The Upenders are the typical suburban family.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: The Upenders aren’t your typical suburban family.
“We’re a family of start-up junkies,” Barg Upender told The Washington Post. Business acumen runs in the family blood; his grandfather became an entrepreneur and “took us out of poverty in India. We went from weaving cloth to weaving start-ups.”
Barg, 47, has launched 10 businesses, with four successes and six admitted misses.
His wife, Madhvi Upender, 46, runs her own sleep-science company called Awarables, which is her second endeavor.
The two have one son bound for Stanford who filed a patent for a safe-driving device and is writing a book, while another son designs products on a 3-D printer.
According to the Post:
The refreshing thing about Barg and other confident entrepreneurs is that they aren’t shy about discussing their failures. Barg’s include Uber-like disruptors for taxis (“right place, right time, no capital”) and doctors. He has also failed at a Groupon-like service, a travel experiences company and something called Google Glass Studio. He even thought up something called Traffic Tweets, which would use Twitter to live-broadcast accidents so drivers could skirt them.
Barg doesn’t view his failures as a detriment to his career’s trajectory, quite the contrary: “It’s the bad ideas that become the brilliant company,” he stated.
After graduating from Cornell with a master’s in electrical engineering, the serial entrepreneur cut his teeth at United Technologies Research, he earned a six-figure salary and traveled the world refining the software engineering behind Otis elevators.
It was there that he said he learned the foundations of his current modus operandi:
Show up. “Showing up is the hardest part. Be a connector. Build a community. Start and attend events. Be a host, create a network of mentors, friends, connect people, connect dots. I get half my opportunities because I go to some random event.”
- Bootstrap. “Let your customers fund your idea. Sell first, build later, presell, run lean until you see demand. Don’t run out of money “
- Like Nike says, just do it. “Start with something small and refine it based on feedback.”
- Become a grinder. “There is no overnight success. You have to grind out the detail, become a generalist and hire the specialist.”
- Experiment. “Try new things, pave new paths, take risks, get out of the comfort zone, learn from failures, reinvent yourself.”
According to the Washington Post, he has followed those values building his four successful Internet companies, which he started in 2005 (Concentric Methods), 2007 (Intridea), 2009 (Mobomo), and 2014 (10Experts), all of which he has sold or sold part of.
He met his wife, who has a doctorate in neuroscience from Wesleyan, at the University of Connecticut. In 1999, he quit his job at United Technologies and followed her to Washington when she was awarded a fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Barg said he “hasn’t slugged any home runs, but he has hit some nice singles.” Concentric got him his first nice car; Intridea got him a house; Mobomo got him a nicer house. Now and again he “swings for the fences,” looking for an elusive multibillion-dollar windfall, or what he describes as “the black swan brilliant idea.”