Romero Rodrigues

I believe there are two truly transformative forces that make the world a better place: education and entrepreneurship. Of course several initiatives (like the ones in public health or income distribution) urge to make life less painful for a big piece of the population. However, they don’t always reduce the pain of future generations in definitive way. By stimulating entrepreneurship, you enable new, better and cheaper products and services to be created, penetrating the offering into lower income layers of population. Inefficiencies are reduced, technologies are created. There is an incremental evolution of the current development of society that will never go back, regardless of future investment. Entrepreneurs are always paving the road for the future. Being an entrepreneur was my dream job, when I was a child, helping my dad at his retail store after school. Until today, this passion still is what takes me out of the bed every morning. From starting my company in 1998 with $100, to successfully selling it in 2009 for $374 Million; from creating a strong team of 1,200 employees, to impacting 30 million consumers per month; from acting as mentor and board member of a NGO enabling entrepreneurship in emerging markets, to becoming angel investor of startups and board member of some large companies. Now as a venture capitalist I’ll extend the impact and reach of my mission, by helping several talented entrepreneurs to succeed and inspiring talented people to help us shape the future.