“Liking challenges” is somewhat of a cliché in the corporate world. But how can you avoid this common jargon when an executive effectively stands out due to his extraordinary drive in adverse situations? In the case of Tivit's CEO, Luiz Mattar, it is possible to challenge commonplaces by observing his performance outside the office. More precisely, on the tennis court. That was the place where Nico — Mattar's nickname during the ten years when he was considered the fourth best Brazilian tennis player ever, according to the global ranking of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) — revealed his main characteristic: playing better under pressure. “When the game was too easy I would lose interest in either losing or winning. There were people more talented than I was, but my game stood out when it got more difficult”, he says.

With a concentration that gives him a serious look, Mattar relaxes and smiles when asked if the “game” is difficult enough for him at Tivit, which premiered on the stock market on September 25th of last year and, only four days later, suffered a 13% drop in share price. “Yes, our challenges are great enough”, he promptly answers. “In addition to our technology services business, which has been going on for ten years, we now have a new baby which is the Tivit brand as a publicly-held company, which needs to grow up strong, healthy and with the spirit of a sportsman”, adds the CEO, who still plays tennis with friends like Jaime Oncins on weekends, 15 years after ending his professional career.

The transition from Nico to Luiz, or from the tennis courts to the corporate world, was easier than he had expected. Mattar was married, wanted to have children and his prize money after winning 12 ATP Tours came to US$1.5 million; he also felt exhausted due to constant traveling. “I wanted to rest”, he says. “Tennis requires so much from the athlete, who feels the ranking pressure every week. I knew the problems of transitioning from a sports into an ordinary life, which dozens of my friends had to face, but luckily I didn't have to experience it.” The long-expected sabbatical year only lasted two months, after he was invited to be a partner in a small beer factory called Dado Bier, in São Paulo. “My first entrepreneurial adventure was a success”, he remembers, pointing out that the entrepreneurial spirit of his family, owner of centenarian company Paramount Têxteis, had not manifested itself previously in him.

The second entrepreneurial opportunity was the embryo of Tivit. It was 1999, when the internet boom led Mattar to found Telefutura, along with two partners, focused on providing support services for websites, chats, e-mail and call centers. “We started from scratch, we carried all the furniture and computers”, he tells. After a while, he felt as fulfilled as an entrepreneur as when he was a professional athlete. "It is great to look back and see the company's growth, after so much personal involvement.” The fast expansion of the business was permitted by the participation of two new partners — Votorantim group and Banco Pátria. In 2007, the merger with another company of the same group helped shape the current characteristics of Tivit's business, whose revenues in 2009 reached R$1 billion.

Mattar was upset with the postponement of his plans to have the company's IPO in 2007, due to the global crisis, but he did not let it get to him. He faced this setback as a new challenge to be overcome. As CEO he opted for an organic expansion, which is “cheaper and safer”, and today he believes those “two years of maturation” were positive. “We became more selective and changed our growth profile.” Also in his personal life, Mattar was able to mature first and then take chances more safely, since his professional career in tennis started when he was only 21 years old, when he decided to drop out of the civil engineering course of the Mackenzie university. “My dad was really surprised, but then he supported me and became my biggest fan.”

Many of his admirers from sports ask him what his career would have been like if it had started earlier, since tennis players usually start their careers at the age of 17 to 21. “Honestly, I believe I would have been a better player, but the fact is that I wasn't mature enough to play when I was 17”, says Mattar, who, at the time, chose to go to university, even though he was ranked among the five best young tennis players in the country. “I didn't really think I had much of a choice. 25 years ago, the importance of sports within society was different.”

Today, the importance of sport is very clear to the executive, whose “number-one mission” is to teach it to all of his three sons, aged between 6 and 11: “I want to teach them every sport I know. But I won't recommend that they be professionals. I would rather that they see sports as a model of discipline and persistence.” This is the model to which he attributes his achievements, either as the popular Nico or as Luiz, the executive who loves challenges. “But I like to solve new problems”, he emphasizes. “Old and recurring problems bother me.” When it comes to demanding results, Mattar reveals he has a “small fault”: impatience. Nothing too explosive, according to his fiends, as long as he has played sports in the morning. “If I spend two days without doing any sports, people will tell me to go sweat a bit and come back later”, he admits.