User:Karen Villerva/Marino Colpo

Marino Stefani Colpo (Brasília, December 27th, 1983) is a brazilian business administrator and farmer. Boa Safra’s CEO and Co-founder (SOJA3), a soybean seeds leading company in Brazil, is one of the youngest B3’s CEO, and has been on Forbes Brazil list of billionaires since 2021.

Origin
Marino Stefani Colpo is the son of Neri Carlos Colpo and Sonia Stefani Colpo. His maternal grandparents were farmers in Rio Grande do Sul. In 1978, the family sold their farm land in the state and acquired new properties in the state of Goiás and Minas Gerais, moving to Formosa City (GO). That time, Neri Colpo, Marino’s father, also moved to the city after receiving a job offer to work with fertilizer sales to farmers in the area around Brasília. After the wedding, Neri Colpo starts to help Sonia Stefani 's family in the activity, which has been inherited by Marino and his sister, Camila Stefani Colpo. The family is one of the most important rural producers in the region.

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Childhood and Youth
Born in 1983 in Brasília, Marino Colpo spent his childhood in Formosa city (GO). When he was 12 years old, he started working at his father's fertilizer trading office after school classes. He used to work in the customer service area with bagged products for animal feed. At that time, his father encouraged him to read the economy newspaper Gazeta Mercantil, and to master the content of the country's economic and financial news. The experience made Marino closer to the financial market, which impacted his desire to act at Stock Exchange from an early age. In 2007, IPOs waves in Brazil inspired the businessman to “bet” with his father that he would also reach the Stock Exchange one day.

Education
His desire to go further with investing, guided his career in business and education. His first under graduation study was Economics, in 2000, at the Catholic University of Brasília (UCB), chosen due to his desire to better understand about financial market. After attending 1.5 years, he dropped out as he realized this course did not have the desired topics to learn. In mid-2002, he started a Business Administration under graduation at Brasília University Center (UniCEUB) at the same time when he opened his first business, the CMW soybean brokerage. Both activities led him to live in Brasília. After graduating from university, in 2006, he was selected for the trainee program at FCStone, in Chicago (USA), today called StoneX. In the USA, in addition to working at Chicago Stock Exchange, he studied about financial market and commodities, graduating in Master of Business Administration and MBA Finance, both at Northwestern University.

Businesses
In the 2000s, Marino Colpo started his activity as a farmer, influenced by his maternal grandfather. Since then, he continued to carry out this job in parallel with other businesses. In 2002, along with two other partners, he founded his first company: the grain brokerage CMW, specializing in soybean marketing advisory, and shut down its activities in 2006.

In the same year, he moved to the USA to be a trainee at FCStone Group, in Chicago. He worked with commodities on the Chicago Stock Exchange when working at FCStone Group. During this period, he also worked as a freelancer correspondent for Canal Rural and founded Cereais Sul, in Brazil, a rice and bean processing company. In 2008, after declining job offers in the USA and England, he returned to Brazil with focus to succeed in the domestic market.

Between 2008 and 2009, his dedication was led to the founding of two other companies: Super Alimentos, specialized in supplying food to other companies, which was sold in 2018; and Boa Safra Sementes, dedicated to the treatment and sale of soybean seeds.

Between 2009 and 2012, he also acted in politics, as Secretary of Industry and Commerce of Formosa’s City Hall.

Boa Safra
Founded by Marino e Camila Colpo in 2009, Boa Safra strongly impacted the soybean seed market in Brazil, investing in biotechnology and climate-controlled storage for cultivation. The company's success is related to the experience of the founders in different areas: Camila, through an internship position at Syngenta, in France, where he came into contact with experts in the treatment and storage of soybean seeds, bringing this expertise to Brazil. In turn, Marino Colpo dedicated himself to using the experience acquired in the USA and in previous businesses, to structure Boa Safra and grow in the market, preparing the company for the IPO on the Stock Exchange.

In 2012, agribusiness in Brazil was enhanced by biotechnologies arrival on cultivation fields. Focusing on technology development, Boa Safra unified the innovations in the area with storage in cold chambers, which provided better seed quality and guaranteed high rates of vigor and germination. As a result, it inaugurates a new era in the supply of premium seeds, which led the company to the leadership of soybean seed market in Brazil, with a market share of more than 7.4% in 2022.

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In preparation for joining B3, in 2016, Boa Safra starts being audited by KPMG. As of 2017, Marino Colpo starts the IPO process by talking to different Brazilian banks. In 2018, he lost his father, Neri Colpo, his great inspiration. In 2019, he began contact with XP Investimentos, which would structure the company's public offering (IPO) in April 2021, which moved R$ 460 milllion at its debut and attracted more than 17 thousand investors in individuals - less than 6 months later, that number jumped to 40 thousand.

Since then, company applied its IPO funds to its expansion project, building new Seed Processing Units and Distribution Centers closer to the producer - its customers are located in more than 70% of the Brazilian soybean producing states, with operations in the Midwest, Southeast, North and Northeast regions. Since its founding, company maintained annual growth above 40%. With the business leverage, company launched, in 2022, two new ventures: it carried out its first M&A, acquiring a 2/3 majority stake in Bestway Seeds do Brasil, a corn tolling service provider; and, in the same year, launched, in partnership with Suno Asset, the Fiagro SNAG11 , one of the greatest success on B3.

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Market recognition and recent activities
Since 2021, Marino Colpo has been on the Forbes Brasil list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of R$ 1 billion. He is also on B3's list of youngest CEOs and, in 2022, he was chosen as one of the 500 most influential people in Latin America by Bloomberg Línea. Today, besides managing Boa Safra, he is a speaker and adviser to Cereais Sul and Grupo Avante, which concentrates the family's rural properties.