Ankur Gopal is a technology entrepreneur based in Louisville Kentucky KY, USA. He founded Interapt, an Innovation-as-a-Service company, and Interapt TechHire, an Opportunity-as-a-Service company that trains, apprentices, and employs underemployed and unemployed people. He is an Endeavor Entrepreneur, and EY Entrepreneur of the Year winner, and an avid tennis player.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Sir Richard Branson
- Ankur’s dad
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I always tell them your biggest hurdle was my biggest hurdle and that was opportunity cost, because you’re sitting in a chair and you’re sitting with a $250,000 a year job as a consultant or as an executive of some sort at a company and you’re saying I’m going to give that up and I’m going to try something that’s going to take 3 times longer than I think it does, it’s going to cost 3 times more money than I think it does but it’s going to have a hundred x more rewards than I think it will so that’s a very hard sell”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The Rise of “The Rest”: Challenges to the West from Late-Industrializing Economies Book by Alice H. Amsden
Favourite Quote:
“It’s better to die on your feet, than to live on your knees”
Recommended Online Resources:
- Facebook – is an American for-profit corporation and an online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California.
- Linkedin – is a business and employment-oriented social networking service that operates via websites and mobile apps.
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“Get strong, valuable and quantifiable mentorship, if you have mentors make sure they’re the right mentors, if you have them, give them a job description, this is what I need, hey I would love for you to mentor me here’s what I need you to do for me and be very thoughtful about what you ask them to do and if they say okay put a timeline on it, here’s what I need you to do, I can do this in 2 months I can do this in 1 month, I can do this in 2 weeks”…[Listen for More]
More About Ankur Gopal:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
Naguib Mahfouz “You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.”
Other Quotes From the Chat with Ankur Gopal:
- “One thing that you’re not going to have any more of is time”
- “People say your business is your baby I say absolutely not, a love between a parent and a child is unconditional, you don’t unconditionally love your business, your business is more like your 3 month girlfriend or boyfriend because you’re having a good time, you’re saying hey let’s see where this goes but the second that person starts turning on you, you say I’m done with you so you have to treat a business as such so it’s a mental sort of exercise to see it that way because you can’t just go down with a sinking ship because that’s not perseverance that’s fool heartedness”
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