“VCs in India have a PE mindset. They have to make money because they have never started a viral company, they just keep counting the money. Elon Musk calls them bean counters,” he said.
Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, said that he was rejected by 18 VCs, before he could secure $300,000 for Hotmail. Bhatia, who made the world’s first free web-based email service, also said that “it is not a disservice to fail or not to even try crazy ideas”.
In a chat with Raj Shamani, Bhatia talked in detail about selling Hotmail (now Microsoft Outlook) to Microsoft, VC mindset in India, government ecosystem towards for startups and how to handle failures among other things.
Talking about the journey of Hotmail, Bhatia said he was rejected by 18 VCs, before he could secure $300,000 from the 19th VC, Drape Facer, who understood his idea. “With those 3 million dollars, we launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996, and within three months we got 3 lakh subscribers then it means that the cost of acquisition for lakhs of dollars is only one dollar,” he said, adding “We got 5 million subscribers in one year.”
Divulging the what worked in favour he said, “We had a tag line at the end of every email. This email is sent to you from free-by-free email provider hotmail.com. Get your own hotmail.com. I did a little PR. I wore a suit and tie I met as many journalists as I could. In those days, print was big and print to online was the big thing so I went around talking to a bunch of journalists hired a PR firm and they introduced their contacts and went and told everyone.”
Sabeer Bhatia, co-founder of Hotmail, said that he was rejected by 18 VCs, before he could secure $300,000 for Hotmail. Bhatia, who made the world’s first free web-based email service, also said that “it is not a disservice to fail or not to even try crazy ideas”.
In a chat with Raj Shamani, Bhatia talked in detail about selling Hotmail (now Microsoft Outlook) to Microsoft, VC mindset in India, government ecosystem towards for startups and how to handle failures among other things.
Talking about the journey of Hotmail, Bhatia said he was rejected by 18 VCs, before he could secure $300,000 from the 19th VC, Drape Facer, who understood his idea. “With those 3 million dollars, we launched Hotmail on July 4, 1996, and within three months we got 3 lakh subscribers then it means that the cost of acquisition for lakhs of dollars is only one dollar,” he said, adding “We got 5 million subscribers in one year.”
Divulging the what worked in favour he said, “We had a tag line at the end of every email. This email is sent to you from free-by-free email provider hotmail.com. Get your own hotmail.com. I did a little PR. I wore a suit and tie I met as many journalists as I could. In those days, print was big and print to online was the big thing so I went around talking to a bunch of journalists hired a PR firm and they introduced their contacts and went and told everyone.”