Fintech Unicorn Neon Appoints André Madeira, Coinbase and Google Veteran, to Role of Chief Technology Officer
SÃO PAULO, Brazil, July 07, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Neon, a fintech company and digital bank focused on improving the lives of working Brazilians, today announced the appointment of André Madeira as the company’s new Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Madeira brings extensive knowledge in engineering to the role, along with expertise in building scalable products for the masses from his stints at Google, Snap, and Coinbase. Madeira will spearhead the effort of transforming Neon into a technology-driven financial product powerhouse, beginning with a remote-worker recruiting effort to build his team with the world’s best tech talent, regardless of location.
Madeira successfully sold his AI-powered fintech startup Meemo last year to Coinbase where he recently oversaw crypto-related consumer-facing data products. He has also built a career building and leading large engineering and data efforts and teams for over a decade at Google Search and Snap, creating scalable and highly personalized products that impact billions of people daily. He will now focus on helping Neon reach new potential with its growing customer base.
Neon’s mission is to decrease inequality in Brazil, where the gap between the wealthy and the low-income population has been persistently large.
“People’s relationship with money is quite emotional, especially on the low end of the income spectrum. Building trust through fair, understandable, and useful financial products is key to creating a loyal bridge between consumers and products and services,” says André Madeira, Neon’s new CTO. “I was captivated by Neon’s mission and impressed by its commitment to use technology to provide equitable offerings for the underbanked in Brazil while striving to deliver a first-class customer experience that has been reserved only for the wealthy.”
Neon plans to invest heavily in areas like large-scale data engineering, data science, distributed systems, and machine learning to create products that significantly improve and personalize the customer experience. The appointment of Madeira and the goal to structure the team in a more globally distributed way not only has Neon thinking about technology differently is motivating the company to embrace a modern tech mindset.
“In order to succeed in this increasingly competitive market, all areas of technology such as engineering, data, product, and design must work extremely well together,” emphasizes Madeira. Traditionally in Brazil, and in the financial industry more specifically, the interplay between these areas is a constant challenge as a company grows. I am committed to ensuring all these fronts work seamlessly together to promote scalable value creation with repeatable innovation at Neon.
“Additionally, I’m excited to have the opportunity to build a product with such an incredible purpose – reducing inequality in Brazil – this is why Neon really caught my attention. I was also impressed with the excellent professionals that make up the Neon technology team.”
Embracing its remote-first work strategy, Neon plans to continue to hire in Brazil and expand the talent pool worldwide to add to its 1,800 employees.
“One of my immediate goals is to transform Neon into a global leader in technology by bringing world-class talent into the company, no matter where they are,” says Madeira who was highly successful in attracting top talent while at Snap and in founding Meemo.
“I am ecstatic with André’s arrival. All of us at Neon believe his international experience and technical excellence in building joyful products for hundreds of millions of people will be a crucial asset to the company. I look forward to partnering with him on building a world-class team at Neon,” says Pedro Conrade, founder and CEO of Neon.
Recently, Neon also hired another U.S.-based C-level executive who is based in Silicon Valley – Koji Pereira, Chief Design Officer. Pereira was most recently a senior product design manager at Twitter after stints at Google and Lyft.
About Neon
Neon is a Brazilian fintech founded in 2016 whose mission is to unite technology and design to redesign and simplify people’s financial experience, reduce inequalities, showing simpler and fairer financial paths. With more than 15 million customers, including individuals and companies, Neon recently achieved a valuation of $1.6 billion after its series D fundraise, in which the Spanish Bank BBVA invested $300M. Neon’s rapid expansion has been made possible in part by strategic acquisitions such as MEI Fácil, which offers financial services and education to individual micro-entrepreneurs, in 2019; and the purchase of Magliano Invest, which was the first stock brokerage on Bovespa – the Brazil Stock Exchange Index, in 2020. In the same year, Neon strengthened its payroll loan portfolio with the purchase of ConsigaMais+, the main company in the sector, and with the recent acquisition of Biorc, a company that has the license of Credit, Finance and Investment Society (SCFI). For more information visit www.neon.com.br or our LinkedIn page.
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