Fireside Chat with Wayfair Co-Founder and CEO, Niraj Shah
Join the Center for Digital Strategies at Tuck as we host Niraj Shah, Co-Founder and CEO of Wayfair for a virtual fireside chat with Center Faculty Director, Professor Alva Taylor.
About Niraj Shah: Niraj Shah co-founded Wayfair with Steve Conine in 2002 and the pair rapidly grew the business to become the largest online retailer of home furnishings, housewares and home improvement goods in the U.S., $9.5 billion in net revenue for the twelve months ended March 31, 2020. Wayfair has extensive operations in the U.S. and Europe and employs more than 15,900 people.
Before founding Wayfair, Niraj served as CEO and co-founder of Simplify Mobile, an enterprise software company which was sold in 2001. Prior to that, he served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Greylock Partners, COO and a member of the Board of iXL, and the CEO and co-founder of Spinners, which was sold to iXL in 1998.
Niraj has been included in Fortune Magazine’s 40 Under 40, and has won the Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. He also serves on the board of Massachusetts Competitive Partnership and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
Niraj holds a B.S. in engineering from Cornell University, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife and two children.
About Alva Taylor: Professor Alva Taylor is Faculty Director of the Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies. His research focuses on the innovation process, entrepreneurship, technological change, and strategic decision making in fast-changing environments. Some of Prof. Taylor’s recent work has been on the challenge of managing creative groups for sustained innovation and entrepreneurship; and how organizational learning takes place in information rich environments.
He teaches courses on strategy in fast-changing environments, managing innovation, and managing change in both the Tuck MBA and Executive Education programs. Prof. Taylor has also designed and is program director of the Digital Excellence for Minority Entrepreneurs Executive Education Program in partnership with Google.
Prior to academia, Prof. Taylor was a senior manager in the consulting division of KPMG, running a practice focusing on business strategy, information technology, and growing companies to scale. His work and ideas have been published in top business journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategic Management of Technology and Innovation, Academy of Management Journal, and Organization Science. He has his doctorate in business from Stanford University, his MBA from the Johnson School of Management at Cornell, and both his Bachelors and Masters in Engineering from Cornell.
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