Petr Zahradník for Via Clarita: Philanthropy Has to Show Results, Even if They’re Small

Just in time for annual Qminers Christmas charity, we are proud to present an interview with our CEO, Petr Zahradník, conducted by Jan Delong for the non-profit organization Via Clarita. Thanks to Petr’s business success, he is a major donor whose interests extend into art and education, with an ambition to achieve systemic change through philanthropy. The interview is not only about him, but also about the Vitreus Family Foundation, which he founded together with his wife Zuzana, and more broadly about how new philanthropists are being shaped in the Czech Republic.

The conversation with Petr Zahradník did not begin with Qminers, the company he co-founded with Miloš Krejník in Kutná Hora in 2012, even though its success and impact would naturally invite that starting point. Instead, we entered much more personal territory. Petr is not only a successful graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, an entrepreneur, and a philanthropist.

With a generous dose of exaggeration, one could also say that he was born well. To name just a few examples: his father is a professor of mathematics; his grandparents were Jaroslava Brychtová and Stanislav Libenský, world-renowned glass artists; his uncle Petr Němec is a prominent and successful businessman who regularly appears in Forbes’ rankings of the richest Czechs. It was therefore only logical that the first question focused on who in the family had the greatest influence on him. According to Petr, it was not a single person, but rather the diversity and variety that surrounded him from childhood. Somewhat unexpectedly, he also included his violin teacher among those formative figures.

“He’s one of the teachers who really shaped me. I loved seeing him, even well into adulthood, when I would visit him in the Krkonoše mountains. In his case, it wasn’t just about lessons, but about passing on life wisdom,” he says.

When did he first discover the desire to help, or as he himself prefers to put it, to be useful?

“It was when my father introduced me to what he called ‘concentration camp literature’. He gave me around fifteen books by authors like Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, or Richard Glazar. Reading them forced me to ask how we as humanity could have allowed something like that to happen, why so many people looked away. At the same time, it led me to think that I would like to be someone who doesn’t look away, someone who tries to help if something like that is happening, but also in other, less extreme situations,” Zahradník explains.

His lifelong desire to be useful was shaped not only by books, but also by gifts he received, although he admits with a laugh that he does not know why he, in particular, received them. These were not financial or material gifts, but experiences. For example, accompanying his grandmother to Armenia, where she was invited by a prominent art collector. Or spending time with his uncle in England during the 1996 European Football Championship, staying in the same hotel as the Czech national team.

“Looking back, you ask yourself why you received that gift at all, and how it worked on you. Those experiences I was given as gifts made me think much more deeply about everything. Together with that desire to be useful, it formed a life attitude that permeates essentially everything I do. Business success simply expanded that desire, and philanthropy became a completely natural thing to engage in,” Petr Zahradník says.

Do you remember the first major gift you gave personally?

What does “major” mean? When I think about it, for me it was a sculpture made of clay that I gave to my grandmother, who was a sculptor. It cost me a lot of effort, and perhaps it was a much bigger thing than what is considered a “major gift” from me today. The first financial one was for children leaving foster care. I felt that children’s homes themselves were relatively well provided for, but that the transition into ordinary adult life didn’t work quite as well as it could have. That may have been the first moment when I began to think about philanthropy differently and more systematically.

How did your approach to giving change from that moment to today?

As my financial possibilities grew, I began to ask why I, specifically, should focus on certain problems. Why should we focus on children from foster homes, for example, when I personally don’t have any particular expertise or relevant experience in that area, and in essence I’m only helping with money? At the same time, there are areas where money can have a much greater impact, because we are closer to them, understand them better, and know how to donate resources more effectively. We began to look for those areas systematically.

We need to understand them somewhat better than the educated average, and our proposed solution to the problem must be relevant. At the same time, they must be areas and topics that evoke emotion in us, that we feel drawn to with our hearts. And I speak in the plural, because this applies both to Qminers and to the family foundation that my wife Zuzka and I lead together.

You mean the Vitreus Family Foundation. What was the impulse behind its creation? Was it a major life event, or did it simply emerge over lunch from a shared conversation?

The trigger was Qminers co-founder Miloš Krejník. We realized it made sense to do some philanthropic activities together, but that there were paths we each wanted to follow individually, because we saw different added value or felt different emotions there. At the same time, we needed to anchor it formally, because thanks to business success, significant sums of money flow through the foundation. If you want to engage in philanthropy as a family, it makes sense to structure it somehow.

So both Miloš and I went to our families and asked whether it made sense to them as well. And that was it. Of course, then we started asking ourselves what it is we actually want to achieve by institutionalizing our giving, what our goals are. It was essentially a spark that ignited the desire to go a step further, to be useful in a slightly different way. Without it, we probably wouldn’t have arrived together at ideas such as founding a museum dedicated to my grandparents, the glass artists Jaroslava Brychtová and Stanislav Libenský.

How do decision-making and deliberation around giving work between you? Is there consensus, or lengthy discussion?

My wife was at a slight disadvantage, because we have three young sons. While I had the luxury of going somewhere quiet to think about how to be useful to the world, she didn’t have that space, or the calm that comes with it. That’s improving now. We make important decisions by consensus and only embark on things we both deeply want. The museum is a good example. It’s a big dream and something we feel deeply connected to. We also believe that due to the financial demands, no one else would take it on. Without agreement between us, it would be a commitment we couldn’t possibly fulfil.

How do you think about philanthropy and the family foundation in relation to your children?

We are clear that we don’t want to bind them to anything, and that we want it to be similar to our own experience. We were both very lucky to receive many opportunities through our families, many doors were opened to us, and we could choose for ourselves. What matters to us is that the boys perceive philanthropy as an important value and as a way to positively influence the world.

Of course, we would be delighted if it turned out that their visions align so closely with ours that they want to continue our values and specific initiatives through the Vitreus Foundation. But we don’t want them to see it as a burden. On the other hand, I believe that if we do it well and with real positive impact, we will naturally draw them closer to it. In the end, though, it will be their free choice.

Do you talk to them about philanthropy and giving?

They’re still too young for that to really make sense. Recently, one of my sons asked why we didn’t buy a Porsche. It turned out to be a good question, an opportunity to explain why that doesn’t make sense for us. It was also a chance to talk about basic values and about how we can be useful. I can’t imagine us deliberately talking to them in the future about succession or continuation. We’ll leave it to them when the right moment ripens. And my wife and I will have no choice but to wait patiently and try not to push.

And what if they say: Mum, Dad, yes, we want to do philanthropy, but we want to take it in a completely different direction from what Vitreus supports?

From today’s perspective, if they wanted to move very far away from our values and priorities, the answer would probably be: then earn the money for it yourselves. (laughs) But maybe not. It’s hard to say now. What I am really looking forward to is that shared discussion about how they want to improve the world. I can imagine that by listening to them, I might come to like their perspective, that I’ll think they’re seeing things better, in a new way, or that the world has shifted so much that my priorities are no longer relevant. So I can imagine that in the end, based on shared consensus, they might transform it all entirely.