Building a $50M Profitable Social Network Focused on Discovery: Greg Tseng, CEO of Tagged (Part 7)

Sramana: I like your financing structure and the fact that you are using venture debt. The venture requirements and exits are not so outlandish. If you raise $50 million or $60 million dollars, then the exit requirements are commensurately higher. A $12 million investment is a much more manageable situation.

Greg Tseng: I have always been much focused on bootstrapping as a philosophy. We are uncomfortable being unprofitable. We also like to control our own destiny. When you are unprofitable, your destiny is controlled by investors. That is also why our default exit is to go public. When you are acquired, your destiny is controlled by others. We are going to build a very strong company that is capable of standing on its own, and if we need liquidity, we can go out on our own.

Sramana: You still have a ways to go before you go public, right?

Greg Tseng: We would want to be at a run rate of at least $100 million before we would consider going public. We are about two times off from any IPO.

Sramana: One thing that I hear from a lot of people who develop on Facebook’s API is that Facebook is charging a lot. You may want to look into this as you develop your API strategy. There are a lot of unhappy developers out there.

Greg Tseng: That is interesting. Do you know how they are charging that is upsetting the developers? Is it via the ad infrastructure?

Sramana: It is how they are charging the developers in the construction of deals. They have a lot of catches. I have heard a lot of murmurs from unsatisfied developers.

Greg Tseng: Platform ecosystems are very, very hard to maintain. There have been a lot of attempts at doing this, and there are a limited number of success stories.

Sramana: I think of all the platforms, the social media platforms are the hardest.

Greg Tseng: Twitter is going through its own trials and tribulations right now.

Sramana: I think the mobile platforms have been successful. I think the cloud platforms have been extremely successful. The social platforms are definitely harder.

Greg Tseng: I completely agree with that.

Sramana: Fantastic story. Thank you for sharing with us.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Building a $50M Profitable Social Network Focused on Discovery: Greg Tseng, CEO of Tagged
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