Jorge Paulo Lemann questioned Guilherme Benchimol, founder of XP, asking when he would stop being CEO. Lemann was part of the so-called "Trio 3G," along with Beto Sicupira, who also acted as Benchimol's "guardian angel" in entrepreneurship. This provocation by Lemann led Benchimol to step down from the executive leadership of XP in 2021, after two decades at the helm of the company.
Before that, André Street, founder of Stone, was the one who encouraged Benchimol to go public on the Nasdaq. In December 2019, Benchimol carried out the IPO of XP on the American Stock Exchange, ringing the bell at Times Square, in an operation that valued the company at US$ 15 billion.
Now, Benchimol intends to transform all this accumulated experience of advice and entrepreneurial mentorship into a systematized program. For this purpose, he created the B55 institute, in partnership with André Street and Alejandro Vélez, with the goal of boosting entrepreneurship.
