An Inspired Chat with Sumit Gupta of Amsterdam

We recently had the chance to connect with Sumit Gupta and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sumit, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What is a normal day like for you right now?
The morning starts with time with my family. Preparing and having breakfast together – and then playing with my son before he leaves for school. Then I start with a 10-min breathing exercise and a 15-min practice to create myself powerfully for the day ahead.

During the day I will 2-3 calls with the CEOs or the leadership teams of the portfolio companies that I am blessed to support. In between those calls, I am either reading, writing or recording a video to share my reflections on the challenges I get to hear from CEOs during the day.

Towards the end of the day I pick my son up from after school daycare, my wife comes home from work and we have dinner together. My son goes to sleep at 7 and that leaves me with an hour to respond to any emails/DMs and prepare my top 3 priorities for the day.

At 8, I watch an hour of TV with my wife before we doze off to a good night’s sleep. A very simple life – nothing to brag about – that has taken me a long time to create – both the internal peace that I experience in the simplicity – and in the gratification of the kind of work I do with my portfolio companies each day

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Sumit Gupta, founder of 10GenPartners, a firm that partners with founders who are playing $100M games — not just in revenue, but in impact, culture, and legacy.

After 16 years in tech with Yahoo and Booking.com, I realized most companies don’t fail because of strategy or talent — they fail because leaders play small, avoid hard conversations, and burn out trying to do it all themselves. So I built 10GenPartners as a hybrid between a private equity growth partner and a leadership dojo — helping founder-led companies scale without losing their soul.

We coach and invest in founders and their leadership teams — turning chaos into clarity, ego into excellence, and potential into performance. My mission is to create workplaces that nourish people, not drain them, and to build leaders whose work will ripple across ten generations.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
As a child, I believed I had to earn my worth — through achievements, good grades, being liked, or being useful to others. I thought love and belonging came as a reward for performance.

It took me years to see that my worth was never up for negotiation. That I was already enough — before the titles, the money, or the applause. Today, I still love achieving big things, but I no longer do it to prove something. I do it to express who I am — and to help others see that they are already whole too.

What fear has held you back the most in your life?
The fear that held me back the most was the fear of being seen fully — of stepping into the spotlight and owning my power.

For years, I stayed the dependable number two, the quiet one behind the scenes, the one who made others shine. It was safe there — no criticism, no judgment, no risk of failure. But safety is a slow poison. I realized I was hiding behind humility and calling it virtue.

The day I chose to be seen — with all my imperfections, doubts, and intensity — everything changed. Clients started showing up differently, opportunities multiplied, and most importantly, I felt free. Not because the fear vanished, but because I stopped letting it drive.

Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? Is the public version of you the real you?
it has taken a long time to get there, but finally the answer is YES

The public version of me is real, but it’s not the whole story. What people see — the calm, confident coach and entrepreneur — is true. But it’s built on top of years of doubt, fear, and hard inner work that rarely make it to the surface.

I used to think I had to hide my messiness to be credible. Now I see that my imperfections are part of my credibility. The man who teaches courage still faces fear. The one who helps founders scale still wrestles with his own limits. The public me and the private me are no longer fighting each other — they’re finally on the same team.

Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
I hope people say that I believed in them long before they believed in themselves. That I reminded them of their power when they had forgotten it. That I stood for them — not because of what they could achieve, but because of who they could become.

I don’t want statues or fancy titles. I want stories — of founders who chose courage over comfort, teams that learned to lead with love, and companies that made people come alive.

If people remember me as someone who helped them see what was always there inside them — then that’s enough. That’s everything.

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