From Developer to Cyber Security Entrepreneur with $10M Revenue and $18M Funding: LoginRadius CEO Deepak Gupta (Part 1)

Deepak tells a textbook story of a developer turned entrepreneur. He and his cofounder started by bootstrapping with a paycheck, validated the hypothesis, and then quit their jobs. We love stories like this, as you know.

Sramana Mitra: Tell me where you’re from, born, raised. What kind of background?

Deepak Gupta: I was born and raised in India. I’m from Jaipur. I did my undergraduate degree in engineering and computer science, and then I moved to the US for my Masters.

Sramana Mitra: When did you finish your Masters?

Deepak Gupta: 2008.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do after that?

Deepak Gupta: My background is in software engineering. My Masters was in cyber security. I started working for a small financial software application company. My objective was to build software for community banks and some of the large banks. I had to handle a massive amount of data and figure out how the data will be transferred across banks and the different companies that the banks are working with.

Since my background was in cyber security, it helped me a lot with understanding what kind of challenges banks are dealing with when it comes to data security and privacy.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you stay with that company?

Deepak Gupta: About three to four years.

Sramana Mitra: So that brings us to 2009?

Deepak Gupta: 2012.

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Deepak Gupta: I got to interact with a lot of customers and learned a lot about business. I quit my job and started thinking about developing something new that could help end users and businesses. Around 2013 and 2014, I thought of this idea of how to eliminate passwords for consumers. That was my personal pain also.

I used to experiment a lot. I used to sign up for different applications. When I did that, I had to create a password, remember it, and store it. That’s where I started this application where it was a simple application for businesses. They don’t need to have their users create another username and password. They can sign up with Google, Twitter, or Facebook. I started that in 2013.

Sramana Mitra: This is the current company?

Deepak Gupta: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about how you got going. Were you self-financing? How did you get your MVP out?

Deepak Gupta: In the beginning, it was self-funded. It was a small product where it’s helping businesses to implement social login. We were fortunate enough that we got a few hundred customers in the very first month of launching.

Sramana Mitra: Who’s we?

Deepak Gupta: I started the company with my co-founder, Rakesh. We are friends from high school.

Sramana Mitra: You are in San Francisco?

Deepak Gupta: I’m based in San Francisco. He is based in Vancouver.

Sramana Mitra: Both of you are coders?

Deepak Gupta: He’s not a programmer. He’s more into designing and project management.

Sramana Mitra: Had you already quit your job when you started this?

Deepak Gupta: I still had a job for a few months. After starting, I left.

This segment is part 1 in the series : From Developer to Cyber Security Entrepreneur with $10M Revenue and $18M Funding: LoginRadius CEO Deepak Gupta
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