Why Brazil's Centeni Shut Down After One Year

What Was Centeni and Why Did It Close?

André Leite and Felipe Cabral met while working at healthtech unicorn Alice. In 2025 they co-founded Centeni, a preventive-health subscription startup that charged R$764 per year. Subscribers filled out a health questionnaire, took blood tests, and received a personalised protocol — prescriptions, supplements and lifestyle changes — signed off by a medical team. The platform also provided clinical analysis and ongoing professional monitoring.

What Went Wrong With the Business?

Despite raising R$5 million in investment and assembling a medical board led by longevity specialist Renato Tomioka, Centeni never achieved the traction its founders had hoped for. The product was officially launched to the public in March 2026 with around 200 users, having begun selling in July 2025. The core problem, as Leite explained, was that preventive health generates interest but almost no purchase urgency. "Nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to get blood tests," he said. Just over a year after founding, the partners decided to shut down.

Why Did They Go Public With the Failure?

Leite and Cabral shared their story on LinkedIn and through their newsletter Leite de Cabra, which they had been publishing since leaving Alice. After 40 editions, they published a final "post-mortem" piece — inspired by a similar text written by Nicolás Abad in 2022 when he closed Neta (Abad now leads Telepatia AI, which raised US$33 million in June). The founders described the writing process as self-reflection. "We already operated transparently, so it was only natural and fair to explain why we decided to close," said Cabral.

What Does This Mean for Brazil's Startup Culture?

Failing fast is a core startup principle, but investors in Brazil often point out that local founders tend to fall in love with their solution rather than the problem they are solving. Cabral pushed back on the stigma: "There is nothing wrong with failing. We see a startup as a big experiment — the goal is to be as efficient as possible in discovering whether it makes sense, to protect the team's time and the investors' money."