Fred Valente once launched a business with money from his father. The venture spent three times what he had expected and failed after reaching the market. When he decided to close it, he learned that the money had been his father’s retirement savings. An idea that had looked promising now had a cost measured inside the family.
He told that story in 2018, alongside a lesson about speaking to prospective customers before committing to a product. His parents had both been entrepreneurs. He had inherited the example of making things happen; experience supplied a harder education in asking whether they should happen at all.
“Faça, experimente e converse,” he advised. Make, experiment and talk. It is an unglamorous sequence for an industry fond of the unveiling. Conversation comes without a ribbon to cut.
“Make, experiment and talk.”
Fred Valente · translated from Portuguese, 2018
Today, Valente is the co-founder and CEO of eMotion Studios, working from Florida with businesses rooted in Brazil. His career connects digital content, animation and the operations that help online creators earn a living. The connection becomes easier to see when you follow the changes in what he has built.
The ringtone years
In 2015, eMotion was supplying Christian content for mobile devices. Its output included text and multimedia messages, music streams, videos, wallpapers and ringback tones. A phone could carry a verse, a song or a sermon. Distribution depended on relationships with the businesses between the producer and the listener.
The company worked with content from 15 Christian denominations. It also made secular material and developed applications for clients. Some contracts paid a share of revenue; others paid a fixed amount for content. Valente and his partner Reinaldo Heleno brought their Christian principles into the business, including choices about the material they would distribute.
This was already a meeting of creative work and technical delivery. Someone had to produce the content, understand its audience and arrange for it to reach a device. The formats feel like a small museum of the mobile internet now. The commercial questions remain recognizable.
A December 2015 partnership with the record label Graça Music extended that distribution work. Valente described the ambition as taking audio and video beyond geographical barriers. Before the language of the creator economy became central to his company, access to digital audiences was already part of his daily business.
Eighteen studios, one change of direction
By 2016, eMotion had partnerships with major players in Brazil’s mobile value-added services market. Valente nevertheless saw a need to change course. The market was changing, and existing relationships did not settle the question of what the company should do next.
Two internal businesses offered a clue: mLearn, focused on mobile education, and Contamobi, serving microentrepreneurs. In February 2018, eMotion Digital became eMotion Studios. The team had studied 18 startup studios before organizing its own version of the model.
The practical change was a shared center for legal work, accounting, finance and human resources. Separate ventures could draw on that support while concentrating on their products and customers. At the time, the group had five operating startups and roughly 100 people across the ventures and shared structure.
There is something appealingly sober about this part of Valente’s story. The new model included people whose work produces very few standing ovations: accountants, lawyers and HR staff. A founder still needs them when the launch party is over.
A conceptual view of the studio structure adopted in 2018, not an organizational chart.
The studio’s own description emphasizes building businesses repeatedly and in parallel, combining market research, validation, resources and early capital. The word “studio” allows for a workshop as much as an office: several projects underway, with skills and tools close enough to be used again.
A short walk in Austin
That same year, Valente visited SXSW with eMotion for the first time. His account paid attention to the festival outside the convention center: hotels, restaurants, music and the conversations that continued while people moved between sessions. He spent more time at the Hilton than at the main venue.
A walk of about 50 meters brought him into contact with a YouTube product leader. He noticed how exposed badges encouraged introductions and how the event’s organization helped participants find one another. His interest was in the arrangements that made a chance meeting more likely.
For someone who works between content producers and platforms, that is a useful thing to notice. A program tells you where to sit. A conversation may tell you what to build. Valente wanted to bring some of Austin’s creative atmosphere back to the studio in Belo Horizonte.
There is a related glimpse in his choice of working tools. In his 2018 interview, he mentioned Things and a Moleskine notebook, while leaving room for what he called chaos. The notebook and the unscheduled encounter belong comfortably in the same career.
The work between the videos
In January 2023, Valente took the role of business director, or CRO, at One Big Media Group, while Heleno became its CEO. The company announced the change as part of a new phase in developing digital channels and audiences.
The following month, 1BMG announced its R$20 million acquisition of Hitbel. Both businesses were already inside the eMotion group. The transaction brought together two kinds of work: developing audiences and managing the distribution and copyright of digital content.
Valente explained that Hitbel would add more than 100 creators to 1BMG’s portfolio. The names included Christian speakers, music-related content and the children’s channel 3 Palavrinhas. This combination gave the group more ways to serve the people making the material.
1BMG’s acquisition of Hitbel combined two businesses already within eMotion.
A viewer sees the video and its creator. The commercial arrangement also involves ownership, licensing, platform relationships and payments. Valente’s explanation of the combination suggests that he was thinking about this whole chain, rather than treating each upload as an isolated event.
Three words, several markets
Oinc Filmes brings another part of his work into focus. The animation business develops music and videos for children and family audiences. Its work includes concept development, scripts, soundtracks, animation, distribution, licensing and live productions. A character can have several working lives beyond its first appearance on a screen.
Valente is one of Oinc’s founding partners. The 3 Palavrinhas project began with Samuel and Ádila Mizrahy and support from Valente, André Câmara and Heleno. By 2023, the project was marking 13 years and staging interactive performances for families in Brazil and the United States.
The children meet characters and songs. Behind them is an arrangement of creative and business responsibilities. Valente’s place in the story is among the partners helping those creations reach audiences, alongside the people who conceived and produced them.
In 2024, he led an Oinc mission to international entertainment markets, presenting original productions with particular attention to 3 Little Words, the studio’s American brand. Samuel Mizrahy joined him in developing plans for the channels. Their work put the creative project in rooms where distribution and partnerships were being discussed.
The next year brought another appearance at Content Americas in Miami. Valente represented Oinc with Juliana Algañaraz, the former Endemol Brasil CEO and founder of LaReina. Her entertainment experience added another connection to the studio’s international efforts.
In February 2026, Oinc announced that Valente had attended NRB in Nashville with CEO Marina Fraga and partner André Câmara. They represented 3 Little Words and worked on international distribution and partnerships. The sequence of appearances makes the ambition concrete: a Brazilian production seeking a continuing place in the North American market.
Fraga’s role matters here. She runs Oinc’s strategy and operations; Valente works alongside her and other partners. This is a career populated by collaborators, with different people responsible for making the films, running the company and opening business relationships.
A creator needs a company
Valente’s current work also includes Creator Network, a US venture focused on TikTok LIVE creators. Its stated method includes business coaching, content strategy, revenue planning and access to brand deals. The website identifies him as founder and places the venture within eMotion Studios.
The language is familiar from the startup years: milestones, accountability, building a business that can continue. The product has changed from a mobile service or animation catalog to a creator’s activity on a live platform. The need for planning and support travels with it.
On LinkedIn, Valente has argued that a creator’s commercial value includes attention, purchase decisions and knowledge about the audience. That is his view of the business. It directs attention toward what a creator learns from viewers, as well as how many people arrive.
The present eMotion venture roster stretches across channel networks, animation, advertising technology, digital infrastructure, content repurposing and music rights. It lists six active ventures and two in residence, including Creator Network. The variety gives some context to the co-founder’s job: connecting activities that have different outputs but recurring business needs.
The route from a failed family-financed venture to international media partnerships has involved repeated changes of direction. Valente’s advice to make, experiment and talk survives those changes. There is still work to build. There is still a customer, a collaborator or a prospective partner worth asking before the next expensive decision.