p r o fi l e
GOOD PEOPLE DOING GOOD WORK How one neighbor found his niche in design
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here’s a running theme in Dev Gupta’s life: Everything is a little bit of an accident. Gupta arrived at the University of Texas not really knowing what he wanted to do. He tried marketing. Then he tried finance. He hated it, but it landed him an internship, where he sat next to the creative team. Gupta found the manager and joined that team. He finished his undergraduate in finance and earned a master’s in advertising by the time he was 21. While in New York City for the One Show, Gupta and his creative partner met the creative director of the now-defunct agency Toy at a bar. They were a pair of naïve college kids filled with a bit of liquid courage, but they ended up with jobs. “I think we had decent work, but we had this like, terrible
arrogant swagger. And I think he kind of enjoyed it. We did not deserve it at all. It’s just like, right place, right time.” Gupta ended up in Dallas, picked up a master’s degree in fine arts, taught at Southern Methodist University for five years and then followed a girl, Kiran, to San Francisco — all before he was 30. Today, Gupta’s client list includes Google, Twitter, Indeed, DocuSign, Toyota and Box. Now back in Dallas, he has launched Not Dev, a UX agency. WHY DALLAS?
I think I was wanting to come back. For me specifically, location is really about the people. I just wanted to be close to family.
Interview by JEHADU ABSHIRO | Photography by OWEN JONES
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prestonhollow.advocatemag.com
JUNE 2021
