Meet Rodney Gainous Jr | Founder & CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rodney Gainous Jr and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rodney, what role has risk played in your life or career?
I think about risk as a necessary for growth. To do something new will always come with risk because you’re unfamiliar with what’s new. In practice, when I think about a situation or decision, I’m making my best guess at the probabilities of an event / outcome. Using those probabilities, I make bets based on what I’m willing to lose vs the upside of winning.

One role risks have taken in my life was my move to the Bay Area from Detroit. In 2015, a friend of mine moved to Berkeley, we knew nobody and only had a couple thousand dollars. We spent months applying for jobs, while we would wake up on deflated air mattresses. One week away from calling it quits, we got high-paying startup roles.

That one risk we took, or the bet we took on ourselves, started a string of even more opportunities like the butterfly effect. To this day, I like to best bet on myself.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Our business is Safe, we’re a security company. Safe is the first chrome extension that helps businesses protect their e-mail from hackers via identity verification.

We add end-to-encryption and a blue checkmark next to verified senders right inside your inbox.

Unlike our competitors, we are privacy-first, free to try and easy to install.

We are most proud of the progress we’ve made on making a good-looking product that is easy to use, we are also proud of the $1.2M we’ve raised.

We got to where we are today through persistence and it wasn’t easy. We overcame the challenges by committing to finding a way to survive and win. We’ve learned that survival is most important, and if you can survive long enough you increase the chances of winning. I’ve also learned you can either do the work, or make excuses for why it’s not working for you.

I want the world to know that I’ve been building software since I was 13, and have made over $300k+ from them (no collaborators). I say this to say, what I’m doing now, I’ve been doing my entire life. This time, I couldn’t be more excited to have funding and a team behind Safe.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If it was a week long trip I would take them to three places.

The first place is Santa Monica, I think it’s just a staple and tourist friendly so it can be a lot of fun for visitors. You can hang out / buy anything on 3rd street promenade. I’m a fan of the Nike store.

Venice would be the second place because it’s my favorite neighborhood. It has a creative vibe and the boardwalk is full of energy so it’s a great place to hangout. For brunch, I’d try Fig or The Rose. For drinks, The Brig or Neighbor.

Third place would be the West Hollywood / Beverly Hills area. I’d show them Launch House, a membership community where you apply to live in their live-in accelerator house for no equity. There’s also plenty of restaurants, Norah being pretty good.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
There are so many people who helped along the way. To name a few:

Mark Suster – Upfront Ventures
DeMarcus Williams – SVB
Marc R – SVB
Qiana Patterson
Jason Yeh – Adamant Ventures
Kobie Fuller – Upfront Ventures
Mandy Howard – Foundry Group
LaunchHouse
Alexis Wiseman – Mercury
Jeremy Kuo – Stonks

And probably so much more!

Website: https://getsafeapp.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rg2official/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rodneygainous/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rg2official