Suneel Gupta teaches innovation at Harvard University and is the author of the upcoming book, BACKABLE (Little Brown, 2021) – exploring how to get people to believe in your ideas. The book is rooted in Suneel’s journey from first-time entrepreneur to being named “The New Face of Innovation” by the New York Stock Exchange. Suneel’s ideas have been backed by firms like Greylock and Google Ventures, and he served as an Entrepreneur in Residence inside Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. He has personally backed startups including Impossible Foods, AirBnB, 23&Me, Calm, and SpaceX. In 2019, Suneel established the Gross National Happiness Center of America in partnership with the Kingdom of Bhutan.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“one of the things I thought was going to happen is that I thought because I had a good idea… Because I had an idea at least that I thought was a good idea that I was going to be able to walk into a room with a venture capitalist and investors and raise money. And what I learned along the way is that a good idea that is not well explained comes off as a bad idea. And so often times what we are being judged on is not quality of the idea we are also being judged on the quality of the explanation”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
Bhagavad GitaFavourite Quote:
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” Mahatma Gandhi
Recommended Online Resources:
Sigma
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“surround yourself with a really good circle of people…”…[Listen for More]
More About Suneel Gupta:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“Greatness only comes before hustle in the dictionary.” Ross Simmonds
Other Quotes From the Chat with Suneel Gupta:
- “there is so much you can learn from other people and I think making sure that you are spending time learning from a core group, a core circle of people I think is just really important”
- “if you can become backable, if you can be the kind of person that people want to take a chance on”
- “I think it really freeze you up to go and work on the things that matter most to you”
- “how do we not seek happiness outside of our work but how do we actually seek happiness through our work. And that goes to a concept called Dharma”
- “the difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing is enough to solve the world’s problems”
- “it’s the difference between having a career and having a calling. I think a lot of us think about our career but not enough of us think about our calling. And I think our career is what we do and our calling is what we are capable of doing”
- “I tend to find that backable people carry around a journal with them. it’s a small notebook where they are constantly writing their ideas down but they are also doing something that I found very interesting and non-intuitive which is that they are keeping track of moments that made them feel alive. So, keep meetings, key moments throughout the day where they really felt like they were in a state of flow so that you can start to create more of that. The idea is to move further and further into that. Usually, we don’t fall into a state of flow for our entire away day. But the idea is to create more of those minutes, more of those hours where you do feel that we. The only way to really do that is by creating a sense of awareness of what is actually making you come alive right now and that just come through a simple journal where you can reflect and keep track of it”
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