This episode of The Startup Vagabond is a conversation with Luiz Neves, co-founder of Gigu, a smart copilot for gig workers.
Luiz’s founder journey started far from software. After leaving a career in tax law, he helped renovate an abandoned space in Rio de Janeiro and turn it into a cultural and culinary hub. That experience pushed him toward entrepreneurship.
Gigu’s story began when Luiz and his co-founder started asking a simple question: what is life actually like for an Uber driver?
Instead of jumping straight into software, they took more than 100 Uber rides in Rio and interviewed drivers directly. That led to Stop Club, a physical one-stop shop for gig workers with clean bathrooms, food, car washes, and services in underused parking lots. The company scaled to 12 locations before the pandemic forced the team to shut down the physical model and pivot.
The result was Gigu: a digital copilot that helps gig workers drive safer and earn more money.
Gigu analyzes offers from platforms like Uber, DoorDash, Lyft, and others in real time. It calculates earnings per mile and per hour, compares that to each driver’s cost structure, and gives a simple red, yellow, or green signal so drivers can decide which offers are actually worth taking.
We talk about Gigu’s pivot from physical locations to software, how the company grew to over 200,000 subscribers, why Brazilian drivers adopted strategic offer selection faster than U.S. drivers, and what Luiz has learned from building inside Brazil’s evolving startup ecosystem.
We also get into Rio’s startup community, why Brazil became so strong in fintech, how inflation shaped the country’s financial infrastructure, and Luiz’s advice for founders: don’t give up, and understand that failure is not an option if you are truly committed to the mission.
The broader takeaway: the best startup ideas often come from spending time with customers before writing code. Gigu worked because the team understood gig workers deeply before deciding what product to build.