the mobstac story - from hacker to founder
DESCRIPTION
Presentation made at Pluggd.in Hackathon in Bangalore (Nov, 2011)TRANSCRIPT
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The MobStac Story“From Hacker to Founder”
Ravi Pratap @ravipratap#PiHackathon - Nov 5, 2011
says “India’s hottest young startup!”
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About Me
• Open source hacker
• GNOME, Mono, libcurl
• Startup guy
• Early employee, Hillcrest Labs, Washington, D.C.
• Co-founder & CTO, MobStac
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1999-2001: Open Source Roots
Fascinated by impact of open source on the world
Learnt how to translate idea into product
GUADEC 2001, Copenhagen
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2002-2003: CS Graduate School
Dove deep into Computer Science
Strove to become the best at my chosen trade
St. Louis Arch
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2004-2005: Morgan Stanley
Programming, sure, but what about impact?
Learnt about what I did not want to do
Radio City Hall, New York
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2005-2008: Hillcrest Labs
Learnt the ropes of everything
Product, people, project management, you name it
Seize initiative!
Hillcrest Labs office, Rockville, MD
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MobStac: Early Years
Late 2008: Planning the startup
Mid 2009: Moving to Bangalore
Single-bedroom office, 2 employees
11 employees, MobStac office, US corp.
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Chased enterprise publishers like Hindustan Times, Hindu, etc. - ZILCH, NADA, NOTHING
Decided that what really mattered is “adoption”
Stuck to our core vision - turned down lots of services opportunities
Experimented a ton: mobile ad server, vernacular rendering, etc.
Jan-June 2010
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Oct 2010: Web Launch
Woah, what just happened!
Iterate, iterate, iterate !"
#!!"
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Traction Led to Rapid Iteration
Product improved leaps and bounds
Learned about real customer needs and opportunities
Improved technology under the hood relentlessly
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Moving Faster
Stopped being scared of running out of money
Continued to run experiments
“Made more mistakes”
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August 2011: Touchsite Experiment
Tablets are game changers
Figured the user experience could be vastly different from a PC site
Launched at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2011
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Things That Have Stayed With Me
Dream big: know where you want to go
Build networks: people are important
Always strive for perfection: don’t ever stop learning!