Rags
Gupta
Operating Partner
The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.
William Gibson
My journey in tech entrepreneurship started back in the day during my senior spring in college. I took the legendary Ed Zschau’s first entrepreneurship class. Our senior project was to walk the halls of the university, find a technology to commercialize and write up a business plan that he’d help get funded. I chose to go into consulting instead – crazy to think I was that risk averse back then!
But I couldn’t get let go of the concept of ‘tech entrepreneurship’ as a career and, within a year, I left the consulting firm to take a chief of staff role at a Valley startup during the dot-com boom. That one became a zombie. Since then, I’ve done six other startups including one that went public, another that got sold, two that shut down with the other two still going strong. Through these experiences, I’ve discovered my calling: to help founders build their business and realize their vision.
It’s so motivating to work alongside founders and their teams trying to make a dent in the universe. I hope to impart lessons learned from being in the arena via my role at Hyperplane, the mentoring I do and my Covid project, writing One to Ten: Finding Your Way from Startup to Scaleup. More importantly, I look forward to learning new lessons from founders and their unique insights.
Fun Facts
What outside-of-work accomplishment are you most proud of?
I’m an avid squash player and still play competitively as much as I can.
First job
Caddying
Favorite books
Anything by Robert Harris, Kazuo Ishiguro, Davie Mitchell and Amor Towles.