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Jason Wang : The ‘$10 to $90M’ Journey of a Passionate Entrepreneur

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Entrepreneurship has always been a term that possibly the three-fourth of the world population look forward to. There are rarely any people who are happy with the idea of the 9 to 5 job. Every person must have thought about starting up their own business and being their own boss at least once in their lifetime. And it is fair too, as working for oneself and doing the work out of passion is what makes everyone successful. One such person, who was always in the favour of becoming his own boss is Jason Wang, an American serial-entrepreneur, who founded the food delivery service Caviar.

Jason Wang belongs to the Japanese descendent and graduated from Berkely University. He was still in school when he started his first business, i.e., an anime website, which served a total of 30,000 unique visitors every month. He received $1 for every ten visitors through ads, and hence, was earning $30 a day. But soon, the creators of Cardcaptor seized the domain name of his website, and his first business came to an end.

After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, (Haas School of Business), he worked with big-name companies, including Google and Microsoft. Though he had a good salary package and had a stable job, he was still dreaming of building his business. So finally, after leaving his corporate job, he founded a mobile app development company, 815 Productions, in 2010. With his company, he developed an app that extracted data from Craigslist. Though the app was quite useful, the venture also got shut in a few months. But still, he remained to be encouraged to do something big and on his own. He kept on thinking of new ideas that would be a kick-starter for his entrepreneurship.

Jason Wang Caviar
Image Source: bizjournals.com

During the same time, Groupon was taking over the world with its amazing deals. He was impressed by how the company was establishing itself in no time. Seeing the growth of the company, Jason was forced to look at the business model of Groupon, upon which he found out that most of the people were going for the food deals on the platform. This led him to think of a similar coupon business that only would provide deals in food items.

Jason concluded that it would be better to target the university students to get more customers in one place without investing in ads. So he launched MunchOnMe for the Berkeley University students first. At the same time, Paul Graham from Y Combinator came to the university for his keynote and asked the students to apply for the accelerator program at Y Combinator.

Jason Wang had already registered 3000 users to MunchOnMe and applied to Y Combinator with the same idea. He made it to Y Combinator for its summer batch. It was a life-changing experience for him, as he got to listen to the big tech entrepreneurs and learn more about the business. He also received an $18000 seed funding for MunchOnMe.

After launching MunchOnMe officially for the general public, Jason realised that the business was good, but could not sustain for a longer time. So after operating it for a few months, he decided to sell the company. While selling the company, he made it clear to the buyers that he won’t be a part of the company and will lose every right over it.

The money he earned from the company’s acquisition helped him and his teammates to survive for a year and a half. But after that, he ran out of money. According to an interview with Jason Wang, there was a time when he had only $10 in his business account. But fortunately, the place he was renting had enough space to make room for new tenants, and he rented half of the place for $600.

While working in his office in San Francisco, he and his teammates felt the craving for Ike Place’s sandwiches, but the restaurant was on a distance of 45 minutes. So it would take them to go and come back from the restaurant a total of one and a half hours plus one hour of standing in the long queue at the restaurant. They called the restaurant for delivery, but they did not have the service available at that time. This was the year 2012, even before Uber. So there were no resources that could help Jason and his teammates to get the sandwich in time.

This incident made Jason think of a delivery service that would help people to get the desired food at their doorsteps. This led to the launch of Caviar.

Jason started working on the idea and partnered with three restaurants, i.e., Ikes Place, HRD and Nick’s Cripsy Tacos. The idea was to get people what they wanted to eat, delivered at their doorsteps. And, initially, Jason and his team would deliver the food by themselves. It was easier for him to get new customers as he talked about the idea with his friends from the University, Office, and also from Y Combinator. In the beginning, they would deliver on the lunchtimes and only on the weekdays. But soon, the company started gaining more customers and partnered with more restaurants. This way, Caviar gained most of its users within the six months of its launch and became popular among the masses.

The company had a kickstart, and in two years, it raised more than a $13 million from the investors. Jason did not have a long journey with Caviar, but it was the most successful business of his life. He sold the company to Square in 2014 for a rumoured $90 million.

Though Jason Wang sold his company, he is still active as a growing entrepreneur and has made a few investments in different ventures. Alongside Caviar, he also launched a few restaurants and also co-owns a hospitality group called Umai. He is also the founding partner of Beluga Capital, the venture that helps the tech startups with funding. He is a big food lover and also founded a food blog named Cityfoodsters. Jason also got his name listed under the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2015.

Marshall Amplification

Jim Marshall : The Guitar Amp Pioneer and the ‘Father of Loud’

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From a drummer to one of the most successful entrepreneurs and the inventer of the amplification system, the life journey of Jim aka James Charles Marshall has been quite an interesting one. Jim Marshall is the founder of the famous Marshall Amplification, a company that designs and manufactures music amplifiers and the other music-related products, including speakers cabinets, headphones, and earphones, etc. The company is also known for manufacturing customised products for its customers and is one of the biggest brands in the music industry.

Early Life & Career

Jim Marshal was born in a family of musicians and boxers settled in Acton, London, United Kingdom, on 29 July 1923. Being a part of a musical family, he got naturally inclined towards music. When he was a little kid, he got diagnosed with tubercular bones. So he had to spend most of his childhood in the hospital. At the time he grew a little older, the second world war took place. He also tried his luck in the army but was rejected due to his poor health condition.

Despite missing his school education, Marshall was able to get a day-time job as an electrical engineer at a small firm. He also worked part-time in the evening as a singer as well as a drummer. As an electrical engineer, he got to gain a lot of experience and designed and built a portable amplification system that he brought to his workplace in the evening. This was the first time when he built an amplification system by himself.

Jim Marshall
Image Source: allaboutbluesmusic.com

Soon in 1942, he joined a band as the lead drummer. At the same time, he started teaching music to people. Those people include some of the famous names of the music industry, including Mitch Mitchell and Micky Waller.

Career as an Entrepreneur

Through working with the band and the music classes, he was able to save enough money to start a music store in Hanwell, west London. Initially, he sold drums in the store and soon, on the request of many guitarists, he stocked guitars and their amplification system in the store. While selling those guitars and their amps, he often got to hear that these guitars were not producing the desired sound for them, not even with the amps. The customer wanted something bigger and louder. The customers had to buy different amps for different sounds. So on the suggestion of Ken Bran, the amp repairer, Marshall thought of building a single amplification system for all.

The Turning Point

Marshall started working on a new amplification system, along with his team, that included Ken Bran and the other worker at the store, Dudley Craven. Within a total of six attempts, using a Fender Bassman, Jim Marshall developed the first prototype of the Marshall Amplification in 1962. He named the system as JTM45. JTM is the acronym for Jim and Terry Marshall (Jim’s son).

The new Marshall Amplification became an instant hit and offered people with the sound they were seeking for. Soon the sales, as well as the products in the range of amplification, increased.

One of the most significant product from Marshall Amplification is the Marshall stack. The Marshall stack was designed specifically on the request of Pete Townshend, who wanted a 100 Watt head and an 8×12 cabinet amp. But instead of an 8×12 cabinet, Jim Marshall suggested him a 4×12. But Pete directed him to build what he wanted initially. At last, he had to come back to Marshall so that he could cut the cabinet into half and make it a 4×12. And eventually, the famous 100 Watt Marshall stack was developed.

In 1981, Marshall came up with the Master Volume Marshall amps and the classic Marshall JCM800 split-channel amps. The Marshall store also started including speakers and other music equipment for sale.

The Life After Success

In 1984, Jim Marshall became the recipient of the “Queen’s Award for Export” by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom for the extraordinary achievement of the Marshall Amplification.

Upon completing the 25 years of the company in 1987, it introduced a new Silver Jubilee series of amps, that included the 2555 (100-watt head) and the 2550 (50-watt head) models. The new models rendered the “semi-split channel” design, such that the user could set two different input gain levels through the same tone stack and master volume control.

In 1985, Marshall got his hands printed to the Rock and Roll Walk of Fame. Marshall also received an OBE honour from Buckingham Palace for his “services to the music industry and charity” in 2003.

Marshal participated in many charity works. When Marshall suffered from tuberculosis as a child, he was treated at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, London. So after earning enough money, he donated a few million dollars to the same hospital.

Marshall had become the biggest name in the field of music through his invention. Today, Marshall Amplification is the first choice of every musician. In fact, in the 60s and 70s, the big-sized Marshall stack had become a status symbol for the musicians. Marshall died at the age of 88 on 5 April 2012. Today he is remembered as one of the four forefathers of rock music equipment and is often cited as the father of Loud.

keka

Vijay Yalamanchili : The Founder of the Best Payroll and HR Software in India, ‘Keka’

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We are often ambushed by many software companies in the market while searching for the best. Be it a tool for project management, your digital assistance, or an HR software, we often find ourselves in a huge dilemma. So, to reduce one of your conundrums, YourTechStory brings to you the flabbergasting story of Keka, the best HR software in India till date.

Vijay Yalamanchili, the founder of Keka, solely founded the company out of sheer disappointment and frustration from working with HR software not up to the mark. He found that the HR software available in the market have a very poor user interface, which leads to a substandard experience for both the HR and the employees. So, to contribute to the HR community of India, Yalamanchili built the software, Keka HR in 2015. Apart from HR software, Keka also has payroll software, applicant tracking software and much more.

Early Life and Career of Yalamanchili

Yalamanchili is mainly a product designer and architect by profession. He pursued his B.Tech in Electronics and Communication Engineering from JNTUH College of Engineering, followed by an MS from the University of Delaware.

Vijay Yalamanchili keka
Image Source: iamwire.com

After completing his MS, Yalamanchili started working with Microsoft in 2003 as a Software Development Engineer. He worked there only for three months.

In August 2006, he co-founded Fotolink Media, a visual image search platform used for product marketing by brands using mobile devices like mediums. It was one of the first mobile start-ups in India. He left the company after 4.5 years and founded Ramp India in 2006. The company was developed to provide solutions and build products for start-ups in India. After working in Ramp with a strong architectural team and delivering over 30+ products, Yalamanchili founded Technovert in July 2012. The zeal for excelling in the world of technology made Yalamanchili establish software solution companies one after the other. He co-founded Technovert with Sashi Pagadala. The company provides services in India, USA and Dallas.

By this time, Yalamanchili suffered enough with the HR software and founded Keka HR in 2015. It’s a Hyderabad based start-up which put a significant impact on the market when it got released, as it provided a better user experience to people.

Strategies to Outdo the Competitors

By the time Yalamanchili founded Keka, he was experienced enough to understand the major flaws in the other HR software. So, his main focus was on improving quality.

Yalamanchili’s first target was to make the user experience better because if the user experience degrades, after a point of time, it would ultimately ruin the brand name, which had already happened to all the other HR software out there.

Another major fault that Yalamanchili noticed in other HR software was the tracking of attendance. No existing software before Keka directly synced biometric devices to attendance log. Hence, it was very tiresome for the HRs to update it manually in the web browser. Keka got a very big bonus point by adding this feature. Though it took almost 1.5 years to build a software like this, it paid off well.

Keka also implemented well-designed security and privacy features that allowed the customer to get notified even if a Keka Customer representative is accessing their account. So, Keka itself also cannot sign in to customer’s account without their consent.

Instead of running behind more customers, Keka invested more time with its existing customers to improve their products until and unless it gave a smooth performance. It is very important to make the customers feel worthy and important because if they feel so, the scale will rise up automatically.

Success of Keka

It is nearly unbelievable that a company which acquired around 450 clients in less than a year is self-funded, given that Keka includes reputed clients like Godrej, Honda, Saavn and ClearTax. Keka is the recipient of the Hottest Start-up of Hyderabad Award and is in Top 3 in terms of bagging new customers with a comparatively smaller team with respect to its competitors.

Keka wanted to go old school, and hence, it tried becoming self-independent which turned out to be surprisingly successful. The company wanted to develop software with a touch of Indian style, and hence, they named it ‘Keka’ which means awesome in a native South Indian dialect. And, guess what? It just proved to be worthy of the name since the very first day.

Baidu

Robin Li : The Founder of Baidu, the “Google of China”

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The emergence of the Internet opened new ways for everyone, especially for them who were innovative and wanted to create something big. It also helped those who had no resources as a child, but later, reached the heights of success. The rags to riches stories are interesting and inspire people to fight with their situations and face the struggle. One such person who presents the most appropriate rags to riches story is Robin Li, an internet entrepreneur from China, who once faced the worst financial conditions and now is one of the richest men in China. He is the founder of the multinational company Baidu, which is the owner of China’s biggest search engine, with the same name.

Early Life

Robin Li was born on 17 November 1968 in Yangquan, Shanxi, China in a labour family. He was a single boy among the five children of his parents. The Shanxi province was an underdeveloped area, and there were no good resources of education. But still, Li tried his best and on the advice of his mother, worked hard to get a better education. Ultimately, he was able to crack the entrance exam for Peking University, Beijing, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in library information management.

After completing his bachelor’s degree, the next step was to get a job. He worked in a company in Beijing for one and a half year, but fortunately got admission to a Fellowship program at the State University of New York. He moved to New York and completed a master’s degree in science from the university in 1994. He was enrolled in the PhD program in computer science but did not complete his doctorate.

Career

Robin Li
Image Source: buffalo.edu

As soon Robin Li completed his master’s he joined Dow Jones and Company’s IDD Information Services as a software engineer. At IDD, he became the part of the development team, which was working on software program for the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. Here he also got the chance to work on the search engine algorithms as well.

While working at IDD, he started working on page-ranking algorithms, and ultimately developed Rankdex, the first web search engine with page-ranking and site-scoring algorithms that means, it used hyperlinks to check the quality of a website. Rankdex later became the inspiration for Google’s PageRank algorithm.

After Li successfully developed Rankdex and got the U.S. patent for its ranking algorithm, he left his job at IDD, in 1997. He then, joined Infoseek, another internet company that was working on search engine algorithms. During his time at Infoseek, he developed a new function for Go.com, through which it could do image-based searches. Here he worked for two years and left the job in 1999.

Founding Baidu

Robin Li moved back to China, to work on his own product and in 2000, he developed Baidu with the help of his friend Eric Xu. The two used the same algorithm as of Rankdex to develop Baidu. Li did not have a permanent apartment in China at that time and did all the coding work and the launch of Baidu from a hotel room near Peking University. Li became the Chairman of the company and Xu was appointed as the CEO.

In 2001, Baidu offered people to bid for putting ads on the search engine. This led to the monetization as well as the growth of the company. Baidu was an instant hit, and Li was named among the “Chinese Top Ten Innovative Pioneers” in the same year. In 2003, the company introduced image-based searches as well as a news search engine.

In 2004, Xu resigned from his post as CEO, and Li held the position. The next year, Li took Baidu to NASDAQ, and the value of its every share raised by 350 per cent, i.e., from $27 to $122. In December 2007, Baidu was listed in the NASDAQ-100, becoming the first Chinese company to do so. In the same year, Li was named in CNN Money’s annual list of “50 people who matter now”.

By 2010, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, and it also got the title of “Google of China”. The company has partnered with big names like Qualcomm, Continental and Bosch. It has also started working in the field of AI. The company has also launched a self-driving vehicle platform under its Apollo project (Apolong).

Along with hosting the biggest search engine in China, Baidu offers over fifty internet-related services as well as artificial intelligence-based products to its users.

Baidu is one innovative product that helped Li to fight with his circumstances. Today, Li is one of the richest men in China and ranks at number eight with $16.5 billion’s net worth. He has been awarded great accolades, including “15 Asian Scientists To Watch” by Asian Scientist Magazine in 2011, “Most Influential Business Leader in China” by Fortune, and “World’s Best Business Leader” by the American Business Weekly in 2006.

nio

William Li : The Founder of Chinese Tesla, Nio

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Everyone is aware of the potential of electric motor vehicles, as these can help the world save on fuel as well as money. Tesla has been the biggest inspiration for every other automobile company, and most of them have already built their electric cars, and are steadily moving towards manufacturing autonomous vehicles. One such company is Nio, founded by a celebrity entrepreneur William Li, that is working on something inspired by the same concept of Tesla electric cars, but a bit on the cheaper end.

William Li was born on born 9 August 1974 in Anhui, Eastern China. Li’s family did not have a very good financial condition, so they started saving for his college since he was seven. He had to work part-time while he was still in school to support his family. He attended a local school and later, joined the Peking University in Beijing to pursue a graduate degree in sociology. He also opted for a minor in law.

Despite the humble beginnings, Li managed to start a business at the age of 21 in 1996. The business was an internet-based startup, and the boom in the industry helped him grow as a successful entrepreneur.

William Li Founder Nio
bloomberg.com

In 2000, he started his second company, which later become his first biggest business. The company name was Bitauto, and it was an automobile Internet content and marketing services provider. Bitauto later became public and traded on the American Stock Exchange Copyright in 2010. It saw huge success and valued at $1 billion. It helped Li to gain enough experience as a businessman and established him as one of the most influential entrepreneurs in China. He served as the CEO and chairman of the company for thirteen years and finally sold Bitauto in 2013.

A fine entrepreneur is never out of ideas and cannot stay idle. Only in a year after he sold his second company, he came up with a new luxury electric car manufacturer startup, Nio, in 2014. Since he had always been into the automobile and stuff related to it, he was inspired to start his own automobile business.

But to start a huge vehicle manufacturing business, one needs a lot of money. For that, he started looking for investments. Li has got great convincing skills, which can be estimated from how he changed the mind of Xiaomi from starting its own electric car manufacturing brand to investing money into another such startup.

Li had always been inspired by the founder of Xiaomi, and how its business model worked. He even implemented some of the strategies from the business model of Xiaomi into his own startup. In a year of struggle, Li was able to bag investments from the major tech companies, including Tencent, Temasek, Baidu, Lenovo and TPG.

NIO EP9 is the first sports car model that the company produced and was launched on the same day as the company. In 2016, the company raised over a billion-dollar from its investors. To expand its specializations, the company received the “Autonomous Vehicle Testing Permit” from the California DMV, in October 2016. Since then, the company has been working on the level-three and level-four autonomy to build its own autonomous vehicles. By the end of the year, the company launched a new two-door coupé, named NIO EP9. Li being an experienced businessman is not afraid of taking risks, but he believes in steady growth. That is why Nio is still producing limited-edition vehicles. Though the company has now made some plans on mass production of its vehicles.

In four years of Nio, it produced over 14,000 units of electric vehicles, and by the end of 2019, the company expects to make the number 20,000 units. Till the year 2019, the company also raised over $2.5 billion through four rounds of investments. In September 2018, the company went public on the New York Stock Exchange and raised a US$1.8 billion.

Nio participated in the Formula E in the 2014–2015 season and also the other race championships. It also won the 2015 Long Beach ePrix and the 2015 Moscow ePrix. NIO has even set five records in their track-only EP9 for the fastest lap for an electric-powered car.

Along with his three startups, Li has also made some good investments. In fact, he has invested in 32 companies from the transportation sector. Li was famous before he started Nio, but the success of Nio has made him known globally. He, in fact, is often termed as the “godfather of the transport sector” in China and sometimes the “Elon Musk” of China.

shazam app

Chris Barton : The Founder of Shazam, A Product of Pure Innovation

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The past few decades have been the luckiest for new ideas and startups. There have been many such cases, where the budding entrepreneurs have got overnight success. But this ain’t true for all of them out there. As, for some of the ideas, it took a lot of persistence and patience of the founders, to become a successful one. One of such ideas is Shazam, a music identifying service, that took a decade to be under the limelight and get the success that it deserved. It was the endurance and willingness for the successe of the founder of Shazam, Chris Barton, that brought the service at the place, where it is today.

Early Life

Chris Barton’s parents were the biggest influence on him. His father was a nuclear physics professor, and his mother worked as a computer science professor. His mother introduced him with computers when she brought a Sinclair computer to their home. Chris loved working on the computer and taught himself the basics of programming. He loved experimenting with things, from where BSMSarton also grew an interest in inventions and creating new things.

After completing his school education, Chris went to the University of California, Berkeley, where he first opted for a double major in computer science. But eventually, he went to graduate in business studies, economics being the major subject of his course.

Chris Barton
Image Source: haas.berkeley.edu

Chris met Philip Inghelbrecht, the future co-founder of Shazam, at the university, where both were in the same class and later became project-teammate. On the other hand, he was already friends with Dhiraj Mukherjee, the other co-founder of the company, when he lived in San Francisco.

Beginning of Entrepreneurship

It was just in 1998 when Chris got his first mobile phone. The time was about the internet and the new mobile devices coming into the market. Though most of the people were looking forward to developing internet-related things, Chris was brainstorming about what he can build based on the tiny handset, that people carried with them 24/7.

When Chris Barton was interning at Microsoft’s internet search portal group MSN, in London, he again met with Mukherjee there, who was working on establishing the first international office of his startup company, Viant, in London. Chris introduced Mukherjee with Inghelbrecht, and all three coincided on a similar topic, starting up a new business.

All the three started looking for an idea that would transform their lives and the world. In the summer of 1999, during the height of the dot-com bubble, Chris saw an opportunity in identifying and providing people with the song they want to know about. Though at that time, many people had tried the same concept for their business, all of them were relying upon the radio for music identification.

Origin of the Idea

Chris Barton came up with the idea of a software that will help people identify a song playing on the radio using the sound of the music itself, and that too, using a mobile phone. But as simple the idea was, its implementation was equally difficult. There was no such technology existed at that time, that would make this very idea possible.

To implement the idea, they developed an algorithm with the help of a PhD scholar Avery Wang (the fourth co-founder of Shazam), that was based on the recorded sound identification technology. So in the year 2000, they launched the demo of Shazam, a mobile service, through which the users could record the piece of music (from radio, club, or any other place) and send it to Shazam, and in return, Shazam would reply the name of the artist and album of the song.

This innovative idea was way ahead of its time. Even before Apple launched its iPod and iPhones. In the beginning, Chris established its office in London and focussed on the European countries, as these countries were more drawn to music.

Founding Shazam

To bring the product out in the market, the co-founders took the help of their family members and friends. After three months of pitching the idea in front of the investors, they raised a one million dollar investment from HSBC. To make the service work properly, in the beginning, the co-founders decided to partner with the people who are related to the key technology that will be used in the service. They partnered with the IVR provider, the SMS aggregator for premium SMS integration, and with the four leading mobile operators in the United Kingdom, i.e. Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile, and O2.

After getting everything in place, Chris Barton along with the other co-founders launched Shazam on 19 August 2002. Now, people could use the service by dialling a four-digit number, i.e. 2580, on their mobile phone, record the music, and receive the details about it, through an SMS, for just 50 pence.

A few years later, with the emergence of better Symbian mobile phones, the company offered the option to buy ringtones of the identified songs. The users could also get access to an unlimited use subscription pack for around $3 per month. And after the iPhone got launched in 2007, in 2008 the new Shazam app reached the heights of success. It had 11 million downloads in the year of 2010. According to a report from CNET, Shazam was the 4th most downloaded app of 2011. By 2012, Shazam had over 225 million users in more than 200 countries.

Today, all four co-founders sit on the board of the company, and Chris now works for Google. Shazam is one of the most popular apps today that allow the users to buy the music, watch music videos, as well as see the lyrics of a particular song.

IN 2016, Snapchat included the Shazam feature to its app, and in 2018, Apple acquired the company for $400 million.