Parul Gupta

Mission-driven Founder/operator | MIT TR35 | Venture Partner

San Francisco Bay Area

About

* Gritty, first-principles, systems-thinker passionate about education and climate/sustainability. * Founder/Board member of Springboard (SF-based edtech startup). Scaled to $XX M annual revenues, $80M in VC funding, 200+ employees + 800 contractors. * Cross-functional leader with 20+ years of global experience across diverse setups - startups, academia, research, venture capital, and nonprofits. * Giving back to the entrepreneurship ecosystem as a mentor, board member, angel investor, and venture partner.

Experience

  • Managing Director, Mobilization at Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability
    Jul 2024 - Present · 2 yrs

    At the Doerr School, I lead the Global Sustainability Challenge (https://globalsustainabilitychallenge.org/) with a powerhouse network to mobilize and support students worldwide in creating real-world solutions for sustainability challenges in their communities. Partners include the Technical University of Munich, Zhejiang University, Imperial College, IIT Bombay, HKUST, and more. I've also had the privilege to co-create and co-teach a course called Scaling Sustainability Solutions with an extraordinary teaching team. We uncover lessons from the scaling journeys of solar, nuclear, and elimination of CFCs through the Montreal Protocol.

  • Venture Partner at Ahead VC
    May 2022 - Present · 4 yrs 2 mos

    Early-stage cross-border fund helping founders in India build iconic, global companies.

  • Springboard (13 yrs 6 mos)
    • Co-founder & Board Member
      2013 - Present · 13 yrs 6 mos

    • President
      Jul 2013 - Jan 2022 · 8 yrs 7 mos

      At Springboard, our mission is to bridge the world's skills gap. We offer online, project-based, mentor-led courses to help people break into fast growing careers in the digital economy like coding, data analytics & machine learning, design, cybersecurity and more. Like founders sometimes do, I have worn multiple hats at Springboard. When we started in 2013, as the technical co-founder of the company, I helped build our engineering team in Bangalore. Over the years, I built ground up and led our product, project-management, program operations, course-development teams out of San Francisco. Most recently, I've been leading Springboard's growth through new products, verticals and markets like international and university partnerships. Always learning!

  • Venture Partner at Emerge Education
    Jun 2022 - Present · 4 yrs 1 mo

    Emerge Education is a European seed fund backed by world-class education entrepreneurs and leaders.

  • Advisor/Angel at Various Companies
    Sep 2017 - Present · 8 yrs 10 mos

    Sharing my learnings with early stage & aspiring founders. Supporting passionate and driven early career professionals whenever I can. Cheerleader for women founders. Involved in our family's portfolio of 30+ angel investments, esp. on education, climate, and some consumer/enterprise companies. Some of my favorite portcos & teams: -- Groww -- Terra.Do -- InspiritVR.com -- Sparkwise.co -- Leap.club -- ThrivingSprings.com