Ģirts Graudiņš
Venture Partner at Change Ventures- Claim this Profile
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Bio
Anis Salvesen
I worked with Girts at Tripping for just over a year. During that time, I came to really admire him for his intelligence, his passion for technology and his ability to inspire the rest of the team. And while he possessed a very strong work ethic and was often deeply focused on his work, he took the time to include the rest of us in the incredible developments that were occurring on the tech front. His warm, fun-loving personality together with his discipline and drive to excel were a unique combination that made Girts such a clear asset to our team and a colleague whom I was proud to have as our CTO.
Ilya Druzhnikov
Great technologists are worth their weight in gold; ones that are steeped in the business needs of the organization are vanishingly rare. Girts is one of those. He shepherded our engineering team from the first lines of code through five years of triple-digit growth and two rounds of financing into profitability. He has consistently been able to translate the company's business needs into workable plans and implemented those plans on time and on budget. As a leader he is balanced, even-keeled, and thoughtful. As a technologist, his flashes of insight have opened up completely new directions for the company. His work is marked by a characteristic ruthless pragmatism necessary to balance demand for scarce resources and conflicting opinions. Girts is one of the three best technology leaders I have had the privilege to encounter in my entire career.
Anis Salvesen
I worked with Girts at Tripping for just over a year. During that time, I came to really admire him for his intelligence, his passion for technology and his ability to inspire the rest of the team. And while he possessed a very strong work ethic and was often deeply focused on his work, he took the time to include the rest of us in the incredible developments that were occurring on the tech front. His warm, fun-loving personality together with his discipline and drive to excel were a unique combination that made Girts such a clear asset to our team and a colleague whom I was proud to have as our CTO.
Ilya Druzhnikov
Great technologists are worth their weight in gold; ones that are steeped in the business needs of the organization are vanishingly rare. Girts is one of those. He shepherded our engineering team from the first lines of code through five years of triple-digit growth and two rounds of financing into profitability. He has consistently been able to translate the company's business needs into workable plans and implemented those plans on time and on budget. As a leader he is balanced, even-keeled, and thoughtful. As a technologist, his flashes of insight have opened up completely new directions for the company. His work is marked by a characteristic ruthless pragmatism necessary to balance demand for scarce resources and conflicting opinions. Girts is one of the three best technology leaders I have had the privilege to encounter in my entire career.
Anis Salvesen
I worked with Girts at Tripping for just over a year. During that time, I came to really admire him for his intelligence, his passion for technology and his ability to inspire the rest of the team. And while he possessed a very strong work ethic and was often deeply focused on his work, he took the time to include the rest of us in the incredible developments that were occurring on the tech front. His warm, fun-loving personality together with his discipline and drive to excel were a unique combination that made Girts such a clear asset to our team and a colleague whom I was proud to have as our CTO.
Ilya Druzhnikov
Great technologists are worth their weight in gold; ones that are steeped in the business needs of the organization are vanishingly rare. Girts is one of those. He shepherded our engineering team from the first lines of code through five years of triple-digit growth and two rounds of financing into profitability. He has consistently been able to translate the company's business needs into workable plans and implemented those plans on time and on budget. As a leader he is balanced, even-keeled, and thoughtful. As a technologist, his flashes of insight have opened up completely new directions for the company. His work is marked by a characteristic ruthless pragmatism necessary to balance demand for scarce resources and conflicting opinions. Girts is one of the three best technology leaders I have had the privilege to encounter in my entire career.
Anis Salvesen
I worked with Girts at Tripping for just over a year. During that time, I came to really admire him for his intelligence, his passion for technology and his ability to inspire the rest of the team. And while he possessed a very strong work ethic and was often deeply focused on his work, he took the time to include the rest of us in the incredible developments that were occurring on the tech front. His warm, fun-loving personality together with his discipline and drive to excel were a unique combination that made Girts such a clear asset to our team and a colleague whom I was proud to have as our CTO.
Ilya Druzhnikov
Great technologists are worth their weight in gold; ones that are steeped in the business needs of the organization are vanishingly rare. Girts is one of those. He shepherded our engineering team from the first lines of code through five years of triple-digit growth and two rounds of financing into profitability. He has consistently been able to translate the company's business needs into workable plans and implemented those plans on time and on budget. As a leader he is balanced, even-keeled, and thoughtful. As a technologist, his flashes of insight have opened up completely new directions for the company. His work is marked by a characteristic ruthless pragmatism necessary to balance demand for scarce resources and conflicting opinions. Girts is one of the three best technology leaders I have had the privilege to encounter in my entire career.
Experience
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Change Ventures
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Estonia
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Venture Capital and Private Equity Principals
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1 - 100 Employee
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Venture Partner
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Sep 2023 - Present
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BADideas.fund
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Fundraising
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1 - 100 Employee
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Angel Investor
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Nov 2022 - Present
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Twilio
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IT Services and IT Consulting
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Director, Engineering - Programmable Video
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Mar 2020 - Nov 2022
Scaled the teams and infrastructure of Programmable Video and enabled unprecedented growth in traffic and revenue.
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Director, Engineering - SDK Platform
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Apr 2018 - Mar 2020
Built out the SDK Platform group - a center for excellence for development of client-side SDKs for real-time communications. Recruited experts in C++, JavaScript, iOS, and Android development and testing. Created a dedicated demo apps team to showcase the group's SDKs. Earned the company's Iron Man award for excellence in development and testing practices.
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Sr. Engineering Manager
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Jul 2015 - Apr 2018
Grew the SDK teams that developed Twilio Voice and Video SDKs and contributed to the development of Twilio TaskRouter, Chat, and Authy. Managed incident response and post-incident reviews as a company-level Escalation Manager.
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Engineering Manager
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Nov 2013 - Jul 2015
Led and grew the Twilio Client (voice SDKs) team. Built the Twilio TaskRouter team and launched the initial version of the product.
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Tripping
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Bangladesh
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Leisure, Travel & Tourism
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1 - 100 Employee
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CTO
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Apr 2012 - Nov 2013
Tripping is the largest vacation and short term home rentals site on the planet. We give you access to the best local homes and neighborhoods around the world. Tripping is the largest vacation and short term home rentals site on the planet. We give you access to the best local homes and neighborhoods around the world.
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Stealth Startup
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India
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Financial Services
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Co-Founder
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Sep 2011 - Apr 2012
■ Using lean startup and customer development methods to seek product/market fit ■ Building MVP using RoR, agile/TDD methods ■ Using lean startup and customer development methods to seek product/market fit ■ Building MVP using RoR, agile/TDD methods
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ConnectAndSell, Inc.
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United States
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Software Development
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1 - 100 Employee
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VP, Engineering
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Mar 2008 - Aug 2011
ConnectAndSell is disrupting the sales industry by providing a SaaS service that puts sales professionals in live phone conversations with their prospects. A true force multiplier, ConnectAndSell enables sales reps to have a week's worth of conversations in a matter of hours. ConnectAndSell is not a dialer, but a new breed of service, based on patented technology, that delivers live phone conversations with verified and confirmed prospects from your list. It integrates with Salesforce and other… Show more ConnectAndSell is disrupting the sales industry by providing a SaaS service that puts sales professionals in live phone conversations with their prospects. A true force multiplier, ConnectAndSell enables sales reps to have a week's worth of conversations in a matter of hours. ConnectAndSell is not a dialer, but a new breed of service, based on patented technology, that delivers live phone conversations with verified and confirmed prospects from your list. It integrates with Salesforce and other CRMs. ■ Built and scaled ConnectAndSell's systems from inception to $10M/year in revenue ■ Led a lean, agile, distributed Engineering team
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Director, Engineering
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Sep 2007 - Mar 2008
ConnectAndSell is disrupting the sales industry by providing a SaaS service that puts sales professionals in live phone conversations with their prospects. ■ Designed ConnectAndSell's voice architecture for scale ■ Scaled voice capacity by 5x ■ Designed an automated test framework ■ Reduced error rate by 50%
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Director, Applications Development
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Jul 2006 - Aug 2007
Nomea is disrupting the sales industry by providing a SaaS service that puts sales professionals in live phone conversations with their prospects. In 2007 Nomea became ConnectAndSell, Inc. ■ Built a custom object-relational framework and a code generator for C#, SQL Server ■ Redesigned data model and improved database performance by orders of magnitude ■ Obtained Digium Certified Asterisk Professional (dCAP) certification
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Exeter Group
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United States
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Performing Arts
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Senior Consultant
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Jul 1998 - Nov 2005
Exeter Group is a leader in IT consulting for higher education institutions. Since its inception in 1984, Exeter Group has been helping its clients create business value by providing business analysis, planning, design, and implementation. ■ Managed a portfolio of technical teams – infrastructure, data conversion, reports, and interfaces – to implement a fundraising system at a top Ivy League university ■ Built a recruiting site for a premier consulting organization using SQL Server… Show more Exeter Group is a leader in IT consulting for higher education institutions. Since its inception in 1984, Exeter Group has been helping its clients create business value by providing business analysis, planning, design, and implementation. ■ Managed a portfolio of technical teams – infrastructure, data conversion, reports, and interfaces – to implement a fundraising system at a top Ivy League university ■ Built a recruiting site for a premier consulting organization using SQL Server, ASP.NET ■ Built a recruiting site for a top Ivy League university using Oracle, PL/SQL ■ Held company record for passing most Microsoft certification exams in a single day ■ Obtained Microsoft's MCP, MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA certifications ■ Obtained Oracle's OCP, OCDBA certifications Show less Exeter Group is a leader in IT consulting for higher education institutions. Since its inception in 1984, Exeter Group has been helping its clients create business value by providing business analysis, planning, design, and implementation. ■ Managed a portfolio of technical teams – infrastructure, data conversion, reports, and interfaces – to implement a fundraising system at a top Ivy League university ■ Built a recruiting site for a premier consulting organization using SQL Server… Show more Exeter Group is a leader in IT consulting for higher education institutions. Since its inception in 1984, Exeter Group has been helping its clients create business value by providing business analysis, planning, design, and implementation. ■ Managed a portfolio of technical teams – infrastructure, data conversion, reports, and interfaces – to implement a fundraising system at a top Ivy League university ■ Built a recruiting site for a premier consulting organization using SQL Server, ASP.NET ■ Built a recruiting site for a top Ivy League university using Oracle, PL/SQL ■ Held company record for passing most Microsoft certification exams in a single day ■ Obtained Microsoft's MCP, MCSE, MCSD, MCDBA certifications ■ Obtained Oracle's OCP, OCDBA certifications Show less
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Education
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Harvard University
ALM in IT, Software Engineering -
1994 - 1998
Harvard University
BA, Applied Mathematics in Economics, Cum Laude -
1993 - 1994
St. Mark's School of Texas
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1991 - 1994
Rīgas Komercskola (Riga Commerce School)
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1981 - 1991
Rīgas 50. Vidusskola
