Listen to Gabriel Engel (Rocket.Chat) on Inevitable Podcast

Today I have the pleasure of publishing a long and quite interesting conversation I’ve had with Gabriel Engel, CEO and co-founder of Rocket.Chat, the leading open-source team communication platform that allows users to chat securely on the web, desktop, or mobile. Previously, he founded four other businesses, including Konecty, a CRM focused on facilitating the management of any business process, and Intelimen, an agency. You can watch it on YouTube or listen on Spotify, PocketCasts, and other apps.

Gabriel is a very special person to me and I’ve had the honor of partnering with him a few times. We talked about Gabriel as a founder, a leader, and a CEO who raised a $19MM Series A. Also, we went deep on his personal story and how his father mentored him to become who he is. Besides, we talked about technical topics such as open-source as a go-to-market strategy and all the typical struggles that an early-stage entrepreneur would go through as he built his empire.

In the episode, I asked him questions such as:

• During your 6 years in London, you build a life there, worked as a freelancer and at companies such as Vodafone. Eventually, you got fed up and quit your job to build another company. Why?
• When you were young, you wanted to grow up to become an “inventor”. Back then, you learned that creating a company was the best way to get your inventions out into the world, so you have been inventing things and starting businesses to turn them into products ever since. When the idea for Rocket.chat came along and you started it as a side-project from Konecty, was it clear to you that it could be your greatest invention and your Ikigai, or was it just an "invention" idea like any other?
• Besides Sid Sijbrandij, co-founder of GitLab, throughout your journey, you met high-profile people such as Eliot Horowitz, an early investor in Duolingo and Groupon, and Harry Weller, founder of MongoDB. Which are some of the lessons you learned from them?

I had a wonderful time talking to him and I hope you enjoy the episode as well.