The Story
He Got Fired From a Unicorn. Then He Told Everyone About It.
In June 2020, Gagan Biyani posted a Twitter thread that hit like a gut punch. Eight years earlier, at age 25, he had been called to a restaurant by his co-founder and quietly fired from Udemy - the company he helped build from nothing. He arrived shaking. He left without the title. And he kept his mouth shut about it for nearly a decade.
Then he pressed publish. "By the time I arrived at the restaurant, I was shaking nervously." The thread ran to dozens of tweets. It got reshared thousands of times. It became required reading for anyone who has ever co-founded something fragile with someone they trusted. That story - the willingness to hand people the lesson along with the wound - is Biyani in a sentence.
He is, by any measure, a serial founder. He co-founded Udemy in 2009 from a dorm-adjacent fever dream, got rejected by more than thirty venture capital firms (including a dismissal from Paul Graham, who called it a "tarpit idea"), bootstrapped anyway, and helped build it to 400,000 students before his exit. Udemy IPO'd in 2021 at a multi-billion dollar valuation. He wasn't there for the opening bell.
He was somewhere else by then - having already launched and shut down Sprig, a food delivery startup with 1,300 employees and $57M in funding that folded when Uber Eats rewrote the rules of the game. When Sprig closed in May 2017, Biyani returned the remaining $8M to investors. No legal obligation. Just a choice that said more than any press release could.
"Nobody talks about failure in Silicon Valley, yet 90% of startups fail."
- Gagan Biyani
The Three Companies
A Scorecard in Three Acts
2009 - 2012 (as co-founder)
Co-founded with Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar. Paul Graham called it a tarpit. They bootstrapped. Built it to 400,000 students. Biyani was fired in 2012 for management style. It IPO'd on NASDAQ in 2021.
Peak valuation: ~$4B
2013 - 2017
Healthy on-demand meal delivery in San Francisco. Promised 15-20 minute delivery at $15/meal. Reached 1,300 employees. Lost to the rise of Uber Eats and an inferior unit economics model. Returned $8M to investors on closure.
Total raised: $57M
2020 - Present
Cohort-based live online courses for experts and professionals. Co-founded with Wes Kao and Shreyans Bhansali. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz. ~318 employees. Pivoted in 2022 from creators to experts. Building the future of professional live learning.
Total raised: $30M (a16z + First Round)
2013
Founded the Growth Hackers Conference in San Francisco. Featured Chamath Palihapitiya and Sean Ellis. One of the first events to put growth as a dedicated discipline on stage before "growth hacking" became a cliche.
Launched a movement
Funding Raised Per Company ($M)
Act Three
Maven and the Third-Time Founder's Edge
After Sprig folded, Biyani gave himself something he'd never allowed before: time. He set a minimum twelve-month window before committing to any new idea. He read, traveled, cooked (he'd studied Tim Ferriss's cookbook while struggling with weight during the Udemy years), and lived what he preaches - that the best startup ideas emerge from normal life, not deliberate analysis.
The idea for Maven came not from a whiteboard session but from lived frustration with static, pre-recorded online courses. Biyani and Wes Kao - who had previously co-founded altMBA with Seth Godin, and whom Biyani had known since high school - believed there was a fundamentally different model waiting: live, cohort-based, expert-led. You learn alongside peers. You get access to the person who actually built the thing.
They ran the first Maven course manually, by hand, before writing a single line of code. Classic Biyani: validate with effort before committing capital. The approach worked. Andreessen Horowitz led the $20M Series A in 2021. Maven has since grown to roughly 318 employees and continues expanding its library of professional courses in AI, product management, engineering, and leadership.
In 2022, Maven pivoted away from general "creators" toward certified experts and professionals. That pivot - pragmatic, non-dogmatic, exactly the opposite of riding a positioning mistake into the ground - is a third-time founder move. He said it plainly: "Being a 3rd time founder has reduced execution risk, but strategy risk remains the same."
"Being a 3rd time founder has reduced execution risk, but strategy risk remains the same."
- Gagan Biyani, X/Twitter, September 2023
The Hard Part
What It Feels Like to Get Fired From Your Own Startup
The details matter. It was not a board meeting. It was not a Zoom call with lawyers. It was a restaurant, a co-founder, and a conversation Biyani didn't see coming. He had been hyper-direct, critical, managing like someone who had never been managed - which, at 25, he essentially hadn't.
Udemy reached 400,000 students under the leadership he helped build. It also had a team that struggled under his management. His co-founder made a call. Biyani showed up shaking and left without the title.
What he did next is the interesting part. He didn't sue. He didn't burn the relationship. He stayed friends with Eren Bali. He kept a good reputation in the community. And eight years later, he posted the whole story publicly - because, in his words, "Nobody talks about failure in Silicon Valley, yet 90% of startups fail."
The viral thread from June 2020 became one of the most widely-read founder resources of that year. Not despite the failure. Because of it. The willingness to be specific about the thing that hurt is rarer than any funding round.
Career Arc
From Fremont to the Future
2005-2008
UC Berkeley, Economics. The Bay Area native stays local.
2008-2009
Tech journalist at TechCrunch and The Next Web. Breaks a story about fake App Store reviews later cited in FTC documents.
2009
Co-founds Udemy with Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar. VCs say no thirty-plus times. They bootstrap.
2012
Fired from Udemy. Platform has 400,000 students. Leaves on good terms. Advises Lyft on growth for six months.
2013
Founds Sprig and Growth Hackers Conference. Raises $57M total. Builds to 1,300 employees.
2016
Forbes 30 Under 30, Fast Company Most Creative People. At peak of Sprig's scale.
2017
Shuts down Sprig. Returns $8M to investors. Takes a breath.
2020
Co-founds Maven. Posts viral Twitter thread about Udemy firing. Both land on the same day, in a different way.
2021
Maven raises $20M Series A from a16z. Udemy IPO's at ~$4B. Two different tables, same story.
2024-present
Interim Executive Director of Empower Oakland. Maven at ~318 employees. Still building, still posting, still going.
The Biyani Framework
01
Markets are random, not optimal. He openly challenges the efficient market hypothesis. The 30 VC rejections for Udemy - now a $4B company - are his Exhibit A.
02
Business model beats product. Sprig had a better product than DoorDash. DoorDash had asset-light unit economics. Business model won. Full stop.
03
Startup ideas come from living normally. Not frameworks. Not spreadsheets. Twelve months of unstructured immersion before committing. Let the gut collect data.
04
90% of aspiring founders would be happier bootstrapping. Not everyone needs VC money. Not everyone should chase billion-dollar outcomes. Most would build better businesses - and better lives - without the pressure.
05
Validate manually before building. Maven's first course was run entirely by hand. No platform. No tech. Just the idea, a cohort, and proof it worked. Then build.
In His Own Words
What Biyani Actually Says
"You always lose a job for a reason. For me, managing was not natural. Get a coach and look inward."
"Be classy on the way out. I left Udemy on good terms. It paid off; I kept a good reputation and Udemy treats me well."
"This too shall pass. It felt like the world had ended when I was fired, but it actually opened the door for my next opportunity."
"We built an impressive product, but we were nobodies. Nobody gave a fuck that we needed money."
"Your gut has a lot more information than your conscious mind."
"It's silly to have such a dogmatic view about really anything."
Beyond the Startup
Oakland as Operating System
Biyani grew up in Fremont. He chose Oakland. That choice is not incidental. He became Interim Executive Director of Empower Oakland in 2024, launching Empower Oakland 2.0 in July of that year. The organization is nonpartisan, volunteer-led, and focused on voter education, public safety, homelessness, and government accountability.
He built it to 150+ volunteers while simultaneously running Maven. This is not the side project of someone who has run out of things to do. It's the commitment of someone who believes the same lessons that apply to building companies apply to building cities. Show up. Be specific. Don't confuse talking about change with making it.
He's been in the Bay Area for thirty-plus years. He chose Oakland for its people, its food, its culture, and its weather. The city chose him back.
Things That Are Genuinely Interesting About Gagan Biyani
- Paul Graham called Udemy a "tarpit idea." It IPO'd at ~$4B.
- He studied cooking from Tim Ferriss's "The Four Hour Chef" during the Udemy years while managing weight alongside workload.
- His personal Substack has ~207 subscribers. His Twitter following is ~107,000. He's not optimizing for newsletter metrics.
- He met Maven co-founder Wes Kao in high school - decades before they built a company together.
- He angel-invested in Replit when it was still early. Also backed Speak_ and Stoa School.
- After Sprig collapsed with $57M raised, he returned the remaining $8M to investors. No legal requirement. Just character.
- His December 2025 post about giving candidates live critical feedback during interviews divided the internet. He didn't backtrack.
- He was a tech journalist before he was a founder - and broke a story that ended up in FTC documents.
