Overview

Bloomberg, Cornell Tech, and Tech:NYC invite you to tune in for the latest installment of the Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg Speaker Series, featuring Niraj Shah, co-founder, CEO and Co-Chairman of Wayfair, in conversation with Scarlet Fu of Bloomberg Television.

Niraj Shah co-founded Wayfair in 2002 with Steve Conine, whom he first met while still in high school. The two attended Cornell University and started multiple businesses together after graduation. In fact, Shah and Conine launched 250 different websites, each focused on a different product category of homewares, and it wasn’t until 2011 when they consolidated them on Wayfair.com that the company took on its current name. Wayfair has since become the largest online retailer of home furnishings with a catalogue of over 14 million products. The company went public in 2014.

This year, Wayfair has enjoyed tremendous growth, with sales surging as consumers have been spending more time in their homes during the Covid-19 pandemic and spending more money to furnish those homes. Wayfair’s share price is now up about 10 times from its March low. This fall, Shah became a member of the Cornell Tech Council, the school’s equivalent of a board.

We hope you’ll join us for this conversation, in which Shah and Fu will discuss Shah’s persistence as an entrepreneur, the role that Cornell played in launching his career, his nearly two-decade leadership of Wayfair, and how he’s helped the company navigate and thrive during the current global pandemic.

After you register, you’ll receive an email on the morning of November 23rd with a link to watch the broadcast.

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Questions: techevents@bloomberg.net

About Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg
Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg is a speaker series that convenes leading figures in global technology for monthly conversations to produce new insights and raise compelling questions. Hosted by Bloomberg, this collaboration between Cornell Tech, Tech:NYC and Bloomberg brings together Bloomberg employees, students, faculty and alumni from the Cornell Tech community, and members of New York’s greater technology community to hear from entrepreneurs, investors, and thinkers.

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Photo of Niraj Shah

Niraj Shah

Co-Founder/CEO
Wayfair

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., with $11.5 billion in net revenue for the twelve months ended June 30, 2020. Wayfair has extensive operations in the U.S. and Europe and employs more than 16,000 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 an 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 & Young Entrepreneur of the Year® Award. He also serves on the board of the 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.