The power of SaaS

The Power of SaaS: Driving Innovation and Efficiency at Web Summit Rio 2026

(This article was generated with AI and it’s based on a AI-generated transcription of a real talk on stage. While we strive for accuracy, we encourage readers to verify important information.)

The Web Summit Rio 2026 Startup Showcase, hosted by Mr. Nathã Souza of Google Cloud, highlighted “The Power of SaaS” with a series of dynamic two-minute elevator pitches. This session focused on innovative solutions addressing significant industry challenges, exploring market trends, customer acquisition strategies, and the future trajectory of SaaS. The event fostered collaborative discussions on leveraging emerging technologies and navigating the evolving market landscape.

Ms. Victoria Souza, CEO of LinPost, introduced a platform designed to revolutionize LinkedIn content strategy. She explained that many content creators struggle to understand why some posts perform well while others yield minimal results, often resorting to time-consuming manual analysis. LinPost integrates content creation, post scheduling, and performance analytics into a single platform, enabling data-driven decisions and moving beyond trial-and-error to achieve growth on LinkedIn.

Ms. Maira Hutterer, co-founder of SIPO, addressed the substantial financial losses incurred by digital tech companies in procurement, estimated at 10-20% annually. She attributed this to fragmented data, reliance on spreadsheets, and human judgment in decision-making, noting that existing procurement software primarily focuses on processes rather than strategic insights. SIPO offers an AI strategy procurement engine, transforming expertise into software to help teams make informed purchasing decisions.

Mr. Eduardo Rodrigues, CEO of Applause, presented a SaaS solution for managing sales incentives, particularly for large sales forces. He highlighted the common problem of incentives getting lost in numerous WhatsApp messages and spreadsheets, making it difficult to measure ROI. Applause bridges the gap between strategy and execution through gamification, AI, real-time sales tracking, and rewards, allowing sales representatives to engage with missions, quizzes, and redeem points for various benefits.

Mr. Rodrigues shared impressive results, including Joja Mac increasing sales by 180% in three months using Applause. The platform is utilized by major companies like Aurora and Mondelez to boost profitability and sales. Applause, a five-year-old company, has quadrupled its size in the last year and achieved break-even, demonstrating its effectiveness in driving sales performance and ensuring incentive programs yield tangible returns.

Mr. Leonardo from Classbuild tackled the high failure rates in online education, where 12,000 Brazilian courses often provide content without ensuring student learning. Classbuild offers an engine that actively helps students learn by incorporating spaced repetition science. This system calculates optimal review dates based on individual student performance, ensuring knowledge retention. The platform allows companies to sell their own courses with a proven learning methodology.

Classbuild has achieved significant traction, attracting over 20,000 students and partnering with more than 100 companies in its first year. Mr. Leonardo expressed interest in finding partners to either host their courses on Classbuild or integrate its learning system into existing platforms. The company aims to combat student forgetfulness and enhance the effectiveness of online education through its innovative, data-driven approach to learning.

Mr. Sergio Penteado, founder of Mentorian, highlighted Brazil’s extensive use of WhatsApp for business and the challenge of converting conversations into revenue. Mentorian provides an AI-driven healthcare CRM integrated with WhatsApp, automating follow-ups, re-marketing, and other processes. Unlike traditional CRMs that demand significant manual effort and large sales teams, Mentorian offers a quick 15-minute onboarding, simplifying operations and resolving scheduling bottlenecks for businesses.

Mr. Alejandro Alvarez, CEO and co-founder of PUY, addressed the multi-million dollar problem of reconciliation in financial institutions. Traditional systems struggle with complex operations involving multiple data sources and counterparties, such as collections or hedging. PUY is an AI-native platform that automates end-to-end reconciliation for these intricate scenarios, generating a significant return on investment for its clients, including top insurance companies and pension funds.

Ms. Teresa Overskei, CEO of Coral Messaging, identified a gap in WhatsApp business tools for sales teams. While marketing and customer service have had solutions since 2018, sales teams lack visibility and productivity tools for their chats. Leveraging her background as COO of WhatsApp’s business products, Ms. Overskei explained that Coral Messaging provides visibility and growth software specifically for sellers, utilizing new, officially released WhatsApp functionality.

Coral Messaging differentiates itself by building features tailored to sellers’ needs, allowing them to continue using the native WhatsApp app without downloading new software. Ms. Overskei cautioned against unofficial solutions that risk phone number shutdowns. With an MVP recently launched and testing underway with major Brazilian clients, Coral Messaging is actively seeking new companies to experience its unique, compliant sales enablement platform.

Ms. Larissa Ferreira, co-founder of Koris, presented a solution to the hidden costs of internal communication inefficiencies. She noted that employees waste significant time on repetitive questions and searching for information, leading to up to 40% loss in team productivity. Koris acts as a corporate knowledge assistant, allowing employees to instantly get answers to process questions via WhatsApp, based on the company’s documented knowledge.

Koris ensures that company knowledge is never lost, even with employee turnover, and provides 24/7 access to information without interruptions. It organizes HR, IT, finance, and training content securely, with managers controlling access and monitoring usage metrics. This results in fewer support tickets, faster onboarding for new employees, and more autonomous teams, ultimately eliminating wasted time on readily answerable questions.

Mr. Michell Anyosa, CEO of Limly, highlighted the widespread issue of unproductive meetings, which cost US companies billions annually. Limly, an AI meeting chief of staff, enhances productivity during and after meetings. It offers real-time summaries, suggested responses, and note-taking, all invisible to other participants. Post-meeting, it provides AI-generated notes and transcriptions, integrating with over 50 platforms like Gmail and Slack.

Launched just 85 days prior, Limly has already garnered 5,000 users across 26 countries and three continents. The platform targets sales managers, consultants, students, and HR teams, aiming to significantly boost their productivity. Mr. Anyosa encouraged attendees to download Limly for free to experience its benefits, emphasizing its role in transforming meeting efficiency and information retention.

Mr. Bruno Bianchi, CEO of WeBox.AI, introduced Hunter Claw, an autonomous AI platform for B2B outbound prospecting. He described the current pipeline generation process as repetitive, expensive, and fragmented, relying on numerous manual tasks and disparate tools. Hunter Claw acts as an autonomous sales agent, hunting new leads based on Ideal Customer Profiles and engaging them at scale across multiple channels, including LinkedIn, email, WhatsApp, and SMS.

The AI agents orchestrate multi-channel outreach, book meetings, create calendar invites with context summaries, and update CRM systems, notifying sales representatives with lead information via WhatsApp. Hunter Claw aims to replace the work of an entire pre-sales team with a single, integrated interface, transforming outbound sales from a manual process into autonomous software, thereby streamlining and scaling B2B prospecting efforts efficiently.

Mr. Fábio Fernandes Alves, founder of Vanguarda Digital, presented Meu Guia do Super, a SaaS solution for improving the grocery shopping experience. He pointed out that shoppers spend a third of their 46-minute grocery trip searching for products, leading to high cart abandonment rates and lost customer loyalty for retailers. His platform aims to provide a seamless shopping experience while offering retailers crucial live behavioral data.

Meu Guia do Super helps retailers understand customer purchasing patterns, hesitations, and preferences, mirroring the data insights available in e-commerce for decades. This data enables increased operational efficiency and improved customer loyalty in physical retail. Vanguarda Digital is currently raising a pre-seed round, seeking investors and partners to revolutionize daily shopping and bring advanced analytics to the brick-and-mortar grocery sector.

Ms. Perina Braga, CEO of Imersa, addressed the critical lack of data for sales leaders to understand and improve their sales teams’ performance. She explained that while sellers are often capable, the market lacks adequate tools for effective sales enablement. Imersa offers an AI platform that listens to sales professionals practicing against AI-driven simulated leads, capturing flaws and areas for improvement in real-time interactions.

Imersa, a bootstrapped startup with 3.5 years in operation, pivoted six months ago to focus on this problem, aiming to become a leading sales enablement solution in Brazil. The platform analyzes conversations, texts, and messages to provide actionable insights. Ms. Braga announced an open angel round, with one investor already committed, and invited interested companies and investors to connect to further enhance sales productivity.

The showcase concluded with a powerful demonstration of how SaaS innovations are addressing critical business challenges across various sectors, from sales and education to finance and retail. The diverse range of solutions presented underscored the transformative potential of software-as-a-service in driving efficiency, fostering growth, and creating more intelligent, data-driven operational models for businesses worldwide.