Mashing Together A Job Search Engine: SimplyHired CEO Gautam Godhwani (Part 3)

SM: Your work at AtWeb concluded in 2000. What came next? GG: At that time I really had a sense that I wanted to do something else. For me personally, and for a lot of the folks who had experienced the run-up of the internet, there was confusion about what to do at that time.

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Mashing Together A Job Search Engine: SimplyHired CEO Gautam Godhwani (Part 2)

SM: Did you raise money to start this venture? GG: We did, but we did it backwards. We poured in our life savings to start the company. We worked out of our house for 9 or 10 months and got the company to be profitable while taking minimal or no salaries.

Mashing Together A Job Search Engine: SimplyHired CEO Gautam Godhwani (Part 1)

There are plenty of job search engines out there. So what makes this one an interesting story? It’s their innovation (the first to use the new LinkedIn API), their ability to reach localized job markets (over 30,000 cities), and all while delivering a customized user experience. This is the direction that successful vertical search engines

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Your Virtual Travel Concierge Has Arrived : Mobissimo CEO Beatrice Tarka (Part 6)

SM: Could you describe how you go about putting together a team? BT: In my two prior ventures I built strong management teams, sometimes through trial and error. This time I knew what I was looking for in terms of not only experience and background, but in character and personality. You can have the best

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Your Virtual Travel Concierge Has Arrived : Mobissimo CEO Beatrice Tarka (Part 5)

SM: Where are you at now in terms of revenue, profitability, and traffic? BT: The Mobissimo.com site has been operating for three years. We’ve been open to the public since November 2004, and we’ve generating revenue and been profitable since June 2005.

Your Virtual Travel Concierge Has Arrived : Mobissimo CEO Beatrice Tarka (Part 4)

SM: What is your TAM and how do you calculate it? BT: According to Henry Harteveldt Forrester Research’s travel expert, the online travel market represents the highest growing proportion of the overall travel market. Online travel is also the most lucrative. PhoCusWright says that online travel spending reached nearly $100 billion in 2007.

Your Virtual Travel Concierge Has Arrived : Mobissimo CEO Beatrice Tarka (Part 3)

SM: What is the value proposition of Mobissimo? BT: We find the cheapest airfares and we find the best international fares. To synthesize, we simplify the search process by querying multiple Web sites in real time and deliver information that is highly valuable to the user. We make it easier for people to travel.

Your Virtual Travel Concierge Has Arrived : Mobissimo CEO Beatrice Tarka (Part 2)

SM: Where did you get the idea for your current venture? Did you have prior domain experience in the travel segment? BT: First and foremost at Mobissimo we are travelers ourselves. We have felt the pain of endless attempts to search and book tickets online.