Ron Gura on Empathy, Grief and Scaling Humanity

On the 7th episode of Invested, Michael hosts Ron Gura, co-founder & CEO at Empathy, which helps families deal with loss.  Ron is a tech entrepreneur who has brought his love for developing empowering products to startups and major international corporations alike. As Senior Vice President at WeWork, Ron started and oversaw a global R&D center of 250 team members, responsible for the tools and systems that helped the company scale operationally. Previously, Ron served as Entrepreneur in Residence here at Aleph. Prior to that, Ron served as a Product Director and General Manager at eBay, leading its business incubation organization. Ron joined eBay as a result of the 2011 acquisition of The Gifts Project, a social-commerce startup where he served as Co-Founder & CEO. You can learn more about Empathy at empathy.com. Please enjoy and rate this episode 5 stars wherever you stream your podcasts!  Key Topics: [0:00] Intro  [2:45] Ron’s core values  [8:18] How Michael judges character [10:35] Gifting  [17:41] Life events [19:10] Empathy  [23:17] Automation and humanity  [25:13] Brand-first approach [29:00] Death statistics  [32:10] Hiring a chief grief officer  [33:41] AI for obituaries  [37:40] Who works at Empathy?  [42:45] From B2C to B2B  [46:30] Transaction vs. process [49:00] Scaling empathy  [53:45] Ron’s motivation  [55:00] Ron’s personal grief  [59:30] Ron’s family [1:01:50] Gifts Project team  [1:04:00] Rapid fire questions  [1:05:20] Empathy in an era of AI  Resources: To learn more about Empathy: https://www.empathy.com Follow Ron on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rongura/ Follow Ron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rongura For show notes and past guests on Invested, please visit content.aleph.vc Learn more about Aleph: aleph.vc  Sign up for Aleph’s monthly email newsletter: aleph.vc  For the transcript of this episode, go to https://content.aleph.vc/invested-episode-07 Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@aleph-vc/ Follow Michael on Twitter: twitter.com/mikeeisenberg Follow Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mieisenberg/ Follow Aleph on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikeeisenberg Follow Aleph on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aleph-vc/ Follow Aleph on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aleph.vc/ Credits: Executive Producer: Erica Marom  Producer: Andrew Jacobson  Video and Editing: Ron Baranov  Music and Art Direction: Uri Ar  Design: Rony Karadi