How a favela investor made his first million and became a guide for other favela residents

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – At 26 years old, Murilo Duarte, known on social networks as Favelado Investidor (Slumdog Investor), has conquered his first 1 million reais. The young man has a YouTube channel and teaches about financial education and investments.

The idea for the channel came up when Duarte and his partner, Vinicius Silva, 24, were in accounting school. When they presented a paper with a theme about investments, they noticed that a large part of the class had little knowledge about the subject.

“If the people in college had no idea, imagine who lives in a favela? At the time, he lived on the outskirts of São Paulo, in the Jardim João XXIII neighborhood in the western zone of the São Paulo capital. The channel’s objective is to show that anyone, from any social class, can improve their finances.

One year after the launch of the channel, Favelado Investidor became a company. It started as an individual micro-entrepreneur (MEI) and months later changed to Simples Nacional. Today, the business employs five people.

Besides the videos on YouTube, Duarte and his team make money from advertising products related to the financial market, with lectures in private companies, and with a course launched last year.

The sale of the course was the main source of income for the business: there are 200 classes and it approaches from how to organize finances to the concepts of fundamental analysis for the stock market.

And it was through the “Favelado Investidor Ltda” that Murilo Duarte reached his first million reais. “I earned my first million reais through my company. It was through entrepreneurship.”

Criticism on the networks

The way Duarte makes money is the target of criticism from some followers. On YouTube, he has 286,000 followers; and on Instagram, 414,000. Many claim that he teaches about investments, but he didn’t become a millionaire that way. The young man rebuts the criticism by explaining the difference between active income and passive income.

“What will make a person rich is work, which is the so-called active income. I set aside a part of the money I earn for my investments, which is passive income. In the long run, I will see my money increase. Investments accelerate the process of becoming rich,” he explains.

Source: Exame