Gilberto Gandra, Founding Partner @ RadiusVC has a mantra: “Invest in things that change the world.” Gilberto’s career has always been mission-driven, from work in animal welfare to relationship building to a life-long commitment to diversity and inclusion. In this episode of Running Into the Fog, Gilberto talks with the Jo Bros about the impact of Covid on the pet industry, his view of intentional diversity in the startup world, and why he calls himself a “relationship strategist.”
Everyone ran into the fog during Covid, but for Giberto, the pandemic brought a bit of good luck. Just before Covid, he started working for a startup called Adopet, which provides a SaaS solution for animal shelters to streamline adoption. With Covid, shelters wanted to ditch old paper processes, and every family in America suddenly wanted a puppy. As a result, Adopet took off.
But Gilberto isn’t just talking about animals in this episode. He always talks about the importance of investing in global, diverse problems – which he does as part of his work with the venture capital fund RadiusVC. Gilberto believes in the power of relationships to impact your life – and venture capital is the ultimate financial relationship with marginalized founders who need financial support.
Tune in this week to hear Gilberto’s value-driven approach to finding work and people you love – and how that has changed his life.
Quotes
- “You need something that you want to solve the problem, regardless of whether you’re going to make money or not. That’s the true measure of a business worth pursuing. You can figure out a way to monetize it. If the problem is big enough, you should be able to create some economy around that problem, to solve it. The best way to change the world is to make money doing it. Otherwise, it is not self-sustaining.” (14:05-14:31)
- “If you invest in things that are going to be changing the world, but you invest always in the same type of people… Then, you don’t get to change the world, you just get to change the world for people in that particular lens.” (22:37-22:54)
Links
https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilberto-gandra/
https://nexaurorawdc.wpengine.com/
Arik Johnson LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/arikjohnson/
Derek Johnson LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/derek-johnson-cfa-190893/