Suneel Gupta

Technologist. Producer. Founder. Lawyer.  

Suneel Gupta is an expert at building stuff from scratch. From newly created ventures to Fortune 500 businesses, he's built and scaled dozens of products that are enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people around the globe. As Groupon's first Head of Product Development, he helped reinvent local commerce, and develop a tiny startup into a multi-billion dollar IPO within 2 years. He's also the Co-Founder and Producer of Kahani Pictures -- a film startup showcased at the South by Southwest festival in 2010 -- alongside his brother, Dr. Sanjay Gupta (CNN).

Prior to his startup life, Gupta led innovation efforts for some of the largest businesses in the world, including Sony Pictures, Tata, and Accenture. He also led product development for Mozilla Firefox's innovation arm, where he built Personas, a browser product that was adopted by hundreds of millions of customers around the globe, and top brands, including Lady Gaga, BCBG, and Harry Potter.

Gupta also spent time working in public policy -- serving as a Speechwriter in the Clinton White House. He earned both his JD and MBA in less than 3 years from Northwestern University. Gupta sits on the boards and advisory boards of several technology companies, including ToyTalk, which was founded by the former Chief Technology Officer of Pixar.

Speech Topics:

Think Big, Act Small. Lessons learned in "Lean" Innovation from building a $25 million startup into a $25 billion startup.

I love your startup, it's perfect, now change -- lessons in Lean. The world's greatest innovators know that the second act of a product's screenplay is where real breakthroughs are made. In this talk, you'll understand why Silicon Valley innovation is more of a discipline than an art, and learn how to bring this back to your own business and life.

The Case Against Someday. Conditions will never be perfect, so build your idea now. Here's how.

The Art of the Question. Failure isn't our inability to succeed, but our inability to learn. But we can't learn without asking the right questions. In this talk, we'll explore the under-appreciated art of using questions to build beautiful products, including lessons learned from the Groupon story, and a close look at people who ask the best questions.

What Jerry Seinfeld Taught us about Innovation. We'll explore lessons we can use to build beautiful products -- courtesy of one of the world's greatest-ever comedians.

Competing and Winning within the eCommerce Revolution. Suneel has built over $1B worth of eCommerce products and services. Most recently at Groupon, he led the Big Data team, based in Silicon Valley, to develop the company's Personalization products, which created massive gains for the business and overall user experience. Leading up to Groupon's IPO, Suneel also created two new eCommerce businesses from scratch, including Travel and Goods, each of which have turned into large user bases with over $100M / year in revenue.

Suneel is an expert at data, optimization, curation, user experience, and personalization -- all of which are ingredients to compete in today's eCommerce revolution.