Vinod Gupta - Early Career

Early Career

In his first job after college Mr. Gupta was hired as a marketing research analyst with Commodore Corporation, a manufacturer of mobile homes. While at Commodore, Vin was assigned the task of gathering a list of every single mobile home dealer in the United States. He found all the sources available to be outdated and incomplete. He then ordered all available 4,800 Yellow Page phone directories and set out to compile the list himself.

With the help of another employee, Gupta sorted the books state by state. Commodore said they could work on the project on their own time and once completed, the company would consider buying the list. After the list was completed, Gupta gave them two options: pay $9,000 for exclusive rights to it or receive it free of charge and allow Gupta and his partner to sell it to Commodore’s competitors. Balking at the $9,000 cost, Commodore chose the latter option.

Borrowing $100 from a local Nebraska bank, Gupta invested the money in mailers he sent out to other mobile home manufacturers. Within three weeks he had received checks for $22,000 and orders for another $13,000. Gupta had found his niche, now he just had to come up with a more efficient way to collect the data. By 1992, the company had revenue of $42 million and became publicly traded on NASDAQ Since then, Mr Gupta acquired over 45 companies and built it into an information power house