Adrian Pereira was born in Victoria, BC. His parents immigrated to Canada and instilled the importance of hard work, innovation, and creative thinking. He attended the University of Victoria, where he majored in Computer Science, taking positions with UVic, Motorola, and the Department of National Defense along the way.

His childhood love of hockey inspired one of his first companies, HockeyDraft.ca. He created a website that automatically managed hockey pool stats, eliminating hours of manual calculations. The site has existed for nearly twenty years and still exists – and has been used by millions of Canadians.

His joint love of sports and data also inspired him to launch a new business, eDraft.com, which creates sports data analytics tools.  He also invested in and joined the board of a little known company at the time called SendToNews. This company now ranks above ESPN and is currently number one in digital sports video views.

His Latest Venture

Adrian is a serial entrepreneur. His latest venture, founded with his wife Kelly, is The Eco Pea Company. When his daughter had recurring reactions to many different diapers and nothing worked, Adrian and Kelly decided to take matters into their own hands and create the solution they needed. The Eco Pea Company is now a highly successful direct to consumer business with four warehouses in North America, having built a reputation for natural, safe, and environmentally friendly diapers.

Adrian and Kelly tried changing their daughter’s diet, ointments, naturopathic treatments, and almost everything else possible to stop her diaper rash – and nothing worked. The couple got inspired to create the solution they needed, and dove in headfirst to create a healthy, sustainable diaper for children.

As they saw it, the solution needed to be both great for the child’s health and for the planet – and to be more absorbent and functional. As a result, The Eco Pea Company diapers are made with sustainably harvested bamboo that is processed using steam without the use of chemicals. They include a wetness indicator, blowout guard, size label, water-based inks, and a very absorbent core, allowing for a high-end, luxury product that doesn’t leave a rash behind.

Adrian’s Work-Life Balance

Though Adrian Pereira spends his days responding to emails, taking Zoom meetings, and building businesses, whenever he needs to take a break, he’ll take time out to play a game of soccer with his son, tag with his daughter, or simply build a fort with his youngest. He has the ability to do all of this while meeting the many challenges businesses face along the way.

Trends and Tools

More than anything else, Adrian Pereira is hugely excited about the power of building a direct to consumer business. He loves the fact that there’s no middleman, which allows the business to cultivate relationships directly with their audience. This means having control over the company’s marketing, learning by receiving direct feedback from customers, and building hugely impactful, meaningful relationships with its fans. He thrives on data, analysis, and informed decisions, and loves using spreadsheets in virtually every aspect of his life in business.

Life Advice for Entrepreneurs – Including Himself

When asked once what advice he’d give his younger self, Adrian’s advice was simple: work on projects you love. With the sheer volume of information now available to aspiring entrepreneurs all over the world, it’s never been easier to find the knowledge or the expertise they need to see a vision through, and love of the idea – or the project – has the power to keep them in it to win, no matter what challenges they may face along the way.

He also recommends that entrepreneurs learn from the things that other brands do well, as well as the mistakes they make along the way, no matter what vertical they’re in. There’s countless inspiration to take from other companies, and their approaches to marketing, support, and operations – to name just three things – can all be used as inspiration or a starting point, as well as a way to help entrepreneurs create winning approaches to business of their very own.

Looking Back

When asked what has helped The Eco Pea Company achieve growth, Adrian emphasizes the fact that he never did anything to compromise quality in their products. Though launching a healthier and more environmentally friendly diaper would require greater overhead, he felt that customers would be willing to pay a premium for those things – and was proven right.

When asked about failures, he acknowledges that it’s very easy to be involved in too many things at the same time, and that he’s definitely done so in the past. Without taking time to truly digest and make sense of information, it becomes much harder to make a meaningful, positive impact on a business.

A Free Idea

Finally, Adrian sees printables as an example of a great business model, as entrepreneurs can commission a design one time, then print it as many times as needed to fulfill orders. This is an example of an easily scaled business that requires only one investment per product. He also highly recommends Shopify as a way to both launch a business and learn how to grow one over time.

Click here to learn more about entrepreneur Adrian Pereira.