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Gurbaksh Chahal

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The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions Hardcover – October 23, 2008

by Gurbaksh Chahal (Author)

4.4 128 ratings

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One of America's most successful young internet entrepreneurs tells his unique and inspiring story, and reveals the risks and rewards behind the sky's-the-limit possibilities of internet entrepreneurship.

Gurbaksh Chahal started the Internet advertising company ClickAgents from his bedroom at the age of 16, having emigrated to the United States with his Sikh family from the small town of Tarn Taran, India. He dropped out of high school to pursue the venture full-time, and two years later sold ClickAgents for $40 million, making him one of the youngest self-made millionaires in history and allowing him and his entire family to realize their dreams. Chahal went on to become the youngest executive of a multi-billion dollar NASDAQ-listed company, and then sold his second company, BlueLithium, to Yahoo! for $300 million, turning many of his employees into multi-millionaires as well.

In The Dream, Chahal's refreshing advice for entrepreneurs encourages them to embrace risk and to carve out new niches in the marketplace. He emphasizes the value of good business timing: how to execute an idea and get it to the marketplace, how to create and maintain solid business relationships, how to stay grounded, and -- most importantly -- how to teach yourself that failure is not an option.

Chahal's story not only shows how a 16-year-old immigrant overcame discrimination and adversity to fulfill his highest ambitions, but also provides aspiring entrepreneurs with valuable hands-on advice on how to achieve success.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

St. Martin's Press
Publication date

October 23, 2008
Dimensions

6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

0230610951
ISBN-13

978-0230610958
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Gurbaksh Chahal is an internet business entrepreneur and self-made multi-millionaire. By the age of twenty-five, Chahal had created, built, and sold two companies for more than $340 million, and is currently laying the foundations for a third company. He is featured on the new prime-time network show The Secret Millionaire (FOX air date December 2008), is developing several other television shows, and in the beginning stages of building a non-profit called the Chahal Foundation. He lives in San Francisco.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Press (October 23, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0230610951
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0230610958
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,640,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #8,672 in Biographies of Business & Industrial Professionals
- #20,802 in Entrepreneurship (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 128 ratings

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Gurbaksh Chahal

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G was born in the town of Tarn Taran, near Amritsar in Punjab, India to Avtar and Arjinder Chahal. In 1985, his parents received a visa for America through a lottery-based system in India, and the following year, when he was four, the family settled in San Jose, California. His parents had arrived with only $25 to their name, and they struggled at menial jobs to make a future for their four children.

For the Chahal family, as for many immigrants, education was paramount.

However, at the age of 16, Gurbaksh dropped out of high school to pursue a dream as an entrepreneur and started his first company, ClickAgents. It was one of the first ad networks focused around performance based advertising. Eighteen months later, he sold it for $40 million to ValueClick.

In January 2004, Gurbaksh founded his second company, BlueLithium, this time with an insight into sophisticated new ways that data, optimization and analytics could help Web advertisers with behavioral targeting. BlueLithium was named one of the top 100 private companies in America for three years in a row by AlwaysOn, and in 2006, it joined Google, Skype and Salesforce.com in being named Innovator of the Year. In 2007, Yahoo acquired BlueLithium for $300 million in cash.

At 28, Gurbaksh is already leading his third start-up, RadiumOne. RadiumOne is the first Real Time Bidding (RTB) enabled display audience network with social and mobile capabilities.

Through its proprietary and patent-pending "Social Retargeting" technology, RadiumOne allows companies to take advantage of the ever-increasing amount of "social" data on the Internet to zero in on the consumers most likely to be receptive to their messages. This helps not only companies, since they can make efficient use of limited Web advertising budgets, but also potential customers, since they are presented with messages more relevant to their needs. RadiumOne is headquartered in San Francisco, and is funded by several prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Satellite offices are in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London.

On April 2010, Chahal was awarded the Leaders In Management Award and an Honorary Doctorate degree in Commercial Science from Pace University in 2010 in recognition for his career achievements as an entrepreneur. Much of that story Chahal himself told in his international best-selling book, "The Dream."

Gurbaksh's successes as an entrepreneur has also been noted in The New York Times, Entrepreneur magazine, Forbes and BusinessWeek. He has also been profiled on Oprah Winfrey Show, Bonnie Hunt and EXTRA.

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4.4 out of 5

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Raj Dhawan

Read in one sitting...gripping, amazingly honest book...

Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2010

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So I bought this book on Friday, and today Sunday, am done reading it...not only did I find this to be an easy read, but also very inspiring.

What I think I really liked about the book was his honesty...I was just amazed at how forthright he was in this book about everything that has happened in his life. And I know that he is being honest because right around the start of the millenium, I met G a number of times and got to know him very well, well before he had become famous. He was however rich already then. I used to do a party called Kohi-noor, and I actually did a grand opening party for his Planet Bollywood Restaurant in Milpitas. And that it burned down 4 months after it opened, and there were all these allegations about him being involved in an insurance scam. I did not believe it then, and dont now, and was glad to read all about it in his book. G very candidly also talks about how he went about starting his business, what exactly he did, and how he made it a success.

Read this book, if you have any entrepreneurial instincts, or if you want to get some wonderful ideas about how to make a successful business. All through the book he writes in very well the lessons that he learned from each effort or failure. Failures after all are a necessary stepping stone to achieving success.

And finally a word to G...well done with this book. Write or chat me on FB, and let's get together for a drink for old times sake !

3 people found this helpful

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Akweli Parker

Impatience Is a Virtue

Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2010

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... Impatience is a virtue, according to Gurbaksh Chahal, Indian-born entrepreneur, multi-millionaire, and author of The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions.

In clear, quicksilver prose, Chahal captures the ups, downs, and eventual moonshot of a business deal that served as coda on his journey from outcast immigrant to rockstar Internet entrepreneur. Given the long odds of millionaire-dom most people are up against, Chahal writes convincingly that The Dream is within anyone's grasp if the person is willing to put in the work and withstand the pain of growth.

Don't let the subtitle fool you. This book is completely the opposite of what you would expect a Trump or Kiyosaki to write. In lieu of the telltale bombast and self-promoting piffle of the insecure, Chahal delivers introspective and open snapshots of his life, adolescent awkwardness and all.

As the other reviewers note, if you can at least fog a mirror, this book will motivate you.

If an immigrant, Sikh, high school dropout can succeed wildly in this country, the reasoning goes, why can't you? But do note it was neither laziness nor intellectual inadequacy that prompted Chahal's departure from that rote facts factory that we know as high school. Instead, it was the realization that the keys to his success awaited beyond the confining wall of institutionalized education. He wanted in on this thing called the Internet that he saw minting overnight millionaires (much of the action takes place during and immediately after the 1998-2000 dotcom craze). And being locked in a classroom, force-fed an irrelevant curriculum was about as far from the action as you could get.

His impatience got the best of him. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Just in case you haven't read it, I won't spoil the plot for you here. But here are a few takeaways.

1) Chahal was no "luckier" than any of us privileged enough to live in the United States or other countries based on free enterprise. He did break rules (but besides purchasing a fake ID to appear older to potential investors, he says he always acted within the law), and his businesses broke or at least shifted paradigms. If you simply do what's expected and what you're told, your chances of breakout success like his are almost non-existent. Make your own luck by becoming the absolute best at what you love. Original? No. But ask how many people actually do it.

2) Persist and always, always get up after defeat. I can be a bit of a sentimental sap, so my reaction may be atypical, BUT, my corneas got quite damp when Chahal mentioned the example of dogged persistence set by his stern but quietly loving father. At one point, his non-demonstrative dad is practically destroyed and in tears after a stock market blip wipes out the family savings. Days later, the father recovers emotionally, and reaffirms as family patriarch his commitment to buy a proper house removed from the projects: The family must work even harder, and be even more frugal, he commands; "Sacrifices must be made."

3) Sometimes you do need patience, at least until you can negotiate from a position of strength. Desperation combined perhaps with naivete leads young "G," as Chahal is known, at several points to make costly business mistakes. But when he does, he absorbs the inherent lesson and refers to Point Number 2, above.

The Dream contains too many wonderful writing gems for me to attempt listing here. Chahal makes completely palpable his terror as an "outsider" among hostile grammar school classmates and also the victorious thrill of catching bargains early on when his family is poor and frugal by necessity. Chahal is honest, too, about what I can only imagine are the burdensome worries of being super-rich. Like never knowing if people -- especially the opposite sex -- appreciate you for you or for your bulging bank balance. Knowing that his family came to America with $25, the lament rings sincere.

As an example of fluid and dynamic writing, and as a manual on living a no-limits life, I heartily recommend you read The Dream. I would love to see this as a Hollywood (or Bollywood) film one day -- it's that much of an experience.

P.S.: To the Ivy League MBA investor who smugly insisted BlueLithium was going nowhere ... dude, did you ever blow it!!!

4 people found this helpful

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S. S. Harrison

You make all those millions, what then? Where does that road go? Here's one story.

Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2016

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What an unbelievable life and astonishing downfall! Worthy of Shakespeare, (yet more acts to come?) He is young enough to rise up again in equally astonishing ways. I am giving 4-stars to the book not his private life. But since it comes up there was an article on BBC this week by Zaria Gorvett: "Why it pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered". Worth looking over. It turns out a frequent trait for incredibly successful people to have bad, if not explosive tempers so I wish Mr. Chahal would write another book honestly chronicling what the hell happened to him. Crack cocaine? Women viciously betraying him? Culture clash? Vultures and wolves curling him and his money until he snapped? What? (Not that that is any kind of excuse for his actions). Still, what happened? I say this because the first half of "The Dream" is gentle, sensitive, endearing and touching, the struggles of an immigrant family starting at the very bottom. I much enjoyed it. Reminded me of John Fante's novels. But then the business struggles and troubles and it's like he is transformed into a different person. I very much recommend the first half of the book. What a beautiful, amazing story. The second half is not so good. A third rate "Art of the Deal" business self-help book. Meanwhile Mr. Chahal has gone from pizzas on Mondays to ultra expensive cars, Lost Vegas and women plus an obsessive drive for more, more, MORE money and success. He'd like a TV show about himself. I'm suspecting cocaine and drinking. Something big ran over him. Maybe all that cash. Here would be my observation. A man that seriously abuses women is someone in urgent need of help. For a system to turn around and put him thru hell is not an answer nor a solution it is just revenge. Jails are schools to make men worse, harder and more angry. Which is exactly what most will clamor for anyway. What would be better, in my opinion, would be if in payment for his debt he did write that next book that could help others on the wrong road to avoid speeding into the ditch at 120 miles an hour as he did. We all have the same qualities and potentials as he has. OK, forget the personal life of this writer which is tragic, the book is well worth reading. At least the first half.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Manpreet Kaur

Read for risks and bliss of success.

Reviewed in India on July 12, 2019

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Inspirational, genuine read for journey and emergence of normal guy to tech mogul. Do's and don't on path of success.

Amazon Customer

Great. Straight to the point.

Reviewed in Australia on July 19, 2017

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I enjoyed every part of it.
Quite inspiring, well written with detailed text how he actually felt, learnt, what he did exactly during his journey. I have learnt a lot from it. Recommended.