12 Jan January 12, 2024 – Government Working w Business Arun Gupta and Australia’s Domain John Foong
Arun Gupta – Venture Capitalist, Lecturer at Stanford University for “Valley Meets Mission,” and Adjunct Entrepreneurship Professor and Senior Advisor to Provost at Georgetown University and Author of
We can’t be demonizing government and we can’t be demonizing
entrepreneurs. We need both if we’re going to solve big problems.
If we’re demonizing one side we will never collaborate and we will
never get to where we need to.
Arun Gupta
Arun Gupta is a venture capitalist, Lecturer at Stanford University for “Valley Meets Mission”, and Adjunct Entrepreneurship Professor and Senior Advisor to the Provost at Georgetown University. He is the CEO of NobleReach Foundation, which is focused on catalyzing and inspiring a renewed spirit of national service through innovation. NobleReach is scaling infrastructure to build pathways connecting top technology talent and innovation networks with the government and providing the scaffolding to support their success. Arun is active in the emerging technology, entrepreneurship, public policy, and venture finance communities. He is passionate about inspiring students to pursue mission-oriented entrepreneurial careers and has committed to contributing ALL his proceeds from book sales to the NobleReach Foundation. At Stanford University, Arun serves on the Stanford in Washington (SIW) Advisory Board, and Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies Advisory Council, and is a Faculty Lecturer teaching ” Valley Meets Mission: Purposeful Entrepreneurship with Government” at Stanford in Washington. The class highlights his venture capital and academic experience building successful mission-oriented ventures at the intersection of government, mission, technology, and entrepreneurship. At Georgetown University, Arun serves on the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Advisory Board, and Tech & Society Steering Committee, and teaches Entrepreneurial Finance and Venture Capital at McDonough School of Business. He was awarded the Entrepreneurial Faculty Teaching Excellence Award and the Peter W. Gonzalez Jr. Award for Excellence in Faculty Teaching. As a Partner at Columbia Capital, Arun’s investment career spanned eighteen years including initiating the firm’s Cybersecurity and Government technology investments with a focus on emerging tech-enabled services and infrastructure companies in National Security, AI, and SaaS/Cloud infrastructure sectors. Prior to joining Columbia Capital in 2000, Arun was at Carlyle Venture Partners focused on software investments. Prior to Carlyle, Arun held positions in Arthur D. Little’s telecom and technology consulting practice and shared responsibility for establishing ADL’s management consulting operations in Mumbai 1995-98. Arun received a B.S. degree with Distinction in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. degree in Engineering Economic Systems from Stanford University (’91). He received his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (’95). Arun has lived in the Washington DC metropolitan area for over 40 years and has been actively involved in local community organizations focusing on coaching youth sports, inner-city educational programs, and food insecurity programs for vulnerable communities. Arun has been happily married for 27+ years and has three wonderful children.
John Foong – Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Domain, one of Australasia’s leading real estate marketplaces
At Google we had the toothbrush test: trying to build something
used by billions of people twice a day. You can’t sell a toothbrush
individually to all of those people, you have to build for scale. By
definition, that makes things a little bit less relation based in terms
of the sales process.
John Foong
John Foong is passionate about Real Estate in Australia and Agents building their business “Australian coming home to be back in Sydney with family.” John has experience working for some of the largest companies in the world, including Google and Uber, where he oversaw record revenue growth (e.g., boosting Google Cloud’s channel revenue into the billions as global lead). Growing up in Australia, he graduated with an MBA and Masters in Education from Stanford and then spent 17 years working in the UK, US, and Africa. In 2014, he became one of the youngest Directors globally at Google. Now back in Australia, he serves as the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) at Domain, one of Australasia’s leading real estate marketplaces. Every month, one-third of Australia’s population use Domain to learn about, buy, rent, or sell property, generating some $400M in revenue. Most reputable real estate brands in Australia also use their platform to market their properties. As CRO, John is responsible for Domain’s revenue. He leads a 500-person sales and customer team and is in charge of expanding Domain’s marketplace portfolio, which includes Residential, Commercial, Developer, Agent Solutions, Corporate Sales and Go-to-Market, Sales Operations, and Customer Experience. He has P&L responsibility for ensuring Domain has the right technological products and direction. John’s career as a senior sales executive spans more than 15 years, and he has established a global reputation as someone who constantly leads his team to success. He is one of Australia’s real estate luminaries and a sought-after speaker, ranked by the leading industry journal as #36 in the Top Industry Influencer list of 2022.