Crossing the Desert, Hitting the Jackpot: Taboola CEO Adam Singolda (Part 4)

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

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: But it did not pan out that way? Blaine Vess: It did not pan out, but we learned a lot in the process – mainly about a lot of the things that we were doing wrong like not having employees. We had very high margins. We were making a lot of money and

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Crossing the Desert, Hitting the Jackpot: Taboola CEO Adam Singolda (Part 3)

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

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: In 2008, you have got one acquisition under your belt. What happens next? Blaine Vess: We ended up buying another site, which was called All Free Essays. It was another site that has been around since about 2000. It was not monetized at all. I had been reaching out to the owner for

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Crossing the Desert, Hitting the Jackpot: Taboola CEO Adam Singolda (Part 2)

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

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Crossing the Desert, Hitting the Jackpot: Taboola CEO Adam Singolda (Part 1)

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

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was Chris working full time or did he take up another job? Blaine Vess: Chris was working full time on this business. He was also doing the contract programming with me. Sramana Mitra: You guys were doing contract programming. You had a job and Chris was doing the business?

Bootstrapping a Robust SaaS company from India: Rategain CEO Bhanu Chopra (Part 7)

Sramana: How do you calculate TAM and how much of the TAM is still available in the market? The OTA segment is relatively small and it sounds like you have saturated that segment quite well. Bhanu Chopra: There is not any publicly available data regarding the OTA segment. If you look at the top OTAs,

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