Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Also, what you have going in your favour is that the market is starting to understand that on the Internet, content is the brand. I think that understanding is going to drive further and further into the industry in general. Yaron Galai: I don’t view Facebook as being in the business of social networks

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Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: The publishers are paying a lot more than $10 a month. Yaron Galai: We kept it, initially, at $10 a month but it couldn’t sustain them that way. The publishers said, “If you let us pay on a per-click basis, then we know exactly how many audience we get.” We pivoted on the

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Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The ratings and the Internet recommendations were free. There were no monetization model around any of that? Yaron Galai: That’s right. Sramana Mitra: The first monetization effort was with the paid recommendation of external content into these larger publishers. What was wrong? Why did the first iteration fail?

Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I have three questions as you were relating that portion of the story. It sounds like this is an experimental period. Were you financing this period yourself? Yaron Galai: Yes. I did finance our early days. I also had a couple of our investors at Quigo. Sramana Mitra: The second question is the people

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Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You sold at the right time because after the iPhone and mobile advertising, the whole ad rate world just collapsed. Yaron Galai: Generally, it did. We sold at a very pretty good time. I do know that just by talking to a friend from AOL that they kept running Quigo as an independent

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Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Given that was your observation and that was you interest, how did that manifest in the next startup? Yaron Galai: In 2000, I started a company called Quigo. It was a mix of similar ideas that my co-founder and I had started working on independently. We merged it as one company. The idea

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Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page.  Yaron came with a clear notion of how he wanted to recommend content and monetize those recommendations. It took, however, many years before the market caught up with his vision. It has now. The company is going gangbusters. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning

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Deal Radar 2008: Baynote

I have written a few pieces on recommendation systems that help sites personalize their offerings. As you know, my thesis on Web 3.0 heavily centers around personalization. In this installment of the Deal Radar, we will be looking at yet another recommendation technology company.