Trilok Sharma’s Post

I first met Sabeer Bhatia when he started Hotmail. I passed on his request for investment because I could not figure out how he would make money. His Webmail was great and solved many problems with early email. Email for most was tied to their job and only available from office. Webmail made it independent of job and accessible from any browser. But it was free and I would say why not charge a dollar a month? He did not want any friction in way of acquiring users. Sabir would talk about building a user base of 10 million. He invented virality and was getting 60,000 users a day at one time. He would talk about upselling to those users. I would say, Sabeer, you have nothing to upsell. I finally warmed to investing one million dollar in his company. I was on my way to India in the fall of 1998 and said that I would invest when I am back in 2 weeks. While in India, news broke that Microsoft was acquiring Hotmail for $400 million. I was shocked to hear that. It was a great learning experience for me. Sabeer did not have any thing to upsell but Microsoft did. Microsoft had spent $2 billion to build its MSN and had only one million users. With the acquisition of Hotmail it was acquiring 10 million users for only $400 million. I realized for the first time that an asset has a different value in the hand of a different user. Microsoft had a great deal at $400 million and Sabeer was proven right that it would be worth a lot if he had 10 million users, even if he did not have any revenue. The sale of Hotmail started the dotcom gold rush in earnest.

Point to ponder.  revenue is not the last thing to target if you are building an innovative product.  actually you are not building a business, but building a future. 

Innovators and Investors Understand This Profound #Learning; "An #asset has a different value in the hand of a different user." I first met Sabeer Bhatia when he started Hotmail. I passed on his request for investment because I could not figure out how he would make money. His Webmail was great and solved many problems with early email. Email for most was tied to their job and only available from office. Webmail made it independent of job and accessible from any browser. But it was free and I would ask why not charge a dollar a month! He'd say he did not want any friction in way of acquiring users. Sabir would talk about building a user base of 10 million. He invented virality and was getting 60,000 users a day at one time. He would talk about upselling to those users. I would tell him; Sabir, you have nothing to upsell. I finally warmed to investing one million dollar in his company. I was on my way to India in the fall of 1998 and said that I would invest when I am back in 2 weeks. While in India, news broke that Microsoft was acquiring Hotmail for $400 million. I was shocked to hear that. It was a great learning experience for me. Sabir did not have any thing to upsell but Microsoft did. Microsoft had spent $2 billion to build its MSN and had only one million users. With the acquisition of Hotmail it was acquiring 10 million users for only $400 million. I realized for the first time that an asset has a different value in the hand of a different user. Microsoft had a great deal at $400 million and Sabir was proven right that it would be worth a lot if he had 10 million users, even if he did not have any revenue. The sale of Hotmail started the dotcom gold rush in earnest. #investor #entrepreneur #inventor #business #data - Kanwal Rekhi

Incredible insight. Classic investment banking 101 takeaway. The value perception of a business by a return-seeking minority investor is quite different from the value perception of the same business by a control-oriented strategic investor, who has many levers to operate to extract value. Someone will find an asset of value, your job is to find that someone.

Usability often transcends 'cool technologies'. This is a wonderful anecdote on Hotmail (with 10m users) and it's $400M deal with Microsoft. Right now GenAI usability is a big issue in businesses. Too many cool technologies yet very few production use cases. Whoever spends time in producing consistent user experience and real value to solve a problem, with even old version of LLMs, will create a lot more value and win big. Customer UX trumps!

We're talking about the incredible journey of Zakia as she transforms her business and personal brand. Our conversation highlights the organic growth that Zakia has experienced, showcasing how she embraced the challenges of starting her venture. https://lnkd.in/erBRxfez

Indeed, it’s a great lesson! However, in today’s fast growing AI world, the significance of data quality and contextual relevance is equivalent to having three times the subscriber base during the early days of the internet's growth and dotcom gold rush(circa 1998). Just as a large subscriber base indicated (perceived) trust and reliability then, high-quality data and contextual alignment now serve as the foundation for effective decision-making in various sectors. This helps the ventures leading to greater opportunities for upselling and long-term success.

Innovation is creating value for others. Entrepreneurship is capturing that value👍

someone once said true success is how many people are better off because we lived on this planet earth.. Simple Story: Amazing Lessons! the power of having a vision, thinking out of the box! the power of believing in the unseen! the power of creating value for others! the power of persistence! the power of delayed gratification! the power of building a large network! Great article on Sabeer Bhatia & hotmail! #growthmindset

With three months of certification on their belt, they may not be a "new" certified product in the traditional sense, but we still wanted to send a congrats out to the team at Hungry Wolves for the certification of their product, Tongkat Ali! To get all the info on Hungry Wolves' first certified product, check out the Informed Sport link below. https://ow.ly/RMEJ50UIQQl #WeTestYouTrust #InformedSport #HungryWolves #TongkatAli