Connecting The Censored Internet: AnchorFree CEO David Gorodyansky, Mountain View, CA (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: In 2005, did you plan to do what your business is doing today?

David Gorodyansky: This is what we planned to do, but it has evolved a bit. There is another very major functionality of the product that we did not even realized when we launched. We filed a bunch of patents after we launched in 2005, and we raised $6 million of venture capital a year later. Between 2006 and 2008 we distributed the product through word of mouth to users throughout the United States, Western Europe, and Canada.

In 2008 we saw a very interesting trend. We saw a lot of users coming from emerging markets, and they were using the product for very different reasons. They used it as a conduit to access content that is censored in China, Indonesia, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. We never thought about that functionality when we started the company, but we realized that it could be powerful. We were making a real impact on people’s lives because they would have no other way to get to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook or Google. We then went out and raised another $5 million venture round to help, in part, with our new focus on emerging markets. That part of the business has definitely evolved.

Sramana Mitra: In 2005 you started with a hypothesis, and you raised $6 million in 2006. How did you validate your concept between the time you founded the company and the time you raised venture capital?

David Gorodyansky: We raised money on a concept. We founded in late 2005. We raised money on the patents that we had filed because we had about 20 of them.

Sramana Mitra: From the time you raised money and launched your first version of the product, what was your process to get the product in the hands of your customers?

David Gorodyansky: We did not know what would happen three years down the road. Too much analysis and market research is useless. You need to focus on the road right in front of you. In our case we did not do any marketing. It took off by word of mouth.

We have two market segments that we address. There are 800 million users who have antivirus products and use them to secure their computers. None of them have security for their Internet connections. We look at our total addressable market as 800 million people that use security but don’t have a complete solution.

Sramana Mitra: How does an antivirus customer learn about AnchorFree and your products?

David Gorodyansky: People tell people. Some of that came from press releases, but primarily it has been word of mouth. We never had a marketing plan.

This segment is part 2 in the series : Connecting The Censored Internet: AnchorFree CEO David Gorodyansky, Mountain View, CA
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