23: How Berenice Giannini's upbringing as a young girl in Mexico led to the successful launch and sale of her e-commerce venture

Banking On Girls

My guest today is Berenice (“Bere”) Giannini who is no stranger to innovation and success. Giannini is not a typical venture-backed founder. She’s a Mexican immigrant, solo entrepreneur who launched and exited her first venture-funded company, eTailPet, after a 20-year-long career outside the tech ecosystem in only four years. After earning an MBA from the University of Southern California while working full-time for Citigroup, followed by JP Morgan, she joined Dogswell in 2007, a pet company. As its COO, she exited Dogswell to private equity providing a +10x return to its original investors. In 2014, she founded a 10-store, omni-channel, pet store chain in Southern California, Protein for Pets. She was nominated for CFO of the Year, and Women Making a Difference by the Los Angeles Business Journal before she turned 35. Berenice Giannini is a Chartered Financial Analyst. She is a top operational mind in the pet industry. Bere is starting a Masters of Science in Analytics at the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC in the Fall of 2023. Bere lives in Los Angeles with her husband, 5 kids, and 2 dogs.

In this episode Bere shares what spurred her childhood determination to become financially independent, the money lessons she learned living near the border of Mexico and the US and why it’s important for women to retain their earning and professional skills as they get older and have families.