Hi folks, I'm Ric!

At least this is how most people know me. My full name is Ricardo Lebre and even though I was born in Brazil I only have one "name" and one "last name" unlike most people in South America. My last name means "hare" in Portuguese (a kind of bigger rabbit) and that's why I adopted the bunny as my personal brand. 

I am the classic geek: very artistic at school, addicted to sci-fi movies, and early adopter of electronic gadgets. Being a mid-class geek in Brazil in the 80's, however, was a challenge. Technology, when available, was unaffordable. But that’s when I had to be most creative. I would leverage on my skills to get things done, especially in unorthodox ways .  

So in mid-90's I learnt the term Hacker thanks to the movie with the same name starring Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie. I was a teen at the time and it was kind of cool to break some rules. Perhaps that's when the internet became popular and there was a hacker-bloom with movies like Johnny Mnemonic, The Net, The Matrix. It took the world (and me) a while to understand that a hacker is not a reckless guy breaking codes in the computer during the night.

Nowadays we use the word hack to describe any clever solutions to real problem and hacker is what we call the person who thinks outside the box. There is a vast variety of hacker types like the food hacker, the travel hacker, the bio hacker, the computer hacker and some names associated with the "Hacking Culture" like Maker or Tinker. It's pretty safe and also cool to say today that I consider myself a hacker or a maker. Some people ask me: "What do you make?" and I always answer: "Anything I need!", I just hate when people use word impossible! Nowadays nothing is impossible, it either take longer than you want or it cost more than you are willing to pay.

In the 00's, I legally became an adult! I went to college, bought my first car, started working, and voted for the first time. In 2006, I took my first risk by choosing to be an entrepreneur. Upon graduation, rather than seek a traditional job, I worked as a free-lancer. Success came right after - I opened a design studio with two partners. 

Our ventured lasted three years. Next, I served some advertising agencies in Sao Paulo, but the entrepreneur inside me put me back in the game with my second company: EletriQ.  For almost three years, I applied all the geek-hacker-maker knowledge I had accumulated through design, art and advertising. I also created a successful service - Festgram. Both are thriving, but I exited the company when I moved to the USA. It would not be fair to remain as a COO and partner without being around full-time. 

In the past ten years, through my rights and wrongs, I have turned NOs into YESes and problems into opportunities while gathering knowledge. In the coming ten years, I want to partner with inspiring people to help me to put all this unconventional way of thinking into good use. I have changed many things with design and I want to keep changing people's lives by using scalable technologies that inspire amazing stories and make the dialogue between humans and machines easier.

Let's talk:

+1 (857) 242-6053
+55 (11) 976 608 300
ric.lebre[at]gmail.com
Cambridge, MA / US
Sao Paulo, SP / Brazil