Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You have, yourself, generated a huge amount of capital at this point through a couple of exits. You had an all-cash exit of $160 million plus a $900 million exit. That’s a lot of cash. You don’t really need to go anywhere for cash. You have plenty of cash. Culturally and strategically, in your subsequent businesses where you have all this cash sloshing around, are you still following the same kind of discipline of turning things profitable?

Bhavin Turakhia: Fundamentally, yes. The principles are the same. The only difference is we have the ability to take bigger bets and wait for longer gestation periods in exchange for growth. We haven’t compromised on fundamentals. I’ve always believed in the notion of focusing on value and not valuation. If you look at Flock today, more than 98% reviews are all four to five stars. >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Any other businesses that you want to talk about?

Bhavin Turakhia: After that, I started two more — Flock and Zeta. Flock is in the enterprise and team messaging space, and Zeta is in the payment space. I started Zeta with a co-founder in India, and the business is currently largely managed by him. My main attention is on Flock.

Sramana Mitra: What is the thesis of Flock?

Bhavin Turakhia: At a macro level, if you look at communication and collaboration between teams within organizations or teams who manage projects, a large chunk of that has only been email. Email as a tool for communication was invented 30 years ago and hasn’t changed much. Our communication needs, however, >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What scale did you get to with that business before you exited?

Bhavin Turakhia: In the public domain, we exited that business at a valuation of $900 million to this consortium of investors in a public company in China. This happened in August of 2016. It was the third largest ad tech deal ever and one of the largest bootstrapped cash exits globally.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, it’s huge. What revenue level had you reached to get that $900 million valuation.

Bhavin Turakhia: The revenue numbers are still not public, so I can’t give you specifics but the deal size is public. The revenue numbers will probably become public. In China, these transactions go through a two-phase process. Once the whole process is completed and the public company announces it, the revenue numbers will be public at that point. >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: In parallel, you started other businesses. At what point did you start the next line of business besides web presence? What was the thinking behind that? What were the circumstances?

Bhavin Turakhia: In 2007, we started dabbling in the online advertising business using a brand called Scenzo. My brother started operating that business. We grew that to a certain size.

Sramana Mitra: What was the thesis of that business?

Bhavin Turakhia: This business targeted publishers who own domains or websites. if they wanted to put up ads on their sites, we had a technology that would figure out the best ads >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long did you go in this mode of in-person selling? What kind of revenue level did that get you to?

Bhavin Turakhia: In that first set of businesses, which we call the web presence business, I actually did in-person selling for the better part of six years.

Sramana Mitra: There’s no choice. At that time, there was no other way of selling.

Bhavin Turakhia: That, and entrepreneurship is a journey that comprises of getting your hands dirty and doing lots of things yourself. Today, I don’t necessarily do a lot of selling except for really big deals. I have teams that do that and to effectively recruit the right people and mentor them the right way, you need to be there yourself. We’ve done it all from legal to marketing. In many ways, it was a good opportunity for us to gain that expertise. >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the first business that you and your brother launched?

Bhavin Turakhia: The first one that we launched together was in late 1998.

Sramana Mitra: You said you and your brother did all your businesses together?

Bhavin Turakhia: Yes. In many ways, that was the genesis. Before that, we were independently doing a bunch of consulting and selling various services. Directi was the genesis. For a bulk of our career from that point till now, we’ve done pretty much everything together. By that, I mean we handle independent businesses and parts of various businesses but have co-invested together and built out this series of companies. >>>

Master Bootstrapper with a Billion Plus in Exits: Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Flock (Part 1)

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Bhavin and his brother Divyank have bootstrapped Directi, a portfolio of Internet businesses over the last ~20 years. In 2014, they had their first $160 million exit. In 2016, they had a second $900 million exit. It’s a very interesting story of masterful business acumen and disciplined fundamentals-driven execution. Not a penny of external financing involved, by the way.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your personal journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Bhavin Turakhia: I was born and raised in Mumbai. My parents are originally from there. I went to school there. In many ways, the seeds for my entrepreneurship career were largely sown there. I remember in 1989, I was in the sixth grade when the school installed their very first computer room. I’m talking >>>

Bootstrap First to $10 Million from Australia, Raise $25 Million Later from the US: Ashik Ahmed, CEO of Deputy (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Where did you choose to raise your $25 million financing from? In Australia?

Ashik Ahmed: Funny story was that every morning, we’d wake up and there’d be an email from some VC. I wanted to focus on growing the business as opposed to getting interested in VCs. In mid-2006, we realized that our product has product-market fit. We have saturated the partnership model but we’re limited by how much our partners are getting. We need to grow the business.

The other thing was, even though we didn’t plan for it, something unreal happened. All of a sudden, we have enterprises with >>>