Venturetakes #8 - Gautam Gupta (TCV Velocity) on This Week in Startups Podcast

Date: Dec 2022

Time Saved: 39 mins

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Podcast

Interviewee

Gautam Gupta is the founder/CEO of NatureBox (www.naturebox.com), a digitally native brand of snacks. He started the company because of his passion for nutrition. Earlier in life, learning about nutrition helped him lose 70 lbs in 6 months. While he was lucky to lose weight, he believes the next generation of food has to be about change. The company has attracted millions of customers and has over 40% brand awareness across the country. They achieved a lot but had their fair share of bumps. This experience gave him many hard-earned lessons in management, scaling, raising capital, and dealing with “shit-hit-the-fan” moments.

Gautam started his career as an early stage investor at General Catalyst. He had the great fortune to join the firm when he was 18 years old and spent the first 8 years of his career as part of the team that scaled it from a small firm to one with global reach. He helped open the west coast office. As a professional and angel investor, he has funded 30+ companies. This portfolio includes 8 companies valued over $1B and in aggregate, generates close to $2B in annual net revenue. Examples include BigCommerce, GoodData, Honest Company, Grammarly, Imperfect Produce, Pilot, The Pill Club, Heap Analytics, Split.io, among others.

Outside work, Gautam is passionate about enabling the next generation of entrepreneurs through education. He sits on the Board of Overseers at Babson College, his alma mater that is consistently ranked #1 in entrepreneurship, and co-created a class at Santa Clara University on emerging retail models.