Brazilian tech startup Digibee raises $5 million, expands to Miami

 
By Nancy Dahlberg
Fresh off a $5 million funding round from South Florida investors, Brazilian startup Digibee is expanding into the U.S., with Miami as its base.
Digibee, co-founded by Rodrigo Bernardinelli, Vitor Sousa, and Peter Kreslins Junior in 2017, offers a no-code integration platform so that a company’s staff can easily integrate services without being a programmer. Digibee has about 100 enterprise clients, including Canon, Accenture, VTEX, Sellers Funding, YoungLiving, Martin Brower, Santander Bank and Brinks. The startup currently has about 55 employees — 50 in Brazil and 5 in Miami — and it expects to finish the year 100-employees strong, with at least 15 of them in Miami.
 “We are dealing with a very old tech problem, which is connecting systems, and we have a simple approach to that problem but for big enterprise systems,” said Bernardinelli, Digibee’s Global CEO. “With three screens you are able to do virtually whatever is needed for connecting applications. By using our approach, a customer can put up integrations 10 times faster than any other approach on the market. That is what our customers are telling us.”
Digibee raised $5 million in funding from Weston-based GAA Investments, which follows on a $1 million seed investment from GAA and also a Brazilian investor who founded 99Taxis, the Uber of Brazil.  The funding will fuel Digibee’s US expansion.
Bernardinelli will be moving to Miami as soon as the COVID allows. Marcelo Souccar is Digibee’s US COO and is based in Weston, and four other Digibee team members so far, including a Director of Alliances, share their time between Digibee’s Weston and Coral Gables offices. Base Miami has been assisting the startup with Digibee’s soft landing, go-to-market strategy and marketing.
Digibee plans to base the core of its operations here in Miami, with strategic sales offices in  NYC and other cities, said Souccar. In South Florida, Digibee has already started working with five clients.  “Our operation here in Florida is going to be key in how we enter the US market and the rest of the world. It all starts in Florida,” Souccar said.
Base Miami was co-founded by Fernando Cariello and Charly Esnal  “We support innovative tech companies with their Go to Market here in the US, with Miami as a base,” Esnal said.
Launched a year ago, Base Miami has taken on about eight go-to-market projects so far. It is also working with about 30 companies, providing them back office services. Most of its clients are from Latin America, but Base Miami is also branching out to Spain. Regarding Digibee, Esnal said: “They get it, they understand how to go global, how to scale the business. We are helping them build the sales & marketing machine, as we call it”.
Bernardinelli adds: “This has been a huge help for us because they [Base Miami] understand everything about the financial, marketing, prospecting, all of it… Without them it would take like forever to get our feet into the market.”
 
Pictured at top of post, left to right: Rodrigo Bernardinelli, Global CEO; Peter Kreslins Junior, CTO; Vitor Sousa, Global COO.
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Nancy Dahlberg