About Me

Hi, I’m Saagar 👋 With a decade of work experience under my belt, I’ve found my calling in “Tech Sales” and have a passion for building strong personal & professional relationships.

Formative High School Years ♟️

While most people peak later in life, I (joke that I) peaked in high school. High School were formative years that led to my professional careers and personal passion.

In High School, I joined our local chess team. In the winter, when there was a break between soccer & tennis seasons, I wanted to stay after school to do an activity. My friend, Chad, recruited me to come out to Chess Club. Little did I know, that day would change my life.

Chess taught me three core things:

How to Learn - I went from barely knowing how to play to beating the top players in the state within a year.

How to Lead - I recruited players from sports’ teams and helped coach them to being the top players. Once recruited, I focus on making sure they had the resources to succeed.

The Benefits of Social Media/Marketing - Chess is normally a dull & uncool game, however, I realized how important it was to build a strong brand to be successful.

We won the Illinois High School State Championship, placed top five in the nation multiple times, and soon had the #1 player in the country (now well-known, Eric Rosen).

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University Days 📚

I joined University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study Accounting. I could easily see how important it is to fully understand how a business operates in the back office, as it leads to front office decisions. During my Freshman year, I took the experience of a previous internship (at the largest Media Company in India) and put it into action.

I noticed a trend of Facebook Pages sparking “humor”. within college campuses. I created a few Facebook Pages: University of Illinois’ Memes, ISU Memes & Events, and DePaul Memes, all of which were successful in their own ways. The clear success was University of Illinois with over 16,000 active students and over a million impressions a month on our posts (organic traffic was everything back then).

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Given social media was new back then, I ended up supporting over 20 local businesses over the four years at University of Illinois with consulting services under the brand “Student Consulting & Promotions”. My most well-known project led to selling over 10,000 pieces of apparel a year to students (and visitors) for St. Patrick’s Day. 🍀 Others included hosting the biggest Halloween party on campus, a barn dance, and a music festival.

This experience led to

Projects⁠

Career Experiences⁠

, and being in the top three.

San Francisco 🌉

After I graduated from University of Illinois, I knew I wanted to be in the tech startup ecosystem. My parents were very supportive, and sent me on a one-way flight to San Francisco after I graduated. Within three weeks, I found a job at a startup called “AffinityLive” at the time (which was rebranded to being called “Accelo”).

Just being in San Francisco helped me build a network, learn the “lingo”, and shared opportunities that I never could have imagined having. After seven years, we ended up moving to Chicago.

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Moving to Chicago 🏙️

After getting married, my wife & I moved to Downtown Chicago. As much as we love San Francisco, we wanted to explore other cities. We now reside in Chicago building a strong community around us (learn more here:

Community⁠

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Formative High School Years ♟️

University Days 📚

San Francisco 🌉

Moving to Chicago 🏙️

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