With experience at asset management firms such as Tarpon , Kamaroopin , and Patria , José Eduardo Andrade would like to invest part of his family's assets in firms that offer qualified access to international managers and that bet on secular trends—those movements that are independent of short-term economic cycles.
After searching for so long, Andrade says he didn't find any house that met his criteria. "The conclusion I came to was that there wasn't one. And I thought, I think it's time for me to start my own business," Andrade tells NeoFeed .
This is how Why Capital came about, a management firm focused exclusively on international equity investments, but with two different strategies.
The first is that 70% of the resource allocation will be directed to three to five leading managers from the United States and Europe. The second is to allocate 30% to direct co-investments with companies that are aligned with secular trends.
The common thread uniting these two strategies is Andrade's philosophy: long-term investments (he claims to be a disciple of Warren Buffett), concentrated portfolios, a focus on growth with high margins, and ROIC (Return on Invested Capital).
elevated and difficult to access.
For this reason, Why Capital's focus is on seeking stable institutional LPs that understand the philosophy of combining investments in the stock market (therefore, liquid investments) but also having the timeframe of private equity or venture capital funds to generate returns. Those who allocate resources to the asset manager, for example, have a three-year lock-up period.
Initially, Why Capital – whose name comes from Andrade's strong Minas Gerais accent and the fact that he asked many questions as a child – emerges with US$10 million under management, a kind of seed money that came from family and friends and from his family's assets – he is the grandson of Eduardo Borges de Andrade, who founded CCR (now renamed Motiva) with Andrade Gutierrez, Camargo Corrêa and Odebrecht.
Over the past 12 months, Andrade has immersed himself in the asset management firm. With the help of the artificial intelligence tool Claude (which he calls "Claudinho"), Andrade evaluated 1,900 funds, studied 40 in depth, and approved three.
The three chosen are ValueAct Capital, from the US, which is an activist fund that participates on boards (Microsoft, Salesforce, Visa); Valley Forge Capital, from Miami, which is more passive and has a concentrated portfolio; and TCI Management, from London, globally renowned for its activist investment strategy focused on long-term value.
In the case of direct investments, Andrade selected companies such as Visa, Vail Resorts, ASML, and Synopsys. "These are companies that are under the radar, with the exception of Visa, but which have unregulated monopolies," he states.
In the case of Visa, the reason for the investment is that the company is creating an infrastructure for digital payments. Vail Resorts, on the other hand, is a thesis of climate resilience and based on the trend of people spending more on experiences than on material goods. "It has 35% of the US ski market."
The Dutch company ASML, in turn, has a global monopoly on lithography machines, high-precision equipment worth US$400 million that are the irreplaceable foundation of the advanced semiconductor production chain, driven by the AI sector. And Synopsys has a global duopoly in chip design software.
Brazil is not on Why Capital's radar. Andrade says this decision is not ideological, but mathematical. The universe of Brazilian companies is small — about 350 listed — and only a fraction of them present returns on capital that approach the American standard.
“Only 20 companies on the Brazilian Stock Exchange had a ROIC above 20% in 2025,” he states. In the United States, that number exceeds 500. The difference in scale, depth, and liquidity creates an environment where it is easier to find businesses with lasting competitive advantages, discreet monopolies, and reinvestment capacity—exactly the type of company the asset manager is looking for.
