Amit Kapur, CEO Of Gravity - Bothsides TV With Mark Suster

**Mark Suster** (0:01)
Welcome to the initial Both Sides TV program. It's the inaugural episode, and for this episode, I'm incredibly excited to welcome Amit Kapur, who just sold his company recently, Gravity, to AOL. Is it a specified number in the public?

**Amit Kapur** (0:19)
Over 90 million. I don't know what the specified number is. You know what it is.

**Mark Suster** (0:22)
It could be 90.00001 or it could be 190 We'll never tell. But I really appreciate you tuning in today. We're actually now filming the show in front of a live audience at General Assembly Los Angeles. If you ever want to attend, we're going to publicize when the dates are, and we'd love to have you attend in person. So let's get kicked off, Amit. So you have been in LA for how long?

**Amit Kapur** (0:48)
11 years.

**Mark Suster** (0:48)
11 years.

**Amit Kapur** (0:49)
Yeah.

**Mark Suster** (0:49)
And I seem to remember you actually went to Stanford.

**Amit Kapur** (0:52)
I did.

**Mark Suster** (0:53)
And you studied what at Stanford?

**Amit Kapur** (0:54)
Mechanical engineering.

**Mark Suster** (0:55)
Mechanical engineering. And after a mechanical engineering degree at Stanford, and you grew up in South Dakota, that's what I thought. You decided my choices are LA or South Dakota, of course they look alike. How did it come about that you came down to Los Angeles in the first place?

**Amit Kapur** (1:14)
It was, I think like a lot of people, it was kind of happenstance. So when I graduated, it was 2003 The market for tech companies, or anybody graduating right then, anybody with an engineering degree was really hard up in the Bay Area. And my best friend lived down in LA, so I came down and crashed on his parents' couch until I found a job.

**Mark Suster** (1:33)
I think it's ironic for any millennials, they probably don't remember that there was that period of time where in the Bay Area, if you were technical, you couldn't get a job.

**Amit Kapur** (1:40)
It's brutal. Yeah, yeah. It was, it was kind of depressing up there at the time, actually. I mean, when I joined, I started going to school there in 99 And it was amazing, right? There were job fairs everywhere. They were encouraging us to drop out of school and join all these companies.
And then during that whole period while I was there, the Bay Area economy, the tech economy kind of collapsed. And it was a completely different story when I left.

**Mark Suster** (2:07)
And did you come down here knowing about a young emerging company called Myspace, or did you find out once you got down here?

**Amit Kapur** (2:13)
No, I found out once I was down here. When I came down, I actually, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I looked at, I was in LA and I thought this is an entertainment town. So I went and I got a job at NBC. And I did that for a year. I did not like working at a big company. And I was going to go back up north to the valley because I wanted to join a startup, maybe go to business school. And that was when I came across an email about Myspace. And I looked into the company, I thought it was cool.

**Mark Suster** (2:43)
And you joined, and how many employees were there at Myspace at the time?

**Amit Kapur** (2:47)
I don't remember the specific number, but I want to say 30-ish, something like that.

**Mark Suster** (2:52)
And what year is this, 2005?

**Amit Kapur** (2:54)
2005, early 2005, yeah.

**Mark Suster** (2:56)
So what was your original role at Myspace?

**Amit Kapur** (2:59)
So it was kind of funny the way I went into the company. So I got an email about a junior marketing position. And I didn't know anything about marketing, but I liked the company, so I went in to interview, I was able to finagle my way in. And the head of marketing at the time, Jamie, who you know.

**Mark Suster** (3:15)
Yes, Jamie Kantrowitz.

**Amit Kapur** (3:17)
Yeah, so Jamie and I had a great interview and at the end, she was like, what are you interviewing for this role for? So she walks me over to Chris, the CEO's office, and he and I hit it off, talked for a few hours.

**Mark Suster** (3:27)
And this is Chris DeWolf.

**Amit Kapur** (3:28)
Chris DeWolf, yeah. And they didn't have anybody doing business development, which was what I had been doing for a very long period of one year at NBC. And so he asked me to come in and run business development.