The conventional wisdom says you wait.
You wait to graduate, you wait for experience and you wait your turn.
Vedant Gupta, a 19-year-old sophomore at Michigan State University, has spent the last eight years proving that wisdom wrong. Since founding Global Kid Media at age 11, Gupta has amassed a resume that reads like a decades-long career, making him one of the most compelling young entrepreneurs in the 517 region and a true legend in the making.
With Global Kid Media, Gupta’s core motivation was to create a platform that encourages kids — and challenges parents and society — to reject the “box” of waiting. For him, this wasn’t an academic exercise; it was a 10,000-hour obsession built on grit.
The Lansing-area resident knows the hustle: For seven years, Gupta frequently made the round trip from the Grand Blanc area to East Lansing, often sprinting into Spartan Stadium or the Breslin Center toward the end of the game to catch visiting or MSU players and coaches for interviews. He’s traveled to Super Bowls, Pro Bowls, Final Fours and other events all over the country. This relentless pursuit, which involved building genuine relationships with college and professional sports talent, taught him everything from communication to networking — lessons he gained not in a classroom, but in hotel lobbies and outside stadiums, fighting off gatekeepers who didn’t take a young person seriously.
The results of this persistence are staggering. Gupta has conducted more than 2,000 celebrity interviews with names like Magic Johnson, Snoop Dogg, Deion Sanders, Patrick Mahomes and Giannis Antetokounmpo, and he has hosted 250 Instagram Live shows.
“Most people are surprised that my favorite interview was a group one, with kids from the Special Olympics during a 2019 Pro Bowl charity flag football event,” Gupta said. “While I received a lot of encouragement from the pro athletes, this was very energetic, very pure and full of contagious energy.”
His business model, centered on creating his own opportunities, led to partnerships with national brands and venues to help offset his travel costs and hopefully make a little money. His determination was formally recognized when he won the $10,000 first-place prize in the youth category at the Rocket Mortgage Detroit Demo Day competition. Additionally, he authored and self-published “Global Kid Media — A Kid Entrepreneur’s Time-Traveling Journey,” a 300-plus-page nonfiction book about his experiences that has sold almost 1,000 copies.
Gupta often shares that his success hasn’t been the most valuable outcome.
“I’m grateful for the adversity,” he said, emphasizing that the hard parts — the age discrimination, the media gatekeepers, the countless rejections — taught him far more than any win.
This belief in “real-world education” and appreciating failure is the anchor of his current focus: paid speaking engagements. As an MSU student, Gupta is looking for speaking opportunities to share his journey and book to inspire others to step out of their conventional boxes.
His message is clear: The only limits are the ones you accept.
Stacy Bogard
Stacy Bogard is a senior content and PR strategist at M3 Group and is a writing and editing contributor for 517 Business. A native of East Lansing, she’s active with the Junior League of Lansing and Central Michigan chapter of the Public Relations Society of America. She also loves watching sports and traveling.
