Brazil: Rock in Rio owners create a startup accelerator

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – During the pandemic, the group of which Rock In Rio is a part of changed its name, grew from 13 to 16 companies and is now betting on accelerating startups.

Previously known as Artplan, Dreamers has under its umbrella the music festival, the communication agency also named Artplan and the production company Dream Factory. All the other companies are also part of the entertainment or communication universe.

The newest of them was baptized Dreamers Village. The goal is to take some of the know-how of the group’s companies to the market, especially to new entrepreneurs and startups.

The group defines Dreamers’ new business front as an accelerator.

“We want to accelerate businesses that need our skills. We have a group of 900 people, who do a little bit of everything, from the biggest music festival in the world to a communication agency. We will bring in businesses that need us”, summarizes the group’s president, Rodolfo Medina, Roberto Medina‘s son, the creator of the Rock In Rio festival.

The executive explains that the pandemic was a determining factor for the then Artplan to “become” Dreamers and for the companies to work as an “ecosystem”. That is when the thought of teaching their combined expertise began.

“The pandemic aligned everyone by pain. The problems became the same in our companies. When we started to act to get everyone in house, create the structure, create the conditions, we started to see the power of this connected team. Perhaps the pandemic triggered a Dreamers Village structure to be born this way. It was not in our pipeline. It emerged from the clarity that we are complementary to accelerate certain types of projects in our ecosystem,” says Medina.

The group chose Eduardo Bicudo to run the Dreamers Village project. Bicudo was CEO of the Dentsu Group in Brazil and the executive director of Accenture Interactive in Latin America. For 14 years, he was CEO of Wunderman.

“The group has a very entrepreneurial DNA. Besides Rock In Rio and Artplan, other companies have been created. The group is prolific in creating new things. The big problem for startups is not usually having the ideas but executing them. There is a symbiosis between a corporation like ours and a startup because we have great execution power and connections with clients and the market,” explains Bicudo.

In 2019, before the pandemic, the group’s revenue had been R$1.5 billion (US$285 million). In the first year of the pandemic, in 2020, it was 30% lower.

In the words of the CEO of the new company, Dreamers will “lend startups all the intellectual capital of doing and executing.”

This know-how that Medina and Bicudo refer to ranges from large events produced by Dream Factory, such as Rio de Janeiro’s Street Carnival, to the platform for small advertisers Aceleraí, also from Dreamers.

For Bicudo, the arrival of future entrepreneurs who will seek the power of execution from Dreamers will help the group itself.

“This benefits the entire ecosystem because a corporation cannot live without an innovation core. When we look at Dreams Village, this is a service to our portfolio of clients, too.”