Peixe Urbano (A) The Ride Up the Roller Coaster

This case follows Julio Vasconcellos (MBA 2007) as he launches Peixe Urbano, a daily deals company in Brazil. Daily deals are coupons that offer savings at local merchants and are sold en masse to consumers by companies such as Peixe Urbano, Groupon, and Living Social. Vasconcellos and his team experience tremendous success with the model in Brazil, but are soon pressured to expand to neighboring countries as a result of the arrival of competitors, which creates a land grab mentality. Case A concludes with Vasconcellos’ assessment of liquidity options given Peixe’s present levels of success, market risk, and scaling risk. Case B opens with Vasconcellos having a made a decision to build Peixe into an independent company, with aspirations to IPO in the U.S. public markets. However, the market soon plateaus, partly due to negative consumer sentiment about daily deals. Meanwhile, Peixe is struggling to scale its sales force and its technology, and the company must use its remaining resources wisely. Vasconcellos finds himself having to quickly transition from entrepreneur to turnaround CEO.