Ethan Agarwal (’03) is running for governor of California in the 2026 election, but not as a typical politician. As a two-time startup founder, Agarwal builds his campaign with the same mentality that drove his business career. 

“I come from a tech and finance background, and I recently sold my second company,” Agarwal said. “California is a really special place that has a lot of problems, so I felt like it was time to put up or shut up. The primary next year is an open primary because Gavin Newsom is termed out, so my thought was this is a good time for me to take a swing and try to fix things.”

Agarwal’s campaign centers on housing. He argues that the state’s affordability crisis has hollowed out communities, pushing essential workers away from the cities they serve.

“I live in Palo Alto, and there are 75 firefighters who work for the city,” Agarwal said. “Not a single one of them lives in Palo Alto because they can’t afford to. I think cops and teachers and firefighters and other people that work in a city should be able to afford to live in that city.”

Agarwal’s political career has roots in his education at the Silicon Valley K-12 private school The Harker School, where he joined in sixth grade as part of its second-ever graduating class. He credits the school’s environment with fostering the ambition necessary for his current bid.

“Harker was very academically rigorous, same as it is today,” Agarwal said. “It’s a very ambitious school, which is good because I’m a very ambitious person.”

Agarwal credits Harker’s speech and debate team as his most compelling extracurricular, helping him hone the public speaking skills he now uses on the campaign trail and create lasting connections with peers he remains close with today.

At Johns Hopkins University, Agarwal pursued a double major in economics and political science with a minor in business. He also took on the role of student body president, an experience that taught him the mechanics of leadership. In the position, he helped launch a new e-voting platform, which combined his interest in technology with governance. 

“I was always really into politics,” Agarwal said. “I always liked student government. You end up learning how to work with a lot of different people to bring people together. A really big thing is about how do you get people aligned? How do you convince a lot of people to do something that you wanna do?”

After college, Agarwal worked at McKinsey & Company, where he faced a personal problem: he gained weight and wanted to lose it. Studio fitness classes provided the motivation and structured planning he needed, but they required showing up in person. He decided to replicate that experience digitally, launching an app called Aaptiv in 2015 as a digital fitness company.

In its early stages, Agarwal balanced his McKinsey job with pitching to investors and refining his idea. 

“It was very hard because I was a new entrepreneur,” Agarwal said. “I pitched to a lot of people and I kept going to business, and I was also still working at McKinsey, so it was a very stressful period of life. I probably had 120 meetings, 120 ‘no’s before I got my first ‘yes.’”

Agarwal identified two principles he considers the most important elements of scaling, which are lessons he focused on while turning Aaptiv from an idea to a global product.

“The key thing you need to focus on is retention,” Agarwal said. “That’s the biggest weakness in most companies — they acquire customers, but then the customers don’t stick around. Also, you need to keep your team very motivated, and you do that through aligning them with the mission of the company, beyond just the progress of the company.”

As the company grew, Agarwal encountered a new challenge: navigating the critical transition from struggling startup to stable business, a phase he calls “exit velocity.” By applying this principle, he grew Aaptiv to $100 million in revenue before selling the company in 2021. 

“Let’s assume that you can raise money,” Agarwal said. “How do you spend that money in a responsible way? There’s this concept of exit velocity, which is like once you reach a certain point, you’ve launched through the atmosphere. So you want to spend as much money as you can to get to exit velocity, but you also have to be penny wise. It’s an interesting mix of challenges.”

After selling Aaptiv, Agarwal took several months off before beginning to work on his second company, The Coterie. This time, he focused on a problem he personally experienced as a founder: the lack of financial tools for people whose income came from equity rather than traditional salaries. 

For four years, Agarwal ran the company from its office in the World Trade Center. He oversaw a staff of over 100 employees while meeting regularly with investors and working closely with teams in product, engineering and marketing. The company expanded internationally, passing milestones of over 100,000 paying subscribers and $10 million in revenue. 

Earlier this year, Agarwal sold The Coterie through an undisclosed acquisition. Soon after, he turned his attention fully to California politics. He is now focused on campaigning across the state, meeting with supporters and discussing political plans. 

“The biggest issue is a law called CEQA, the California Environmental Quality Act,” Agarwal said. “It was designed to protect California’s environment, but now it is being used as an extortion tool by unions and other groups who want to get something out of the developer. They sue under CEQA to stop construction from happening, and it ends up being prohibitively expensive to build anything. Overturning or dramatically weakening CEQA is really important.”

Agarwal believes that without regulatory reform, the state cannot lower housing costs enough to bring the middle class back. He argues that the state has a greater responsibility to human housing needs than to outdated environmental hurdles.

The shift from founder to political candidate has required new routines, new conversations and new forms of public accountability for Agarwal. However, he sees the challenge as a continuation of the work he has always done. 

“Running a political campaign is very similar to running a company,” Agarwal said. “You’re hiring people, you’re fundraising, you’re telling your story, and you’re connecting with customers who are basically voters. That skill set’s very valuable. The problem is that people who run states don’t have a lot of experience in business, so they don’t end up doing a great job. An outsider’s view is better when it comes to running a government as opposed to a lifelong politicians’.”