Sramana: Can you give us some use cases as examples? Adam Singolda: One example that I really like is Ancestry.com. It is a brilliant example of the future. Today 70% of the $110 billion in advertising are ROI performance-driven spends. The likelihood of that changing is very small. Ancenstry.com offers subscription services and they are
Sramana: At what point did you find your product market fit and business model? Adam Singolda: In December of 2011. At that point, we felt we had the best engine in the world to predict what content people like to consume next. Most companies have 20 or 30 algorithms they will apply to do some
Sramana: What was your next milestone after 5min? Adam Singolda: Our next goal was to attract big brand publishers. The problem was that I had no idea how to make money. We could not make it scale to the point of relevancy to big businesses. That is when I decided to leave the tech side
Sramana: What story did you tell the VC? What was the vision? Adam Singolda: We told them a similar story to what I expressed earlier but focused on video. It was the same premise that information should look for people as opposed to the other way around. I did not speak about content and discovery
Sramana: What was your frame of mind as you approached the angel investors? You had just left the Army and it sounds like you may have been looking for a bit of a break at that point. Adam Singolda: At that time, I was considering two things. One was to do an MBA because I
Sramana: There are a lot of entrepreneurs who have a military background. I think there are some unique skill sets or opportunities that you can gain from military service. Adam Singolda: I also had a unique opportunity to work with large data sets and applied mathematics. I joined as an engineer and I was an
If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. Taboola had to sustain four years of zero-revenue, until it hit a million dollar revenue year in 2012. In 2013, their revenue run-rate is $100 million. It’s an amazing story! Read on… Sramana: Adam, let’s start with a bit of your personal background. What kind of