5 min read

Kevel Spotlight on Customer Success Manager, João de Almeida

Natalie Palfreman
Natalie Palfreman
Updated on
September 29, 2023
Company Highlight

Introducing João de Almeida...

Joao in the booth

How long have you worked at Kevel? 

I’ve been with the company for a little over one year, since Kevel acquired Velocidi, the company I worked for since 2018. Because the transition was so smooth, I feel like I’ve been at Kevel for 5 years.

What is your role here and how would you summarize what you do?

I’m a Customer Success Manager for Kevel Audience. I ensure that our clients get the most out of our product while investigating their ever-evolving challenges and use cases. I then try to convert the by-product of these relationships into ideas for product development that I share with other teams.

What was your inspiration for choosing your current career path?

I started out as a generalist in Marketing and Communications, but once clients started pouring up, my attention shifted to helping our customers navigate the product. I never looked back since. Working closely with clients, getting to know our product inside out, and being able to influence its development is a continuous source of exciting challenges.

Be curious and, especially, be kind and easy to work with.

What is the best advice you have for someone just starting out their career?

Never stop never stopping! Keep on learning new skills even if they feel like a departure from your academic background. Be curious and, especially, be kind and easy to work with.

What do you like most about working at Kevel?

I love the team-spirit. It manifests itself in the trust that is placed into each individual to act as part of a whole, as well as in the transparency and communication across the entire company and in any direction.

Joao and the team

What’s your favorite thing about your job?

I love that I get to establish meaningful relationships and meet great people along the way. Even though one of my main tasks is to teach people using Kevel Audience, I feel like I end up learning much more.

Which company value resonates with you the most?

'We are all adults' - because the way we treat each other is what really sets the culture that makes the rest of the values shine with the end goal of making the internet a better place.

Joao and his home made studio

What’s unique about working for Kevel?

There’s really no one that feels unreachable inside the organization. We feel like we are heard.

What’s the best advice you can give to someone who wants to work for us?

Be curious and be kind so that you can also foster curiosity for those around you.

What part of our mission do you connect with?

As a millennial born in the late 80s, I feel like I matured alongside the internet. So, working together towards a more independent state of the internet, really speaks to me.

How would you describe our company culture?

Kevel fosters a culture of trust that provides autonomy and space for people to reveal their true colors, which allows employees to play by their strengths and uniqueness. Even with oceans separating offices, it feels like a tight-knit community.

What do you like to do outside of work and in your free time?

I love all things music, so most of my free time is spent producing music, DJing, podcasting, listening to new music, creating and maintaining themed playlists… There’s also a lot of gaming and cooking involved.

Joao as DJ Elite Athlete

Is there anything that you’ve always wanted to try or learn?

I would love to be able to play sick guitar solos.

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go and why?

A cozy cabin with a good internet connection in a northern, remote, cold region.

What’s your favorite food?

There are so many… Feijoada, shellfish rice, roasted octopus, samosas, beef stew with mashed potatoes… Now I’m hungry.

Joao and the team

Who inspires you the most and why?

I would say 'what', and that’s definitely music.

If you could meet someone famous, who would you want to meet and why?

Arnold Schwarzenegger. He’s part of my childhood and I look back at it fondly. I grew up through the nineties watching and re-watching Terminator 2, Commando, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, Last Action Hero… I guess I would just give him a hug and thank him for all the fond memories.

What’s something surprising that not many people know about you?

I have a few releases etched in vinyl and dabble with found footage-style video editing mostly creating music videos. I once created a video for The Weeknd’s “Glass Table Girls” using heavily-edited Robocop footage, which he put up online on his blog and even played it at a few live shows in Canada. His team then took down the video from my YouTube channel with someone else uploading it shortly after. So, it’s still out there…

If you could pick any superpower, what would it be and why?

Peace-mongering guitar solos. I would be deployed to highly militarized conflict zones equipped with an electric guitar and a pair of giant speakers. I’d start playing a guitar solo and, at the first far echoes of my amazing proficiency and sensibility, everybody would stop hating and would start laying down their weapons and come together. Depending on the song people would either party or just snuggle gently with enemies turned into friends. I’d be known as Captain Chord and whenever I’d solve a world crisis, my CIA handler would say the catchphrase “I guess Captain struck a chord with them” and everyone in the war room would laugh in relief.

If you could be any animal, what would you want to be and why?

Whatever sits at the top of each food chain, or a dog belonging to a family with anthropomorphic tendencies. In summary: I’d like to be a carefree animal.

If you could instantly become an expert in something, what would it be?

JavaScript and guitar solos.

If you were stranded on a desert island and could bring 3 movies to watch for the rest of your life, what movies would you choose? 

Terminator 2, Heat, and Gummo.

Joao with the team of Joaos

If you weren’t in this career, what could you see yourself doing? 

I would definitely have become either a carpenter or a soldering specialist. 

If you had a time machine, would you go back in time or into the future?

I would go back to the Y2K era, which is the height of human civilization: All the best movies have already been made, we’re all connected but not that much, Playstation 2 has just been released, medicine is advanced enough, flat screen 16:9 TVs are becoming widely available… The only downside is that Counting Crows had already released a lot of records.

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