Mohit Srivastava Co-Founder & Former CTO of Faves.com Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
StartPad Countdown 1 - The Best Laid Plans of Startups...
Jan 15, 2015
It's easy (and perhaps necessary) for a new entrepreneur to be very optimistic about the business opportunity before them. But not every great idea translates to business success.
Mohit Srivastava and Mikhail Seregine, previously of Faves.com and ClayValet.com respectively, discuss the rise and fall of tech startups. We will hear from these two experienced entrepreneurs who have learned the hard way how difficult it can be to achieve a successful outcome.
The goal of this talk is to arm you with knowledge of potential pitfalls and to help you recognize realistic and achievable goals for your own project.
Mohit Srivastava and Mikhail Seregine, previously of Faves.com and ClayValet.com respectively, discuss the rise and fall of tech startups. We will hear from these two experienced entrepreneurs who have learned the hard way how difficult it can be to achieve a successful outcome.
The goal of this talk is to arm you with knowledge of potential pitfalls and to help you recognize realistic and achievable goals for your own project.
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Mohit SrivastavaCo-Founder & Former CTO of Faves.com
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
1996-2000BS in CS
2000Dev
2002Dev
Dec 2004Co-Founder
& CTO
Dec 2008Senior PM
Oct 2008Consultant
Co-founded Faves in December 2004
Grew to 10 employees (including 2 founders)
Launched at Gnomedex in June 2006
Initial offering: “Share the Web, Connect with Friends”
Raised approximately $2M via multiple angel rounds
Still operating in low burn mode and are pursuing a few high ROI yet relatively low cost initiatives
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Over 1M monthly visitors
Over $2 sitewide CPM in some months
One of TechCrunch 2007 “Web 2.0 Companies I Couldn’t Live Without”
Technology Pioneer in aggregating friend activity (pre-
Facebook newsfeed and pre-Twitter) Pioneer in creating an intelligent in-page
yet no-install authoring experience
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Situation: We unknowingly overemphasized items that were “comfortable” to us while underemphasizing those that were more important for the business.
Mitigation: Checklist that captures the major components of a product lifecycle. This would have kept us grounded. I recommend: http://www.pragmaticmarketing.com/pragmatic-marketing-framework.
Corollary: Hire and/or find a co-founder such that you have the expertise to cover the checklist.
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Situation: We underestimated the difficulty in building a viable advertising-supported business. While both our CPM and traffic levels were respectable, one of those two parameters needed to be *exceptional* (e.g. 10x).
Mitigation: CPM: More focus on a vertical with higher
CPM’s. Traffic: More focus on positioning and
distribution.
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Situation: We had difficulty articulating why
customers should pay for our white-label feature set. They perceived us as a “nice-to-have” but not a “must-to-have”.
Mitigation: Create an offering where the return on investment (ROI) is simple and direct. Articulate why you help your customers make more money and/or save money.
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Situation: We did not have somebody with deep pre-existing relationships with our target customers. This is often *the* differentiator in a customer selecting your offering over a competitor’s.
Mitigation: Talk to your advisor network to find such a person. Be generous with equity and/or incentive-based compensation. Do not underestimate the value of relationships.
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Situation: We focused on a general purpose Internet audience. We found that acquirers often prefer more targeted audiences. They (just like advertisers) are willing to pay to get access to customers consistent with their business. For example, a bookseller might pay for a community book review site.
Mitigation: Build your business around a lucrative and targeted user base.
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Situation: We (and hence our customers) were conflicted:▪ Were we about bookmarking or were we about friend
activity aggregation?▪ In what area did we want to be known as the “only”,
“best”, “first”, and/or “most-used” way to accomplish something?
Without good answers to the above, we fragmented our development activities.
Mitigation: Answer the above questions Hire a positioning expert
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Situation: We could have given more attention to our highest value (yet smallest in number) group of users.
Mitigation: Periodically segment your user base. Understand the dynamics of each group, which groups you want to invest in, and what features will best target those groups. I recommend this case study by HBS – http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=707406 – which shows how LinkedIn did just that.
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Situation: For awhile, we had a high “maintenance tax” which compromised our ability to innovate. This was a combination of us having built our own datacenter and us not bounding our database calls (i.e. no more than n joins, kill queries after ).
Mitigation: Don’t build your own datacenter. Anticipate requests that could bring down your
site. Note: This is not the same thing as over-engineering in anticipation of massive user growth.
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
Release early, and release often.Don’t be shy to share you idea –
especially with friends and potential advisors. Do they get it right away?
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
More About Me http://faves.com/users/mohit http://thishostedlife.com
Questions?
Copyright (c) 2009 Mohit Srivastava
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