is paying the bill. Because if you have an intermediary, well, of course you lose the margins, right? Because someone is in the middle. But if you don't have the middle man, it's not just about the margins. It's mostly about the feedback.

Dylan Pathirana (51:17.928)
Any?

Felipe David (51:35.563)
So the reason why I'm able to create a second version of the product, a third version of the product, is because I've learned through the thousands of customers that we've sold already what they really need, what they are really willing to pay. We had several classes on that, right? What is your willingness to pay? What are the characteristics that people want? So for example, right now we have only one color, navy blue. And the reason why we started with

Dylan Pathirana (51:54.664)
Yep.

Dylan Pathirana (52:04.488)
Alright.

Felipe David (52:05.466)
Navy blue is 70 % of people like navy blue the most. But I have feedback on what are the colors that they want. I have some of them here. So, charcoal, black, burgundy, green, et cetera. Because we are able to talk to them. If we had a middle man, then we would lose this feedback loop and we would not be able to continuously improve.

Dylan Pathirana (52:20.693)
green.

Felipe David (52:35.32)
So the goal is to be straight to the one that is paying to the bill.

Dylan Pathirana (52:39.284)
But that means you need lot of resources as well, right? I mean, it's okay. mean, even Brazil is such a large country, right? So for you to reach to 80 % of Brazil or more, that means you need more resources.

Felipe David (52:56.342)
Yes and no.

The beauty of the age where we are right now is being able to launch something on the internet. And the beauty of being on a niche is that this niche is concentrated. Brazil has almost 1 million.

doctors and or students of medicine. This is just medicine. I'm not talking about dentists, I'm not talking about physiotherapists, etc. This one million population is concentrated in the 4,000 hospitals we have in Brazil and the 300 medical schools we have in Brazil and some hundreds of medical congresses. So if we are able to be present in

let's say the top 100 hospitals, the top 100 universities, the world will be spread out. And the beauty of today's age is this was impossible 15 years ago, 20 years ago, because 20 years ago, if I wanted to build a brand, if I wanted to build a product to serve even a certain niche, I would have to do advertising on television.

So it was impossible for a new brand to start from zero because advertisement for television was too expensive. Now we can just go on the universities. You can use social media to target influencers, to target specifically the customer that you want to reach. And look at us, I mean...

Dylan Pathirana (54:34.556)
Influences

Felipe David (54:45.848)
We started July last year, we didn't do any marketing efforts and we started this year with around 2000 followers on Instagram. Now we're almost 17,000. So in 100 days, we grew seven times, right? More than seven times, right? Because of that, because you are able to do advertisement very specifically on the niche that you want to serve.

And so I've never done, I've never been to Amazonas. I've never been to probably more than half of the states where we have already sold. And we are able to get there through social media. We're able to get there through our website, through WhatsApp. And that's the beauty of it. So.

Dylan Pathirana (55:42.644)
Mm.

Felipe David (55:44.0)
Let's try to replicate this worldwide. When I go to Australia, I know who I'm going to call to.

Dylan Pathirana (55:46.676)
Absolutely.

Yeah, sure. If you want someone to do the third party logistics, I can help you. Anyway, let's have a separate discussion about that. So, Philippe, know, over the past nine months, what are the key learnings like, you know, doing this?

Felipe David (56:18.39)
Well, there's so many. But I guess...

Felipe David (56:32.396)
being really focused on the problem that you're solving for your customer. So being obsessed with the customer. It's not about... I'm really not worried on competition. I'm not worried on the macro environment. Brazil has a very tough macro environment with inflation, with the change of politics, etc.

Regardless of who is the president, regardless of how many competitors I have, there are eight million healthcare workers or students that need good garments to do their day-to-day work. And I guess the biggest learning is having this obsession, not looking anywhere else, because the problem is there. They need clothes.

If we're able to provide them good clothes at affordable pricing and create an aspirational brand so that they really want our product instead of any of the competitors that already exists or the ones that will exist, we're going to get there. And not, you know, I always say being focused on this industry.

Imagine you received the pitch of on running 15 years ago on running started in 2010, right? Imagine three guys come to you and say hey We want to build this tennis shoe brand. We're gonna compete against Nike. We're gonna compete against Adidas You would call them crazy, right? How come are you going to compete with these guys that are?

They're going to be one million times your size if you are very successful. And they did it. They went from zero to $2.5 billion in revenues in 15 years. Their global company. And because they analyzed this niche, they understood the needs of the customer, they built a product upon it, they built a brand upon it, they gathered a community upon it, and this is exactly the playbook that I want to build.

Dylan Pathirana (58:51.668)
And Felipe, you mentioned at the beginning that one of the factors that you class as success is, having love of the people around you. want to understand, you know, a little bit more on the family side of things. How do you manage this entrepreneurial life with also the family aspect of life?

Felipe David (59:15.816)
It's super tough. People say, being an entrepreneur is super nice. You do great posts on LinkedIn. You go through some of the websites, etc. It's really hard. And it's really lonely. There were periods where I felt super lonely. There were periods where I felt, my God, what I'm doing.

Dylan Pathirana (59:25.873)
Yeah.

Dylan Pathirana (59:33.883)
yeah.

Felipe David (59:40.449)
I was super successful in finance. had a reputation already. had a, I mean, but when you have the support of your loved ones, when you have this mission, and I really feel this purpose, I mean, not only because my parents and my youngest brother are doctors, but also because I have diabetes.

So I've lived with healthcare workers my entire life. And also during my 10 years tenure at Constellation where I was analyzing healthcare, I also had the opportunity of spending a lot of time with doctors and nurses and other healthcare workers. So I really build this passion for the community and I want to give them back.

by creating something good. So when you have this goal, this purpose mission, you go through every challenge. And having the family and the support of my loved ones, not only family, but friends has been super pivotal to continue the day-to-day struggle.

Dylan Pathirana (01:01:00.53)
And I suppose looking back on your journey, Felipe, do you feel successful?

Felipe David (01:01:08.323)
I mean, I'm super proud of what I've achieved. I'm 33. But I really hope this is just the beginning of chapter one, from what I'm going to achieve even further.

Dylan Pathirana (01:01:25.3)
I mean, yeah, Felipe, it's been an incredible conversation. I can't believe an hour has already flown by. and I'm sure we could talk at length about, the future, but throughout our discussion, I've been jotting down a few aspects, which I think have led to your successful life or what I deem a successful life. I'd like to share them with you. The first one is you mentioned it in there. It's a trait that you got from your family is the discipline. You're incredibly disciplined and you.

it comes through in your work ethic as well. know, pulling incredible days and really like switching on and going deep into things. Your discipline, you show up every single day and it comes through in your passion as well. You know, you're doing this for a reason. And I think that helps you to stay disciplined and show up every single day. The next one is curiosity. I think, you know,

whether it's from your investment days, trying to understand why companies work and how they can get better to now in the healthcare space of how do I make a better product? You're always curious about challenges and how you can turn those challenges into opportunities. The next one is you stress the details. And I think that really shone through in the product design side of things of, know, this was an industry where people said it was good enough.

You went in and you like, you went down to the very little, little things of, can we put a little pocket in for the stethoscope? Something that people wouldn't have even thought about. And you stress those little details. And I think that's what, especially in the product game, that makes all the difference because it's those little details that, that really shine through and take your product to the next level. So Felipe, thank you so much. Yeah. Just to add to what Dylan was saying. Yeah.

Felipe David (01:03:17.77)
I like the summary.

Dylan Pathirana (01:03:20.628)
And Philippe, there's a few more too I want to add. mean, obviously, you're very customer centric person, you know, you really wanted to really understand the problems, you know, rather than you come up with a solution, you just really want to get feedback from everyone, you know, I mean, I remember you, you know, during our, you know, three years, you know, you, you, you, you continuously talking to people and asking the question.

Felipe David (01:03:45.4)
of our kids.

Dylan Pathirana (01:03:50.372)
asking the doctors where these things or do they wear normal clothes? know, you're yes, you're curious and also really wanted to understand, you know, you're to serve your customers better. that that servicing mentality also helping you to succeed. You know, I mean, if you even if you don't believe that you're successful, I mean, we both believe that you achieve amazing things.

for 33 year old and there's a long way to go. And thank you for having this conversation with us and we wish you very best. And yeah, we wanna see how BEEP gonna take over the world and grow significantly and any way that we can help you. We're happy to help.

Felipe David (01:04:40.45)
Thank you guys, it's been a pleasure to spend this last hour with you guys and hope we can make a second one or third one when we reach new places and new goals.

Dylan Pathirana (01:04:51.27)
Absolutely. Yeah, look forward to it. And if people want to find out a bit more about BIP, where can they find some information?

Felipe David (01:04:59.308)
Well, we're on Instagram at use.bip and our website is usebip.com

Dylan Pathirana (01:05:07.679)
Perfect. Well, Felipe, thank you so much for this conversation. And for our listeners, if you found something useful from today, it would be incredible if you could like and follow us on whichever platform you're listening to this on right now. And you can also see all of our episodes over on our website, the quest for success podcast.com. And with that, we'll catch you guys in the next episode. Thanks for listening.