Becoming Backable: Suneel Gupta on Learning from Failure

Suneel Gupta

Husband, Dad, Author Backable, Activist, Celebrated Failure

What’s your G.O.A.T.?

My Mom. I will say more about this, but she taught me the relationship between action and courage. I used to think that you had to gather courage and then act. She did the reverse—I learned action leads to courage.

What would you say to your older self?

Don’t judge me! I know that I can be pretty hard on myself as I look at my younger years so I would hope the older me would be nicer to current me.

What's a book that changed your life?

Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony de Mello. He was a Jesuit priest, but only later did I find out he was Indian.

Best thing that happened in the 80s?

The music. I am an unabashed fan. I love it all—from Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen to a-ha. Though I didn’t start driving until the nineties, when I would pick up my friends and have my eighties tunes playing they would tell me, “My Mom likes this song.”

Reframing the Narrative of Failure

As a refugee who spent her early childhood near the border between Pakistan and India, the first book that Damyani Hingorani read cover-to-cover was a biography of Henry Ford. It was then that she hatched her dream of becoming an engineer building cars for the Ford Motor Company. Her parents saved every penny they had to send her to America, and after graduating from Oklahoma State University, she headed to Detroit to apply for her dream job. But this was the 1960s and the hiring manager politely told her they didn’t have female engineers at Ford. She started to leave the room, but something clicked. She remembered all that she had endured to be in this room. She told the hiring manager, “If you don’t have any female engineers, then do yourself a favor and hire me now.” And that’s how on August 7, 1967, she became Ford Motor Company’s first female engineer. It is one of my favorite backable stories because Damyanti Hingorani is my mom.

Unlike my mother, I didn’t have an early concept of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I figured I would follow the expected path of either doctor, lawyer or engineer. After working in technology and feeling somewhat adrift, I did eventually go to law school. When I received an offer in my third year from a chest-thumping corporate firm in Midtown Manhattan, I feared that I would be returned to my pre-law school headspace...restless and bored. I turned down the offer and started cold-calling people in Silicon Valley, landing a job at Mozilla, the maker of Firefox. At Mozilla, I slowly moved from legal matters to the engineers’ and designers' domain, and got a chance to design a new product feature. A fire was lit inside me. I learned enough to get recruited to Groupon, and after a wild ride with ups and downs, I decided to start my own company. The idea was for a telehealth service called “Rise” that would match you with a personal nutritionist, all from your phone.

I was trying to raise money for Rise and it was not going well. A call came in from a restricted number and I answered, hoping it was one of the many investors who hadn’t gotten back to me, but it was the organizer of an event called FailCon (Failure Conference) telling me I had been nominated twice to speak. I was hesitant, but when she mentioned there would be investors in the audience, I accepted the keynote speaker slot immediately. There were investors in the audience, but there was also a New York Times reporter. Fast forward to my surprise when I saw my wife holding the latest issue of the Times with a full-length article on failure, featuring me. Instead of hiding, I decided to give this new identity a try and I began emailing highly successful people using the Times article to break the ice. It worked and paved the way to hundreds of open, honest conversations with fascinating people. In the end, I was left with a life-altering discovery. People who change the world around them aren’t just brilliant...they’re backable. They have an intangible that lies somewhere between creativity and persuasion—something that makes people want to take a chance on them. 

Probably the most surprising learning I had in writing this book is that backable people aren’t necessarily charismatic—they have conviction and spend a great deal of time convincing themselves before they expose their idea to others. And the good news is that I found that being backable can be learned—take it from an introvert like me. Or take it from the number-one TED talk of all time with Sir Ken Robinson, who probably gives one of the most un-TED like performances. It’s a shame how much time people spend adopting a style they think will be seen as charismatic.

I am always looking to be fully engaged in what I am doing, to have conviction (which, as I said, makes you backable). That’s why I decided to trade in my map for a compass. I didn’t need to know the last step in order to take the first step. Through writing this book, I’ve realized that what holds many of us back are three words, "I'm not ready." And yet, if you look at some of the most extraordinary people and rewind the tape to the beginning of their journey, very few of them were “ready.” Like anyone else, they had setbacks and made mistakes, but they all played what I now call the “Game of Now.” And in the Game of Now, the opposite of success isn’t failure. It’s boredom. 

Every morning I have a little routine with my daughters where I ask them two questions based on a Picasso quote. What is the meaning of life? To find your gift. What’s the purpose of life? To give it away. At its core, Backable is about how we share our gifts with the world.

(Editor’s note: We can’t recommend this book highly enough. Everyday, no matter our pursuit, we are asking people to back us. Let’s be more backable together.)