As Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Portuguese native Gonçalo is responsible for overseeing Business Intelligence & Operations for LIFT12. Gonçalo’s career has included time spent as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Rocket Internet, the leading European Venture Capital incubator responsible for founding ecommerce companies such as Groupon (Europe) and eBay (Europe). Whilst at Rocket, he supported the operations and business development of Singapore-based fashion website Zalora. Prior to relocating to Singapore, Gonçalo headed up Groupon Porto as City Manager and also worked as a Business Analyst at Accenture and supported the creation and development of business incubators in Europe at EBN (European Business Innovation Centres Network).
The creation of LIFT12 realises a long-held ambition for Gonçalo. In 2008, whilst studying for his Masters Degree in Business Management – Applied Economics at Vrije Universiteit Brussel & Solvay Business School, he won top honours in the IBM Students Innovation Contest with an essay entitled “The 21st Century enterprise where I would like to work”. The winning essay put forward his belief that successful 21st Century companies would ‘listen and react to people’s individual, informed and complex new needs’ as well as ‘not consider “costumer care” and “quality of the products” as competitive characteristics, but rather as preconditions for success.’
In 2012, LIFT12 was born, with a commitment to being a true 21st Century enterprise, encompassing Gonçalo and his fellow founding partners’ mission to fundamentally change the way the fashion industry works by leveraging and developing new technology, creating smarter processes and systems and to become a truly data-driven enterprise – enabling LIFT12’s brands to deliver outstanding value to its customers and retail partners.
