Gagan Biyani

Biyani attended University of California, Berkeley, and received a bachelor's degree in Economics. He began his career working at Accenture before transitioning into technology entrepreneurship and journalism. As a journalist, he covered mobile applications and technology at TechCrunch.[5] While there, he wrote a number of investigative journalism pieces, including one about a PR firm that was writing fake reviews on the App Store.[6] He broke the story in TechCrunch. According to The New York Times,[7] the findings led to an FTC investigation and Biyani's findings were quoted by the FTC's official documents.

In 2009, Biyani co-founded Udemy,[8][9] one of the first MOOC platforms.[2] Courses are offered across a breadth of categories, including business and entrepreneurship, academics, the arts, health and fitness, language, music, and technology.[10] Most classes are in practical subjects such as Excel software or using an iPhone camera.[11]

At Udemy, Biyani focused mainly on marketing, instructor acquisition, investor relations, finance, business development, and public relations.[12] As of 2018, the company claims to have over 24 million students and offer more than 80,000 courses[13] from thousands of teachers. As of 2019, Alexa counts Udemy among top 500 most-visited websites.[14]

After Udemy,[15] Biyani spent six months as a Growth Advisor at Lyft.[16] He soon left Lyft in 2013 to begin on new ventures.

Biyani founded the Growth Hackers Conference in 2013,[17] which he co-founded with Erin Turner.[18] The event was in San Francisco and featured a number of well-known growth hackers, including Chamath Palihapitiya, Sean Ellis, Keith Rabois, and others.[19][20][21][22]

While at Lyft, Gagan came up with the idea for Sprig. While speaking with friends, he came up with the idea to start a food delivery service.[23] He left Lyft in 2013 to begin the venture into healthy home cooked food. He partnered with a number of chefs, including Nate Keller, a former Executive Chef at Google's headquarters,[24] and Michelin-starred chef Kyle Connaughton, who served as culinary advisor.[25]

The concept for Sprig was to provide home cooked food via delivery.[26][27] The startup claimed to allow users to order a “balanced meal”, which is prepared in Sprig's industrial kitchen and delivered in 15–20 minutes. Sprig's chef is Nate Keller, Google’s former executive chef.[28]

In March 2014, Sprig raised $10 million in Series A funding from Greylock Partners with Battery Ventures and Accel participating. As part of the funding, Greylock partner Simon Rothman joined Sprig's board.[29] A year later, the company announced it had raised $45 million via its Series B funding round.[30]

In 2016, Biyani and his co-founder Neeraj Berry were named by Forbes in its 30 Under 30 list for Consumer Tech entrepreneurs.[31] Gagan was also part of the Fast Company's Most Creative People list around the same time.[32]

Sprig raised a total of $57 million and had over 1,300 employees[33][34] at its peak, but announced in late 2017 that it would no longer be operational.[35][36][37] In his closing e-mail, Biyani cited challenges in the complexity of the operations as reasons for the closure.[38] According to Biyani's twitter story about Sprig, one of causes of Sprig's failure was rise of Uber Eats.[39] According to TechCrunch,[40] a number of other startups in the same industry also closed in 2017, including venture-backed SpoonRocket and Maple.[41]