Sramana: Global Scholar was funded by [Michael] Milken, so why did you decide to sell the company last year? Kal Raman: As passionate as I am about the vision, I am equally passionate about the business. Every company is up for sell at the right price. In 2010, I was missing two modules for a
Sramana: Do you ask students or teachers to fill in personal profiles, or does your system function purely from collaborative filtering? Kal Raman: We do it entirely via collaborative filtering because we have all the data we would need. We know your age, grade, test scores, scores last year, and state tests. We know your
Sramana: Would you give me a granular view of what the initial product was that you launched in 2009? Kal Raman: If you look at a school today, on an average day they will use 14 different software vendors. They have a system to manage student demographic data which is the student information system. They
Sramana: Did Global Scholar emerge out of your charitable work in education? Kal Raman: In 2004 Mike Milken learned about my efforts and desires to help with education. He told me he had donated a billion dollars to US education and that he still could not make a dent. He was pleased that I had
Sramana: What did you do after you had led Drugstore.com back to a $9 stock position? Kal Raman: That was sometime around 2003. I had begun having conversations with my board about what our next steps should be. I gave them three choices. First, being a micro-cap public company is not an easy thing, especially
Sramana: In 1996 when you finally left Walmart, the Internet was starting to emerge. Kal Raman: Absolutely. I had a great mentor at Walmart, Mr. Doyle Graham, who is no more. He was like a father figure to me. He was the CIO of the international [division]; unfortunately, he passed when we was the same
Kal is the CEO of GlobalScholar.com. Prior to joining GlobalScholar.com, he was senior vice president of the world wide hardlines business at Amazon.com from August 2004. From 2001 to 2004, he was the CEO of drugstore.com and also served as COO and CIO. Prior to drugstore.com, Kal has served as the CIO of NationsRent and
Sramana Mitra: Do you have partnerships with companies like Skype, Facebook, or other sites that you enable in censored countries? David Gorodyansky: We don’t, but we probably will at some point. I think they know about us because we send such a huge amount of traffic to them. We are happy to talk to them