Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 7)

Sramana: I take it that your VCs are not antsy about an exit at the moment. John Berkowitz: They are very content. In any scenario we were a good decision for them. Valuation is increasing and business is going good. We are not getting any pressure to do anything that we are not already doing.

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Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 6)

Sramana: Do you have any other serious competitors who target small, locally owned businesses? Ben Rubenstein: The former Yellow Pages would be. In terms of PPC and bid optimization on the local market, the only company that could compete with us is ReachLocal. They are at a higher price point than us and they are

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Jose Dominic, Kerala’s Sustainable Tourism Visionary

It’s a hot, tropical afternoon in Kumarakom, in the backwaters of Kerala. I am sitting on the verandah of a cottage in Coconut Lagoon, which is a nature resort and the brainchild of Jose Dominic, CEO of the CGH Earth Group of hotels. I am watching turtles trying to climb out of a backwater canal,

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Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 5)

Sramana: Let’s talk some about the technology at Yodle. What are the key technology components behind your offering? John Berkowitz: We realized that it was not intuitive for small businesses to go online and set up a paid search campaign. Most of them do not have the time or expertise to manage the nuances of

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Roundtable Recap: October 26 – Emerging Kerala

I spent the last few days in Cochin, at the inaugural edition of TiECon Kerala. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure how much entrepreneurial energy exists in Kerala today, so I had some concerns about the event. The organizers of TiECon also did not have a clear sense of what to expect. Registration was

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Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 4)

Sramana: The company had hit $3.5 million in revenue, you brought in venture capital and a new CEO. What strategic decisions were made to put the company on a faster growth curve? Ben Rubenstein: This was the time when we were starting to scale. There were a lot of things we were doing in the

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Thought Leaders in Mobile and Social: Marty Beard, CEO of LiveOps (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: We just went through a somewhat painful migration and then, in the middle, integration of our email marketing system, which was on Aweber. Our CRM system is on Zoho, and Zoho has now released an email marketing product. We were not happy with Aweber, so we are moving from Aweber to Zoho. All

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Building a Fast-Growth Local Advertising Business: Yodle Co-founders Ben Rubenstein and John Berkowitz (Part 3)

Sramana: There are a lot of angel investors who are also great business mentors. I think turning to VCs was the right move because typically angel investors do not invest in companies that already have over a million dollars in revenue. John Berkowitz: That is true. We did not have to raise a large amount

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