Today's teacher is Ravi Gupta, a partner at renowned venture firm Sequoia Capital. Ravi has had a fascinating and meandering career on his way to becoming a VC, from consulting at McKinsey to private equity at KKR to operations at Instacart as both CFO and COO. All along the way, Ravi was gathering and cultivating a unique set of skills that's equipped him to now identify and support some of the most daring founders striving to build legendary companies.

Ravi's life and career are teeming with trials, successes, and applicable lessons for all of us. He's such a thoughtful and deep thinker, and I'd encourage you to check out his personal site, RKG.blog, for more of his musings. We hope you enjoy class with the ever-joyful Ravi Gupta.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

-----

This episode is brought to you by EightSleep, the temperature-controlled mattress cover that heats or cools your mattress to transform your sleep. The Pod 4 Ultra is the new gold standard in intelligent sleep systems. It can be added to your current mattress like a fitted sheet and is been clinically proven to give you up to an hour more quality of sleep every night. The cooling capability can cool your side of the bed to 20 degrees below room temperature, all managed by the pod's autopilot feature, which adjusts the temperature throughout the night. Go to eightsleep.com/joys for $350 off. 

-----

Joys of Compounding is a property of Pine Grove Studios in collaboration with Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Joys of Compounding, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. 

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com).

Follow us on Twitter: @Buhrman_Rick | @PaulBuser | @JoinColossus

Show Notes

(00:00:00) Welcome to Joys of Compounding

(00:05:00) Aspirations and Career Beginnings

(00:07:21) The Impact of Indian Heritage

(00:12:53) The Notre Dame vs. Duke Rivalry

(00:20:51) Lessons from Coach K and Leadership

(00:24:18) From McKinsey to KKR

(00:44:33) Learning and Humility in Private Equity

(00:47:09) Finding Purpose Through Family

(00:49:42) Motivation and Desperation at Instacart

(00:56:04) The Role of a Supportive Leader

(00:58:24) The Instacart Turnaround

(01:04:41) Lessons from Sequoia and Venture Capital

(01:23:57) Measuring Life by Relationships