Social Networking Without Boundaries : hi5 CEO Ramu Yalamanchi (Part 4)

SM: How do you rank in the Spanish speaking countries? RY: We are the number one social networking company. SM: Do you have any idea why? RY: Because we targeted those demographics. We focused on Spanish speaking users.

Social Networking Without Boundaries : hi5 CEO Ramu Yalamanchi (Part 3)

SM: What business did you think you were getting into in 2003? RY: The business we thought we were getting into could broadly be defined as communication. We thought we were providing an option beyond what people were doing with email and instant messaging. Over time, new methods of communication have continually been invented. It

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Social Networking Without Boundaries : hi5 CEO Ramu Yalamanchi (Part 2)

SM: After working in some of the leadership development positions you felt confident you could leverage your experience with a startup of your own? RY: Yes. Unfortunately, I was overconfident. I jumped back into starting companies but I still had some learning to do.

Social Networking Without Boundaries : hi5 CEO Ramu Yalamanchi (Part 1)

Ramu Yalamanchi runs hi5, one of the leading social networking companies in the world. The company is recognized as one of the fastest growing social networking companies. Here I discuss the strategy behind hi5 with Ramu and gain some of his insights for the future.

Vertical Travel Search Engine Kayak CEO Steve Hafner (Part 7)

SM: What is your read on some of the other travel and ad network players out there? There are some vertical travel ad networks which have been reasonably successful so far. SH: There are three things you need to do to have a viable vertical ad network. You need to get a set of publishers,

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Vertical Travel Search Engine Kayak CEO Steve Hafner (Part 6)

SM: The major gains from purchasing SideStep were adding their display advertising business and their email marketing platforms? SH: That is right.

Vertical Travel Search Engine Kayak CEO Steve Hafner (Part 5)

SM: Obviously you made a big departure from established business models in the travel industry. Can we discuss that in terms of growth? SH: Our business model is very similar to Google’s. We get paid for the referral. We are unbiased which is great for consumers because when you have an advertising driven model the

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Vertical Travel Search Engine Kayak CEO Steve Hafner (Part 4)

SM: Let’s discuss the competitive landscape. What was it like when you started and what is it like now? SH: The market has evolved quite a bit but not as much as we expected it to. Initially the only competition came from two companies. One was called FareChase and they did not have a consumer

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