Who is behind Zerlotti Signal
Rodrigo Zerlotti
Thirty years reading where technology is headed and building companies before the market notices. Now dedicated to a small number of leaders who need to do the same with AI.
Thesis
The same curve, in four different disguises.
Every new technological wave produces two groups of companies. The ones that treat the technology as an upgrade of what they already do, and the ones that redesign themselves around it. The first group is disrupted. The second group disrupts.
I have seen this pattern repeat four times since 1994. Internet. Cloud. Mobile. SaaS. I built my entire career on top of it.
AI is not the fifth wave. It is the wave that compresses the other four. And the gap between what it makes possible and what organizations are prepared to do is the largest I have seen in three decades. Zerlotti Signal exists to close that gap, a few C-suites at a time.
Track record
Four dimensions of a single trajectory.
Operator, executive, investor, engineer. Each layer explains the next.
Operator
Built, scaled, and sold.
Four companies founded and acquired: DbLive (climate intelligence and IoT, patent granted in the United States), Suiteplus (NetSuite localization leader in Brazil, acquired by Avalara), Rezolve (SaaS e-learning built on ERP frameworks, acquired by DOT Digital Group), Enlizt (collaborative recruitment platform). Operator, not commentator.
Global-scale C-suite executive
Decided firsthand, across three continents.
CAIO, CTIO, and COO at DOT Digital Group during 7 years of growth above 60% per year. General Manager Latin America at Avalara, coordinating the global tax compliance leader's entry into the Brazilian market. Executive operations across the United States, Brazil, and Latin America.
Investor and ecosystem builder
Own capital on early-stage bets.
Member of Tech Coast Angels, the largest angel investor group in the United States. Early-stage investments in Silicon Valley and Brazil. Named inventor on a US patent for environmental prediction at points of interest.
Technical foundation nobody improvises
Engineering, not guesswork.
Master's in Aerospace Engineering from ITA, with a thesis on trajectory optimization for satellite launch vehicles. Graduate work in Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. BS in Physics from UNESP. Published, peer-reviewed research.
The five waves
Five entries. Same read. Always ahead of the market.
Thirty years building in the exact moment each wave began to form.
1994
Internet
First connected systems. Dow Chemical, intercontinental supply chain.
2000
Cloud + IoT
DbLive. Patent in climate intelligence. Millions of daily transactions before the word “cloud” went mainstream.
2010
SaaS
Suiteplus. NetSuite localization leadership in Brazil. Acquired by Avalara in 2016.
2018
Mobile + Platform
Enlizt. Collaborative recruitment platform. Tech Coast Angels.
2025
Agentic AI
CAIO at DOT Digital Group. Founder of MUZT. Zerlotti Signal.
Always the same pattern: arrive ahead of the market and build.
What this means for you
You are not hiring an opinion about AI.
You are hiring thirty years of pattern. The difference is large.
Most AI consultants learned the subject in the last three years. They can explain what an agent is. They cannot tell you with confidence what will happen in your industry in the next twenty-four months, because they have never lived through four previous technological inflections firsthand.
I have. I built through each one. I sold companies in three. And the reason Zerlotti Signal exists is because, for the first time in thirty years, the speed of change has exceeded the capacity of most C-suites to process it alone.
If you are one of the few who refuses to learn AI from the headlines, this practice was designed for you.
Operating, not commenting
In parallel with the advisory, I build.
I am founder and adviser at Plooral, an established HRTech that first brought the ATS concept to the Brazilian market. I am also the founder of MUZT, an AI-native company that builds and launches vertical products with an agentic engine that accumulates proprietary intelligence every cycle. Each product feeds the next: faster, smarter, cheaper. The moat is not the software, it is the compounded intelligence underneath.
This means that when I advise a C-suite about AI, I am not repeating what I read. I am describing what I am building right now.
Next step
There are three ways forward.
01 / ADVISORY
Hire the advisory
For C-suites and boards ready for a strategic decision about AI. Minimum engagement: two private sessions.
02 / SIGNALS
Get the Signals
Analyses and frameworks published regularly. Distribution restricted to executives.
03 / ARCHIVE
See the Signals already published
Thirty years of reading, translated into frameworks applicable today.
For full CV, speaking invitations, or press: Download CV (PDF)LinkedIncontact@zerlotti.com