The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions (20 page)
Read The Dream: How I Learned the Risks and Rewards of Entrepreneurship and Made Millions Online
Authors: Gurbaksh Chahal
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Business & Economics, #Business, #Entrepreneurship
In late February, I officially left BlueLithium, and I again wrote my employees to let them know I was moving on. My transitional role was over. And anyway, in my heart I was an entrepreneur, and I knew that—much as I respected and admired
Yahoo!—corporate life was not for me. There’s a big difference between running your own company and being a successful executive at a company with 14,000 employees. I knew my strengths, and I was sticking to them.
From: | Gurbaksh Chahal |
Sent: | Monday, February 25, 2008 12:57 PM |
To: | |
Subject: | An Incredible Journey . . . |
Hello Everyone,
As you know, 4 years ago, I made a very important decision to return to the industry. Today, as my last day, I look back at truly what an incredible team, products, and company we made together. Wow, what an amazing 4 years. I have to say, gladly, that returning to the industry was one of the best decisions I ever made.
We started off 4 years ago with the “Dream Team” with a simple idea of creating a better ad network. 4 years later, we’ve not only created the best ad network but also the largest global ad network. YOU ALL should be proud for creating this in such a short amount of time!
Every victory has its battles. Through this journey, we faced a lot of obstacles and roadblocks. Having my world-class management team at BL to help solve them was truly a blessing for me.
I’d also like to take this time to thank individually each one of my direct reports:
• Tim Brown, for believing a 23-year-old guy’s vision (at the time)—quitting your job at 24/7, successfully executing our vision across the pond, beyond my expectations.
• Bill Lonergan, for being a great true asset to me, working with me on handling every crisis and success with your wealth of experience and knowledge.
• Scott Kauffman, for being a great ally, especially in the board room. :-)
I’d like to also thank the “Dream Team”—you guys are living proof that dreams do come true, twice in a row!
Again, I’d like to thank you all for all of your hard work, discipline, and determination to see BL succeed. Being a part of one of the best brands and companies in the world was a phenomenal outcome for us all.
The “dream team” at BlueLithium on the day of their merger with Yahoo!; Gurbaksh with siblings Kamal and Taj in the front.
As you all know, I will be taking some time off to pursue a list of things I’ve always wanted to do in life. But, for those of you that know me best, also know I get bored very easily.
Till the next time we cross paths, I wish you all continued success.
Yours truly,
Gurbaksh Chahal
Founder, BlueLithium
Not long after,
The Secret Millionaire
actually went into production, and it was truly an amazing experience. I’ve always tried to be generous, particularly with my family, but I learned that if you help people out—even complete strangers—it also makes you feel really good about yourself, sort of like a runner’s high. So you might say there’s an almost selfish component to giving. But that’s cool, too. It was clear to me that philanthropy was going to be a big part of my future.
The Lessons of Entrepreneurship
T
he Secret Millionaire
was not scheduled to air until December 2008—the producers were off filming other millionaires, in other situations—and I again found myself talking to the William Morris Agency about potential television shows, most of them revolving around my background as an entrepreneur.
The agency set up a number of meetings for me, and I flew to Los Angeles and discussed my ideas with various producers, some of whom seemed genuinely interested. Since I am not the most patient guy in the world, however, and since I’m not inclined to sit around doing nothing, I decided to start laying the foundations for my next company.
At the time, my noncompete with Yahoo! was still in effect, so I had to steer clear of the advertising business. This was just as well, however, because the advertising business was going a little crazy. Earlier in the year, there had been reports in the press that Google’s clicks were going flat, and at one point the value of the company’s stock had dropped by more than a third, from $750 a share to $460. Analysts blamed lackluster advertising and a decline in the overall economy.
Then in March, Google’s $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick finally closed, and the company stock jumped 6 percent on the news. The stock was a long way from its record highs, but Google continued to look for ways to dominate the market for targeted text ads, which was a $40 billion business. It wanted to create a one-stop, full-service shop for any company that wanted to advertise online, and one of its selling points was its ability—not unique, of course—to track viewers and target ads. Again, that’s what it was all about: getting the right ads in front of the right eyeballs, based on a person’s taste, lifestyle, and viewing history.
Once again, there were a number of stories in the press about the amount of personal data that was being collected by large Web companies and about the potential threats to our privacy, but the reporters were missing the point. It wasn’t about information; it was about selling stuff. At the end of the day, it was capitalism, pure and simple.
Still, these were tough times in Silicon Valley. In the first three months of 2008, only five companies backed by venture capital investors had gone public on Wall Street, down from thirty-one companies in the fourth quarter of 2007. And the grim news was getting worse by the day. The mortgage crisis was in full swing. (Eighteen percent of Americans had homes with negative equity!) The price of gas was at record highs. The stock market was poised for yet another massive correction. Inflation was out of control. The dollar kept falling. We were either in the middle of a recession or at the end of a recession, depending on who was telling the story. And the government’s so-called economic stimulus plans weren’t turning out to be all that stimulating.
When I looked around, I realized that more than anything else, the average American was looking for a break on prices. I began to think about online sales and about creating a Web site that would function as a portal to a new kind of shopping experience. Consumers were looking for deals, they
were looking to save money, and I had some ideas about how to do it.
The name of my new company popped into my head full blown: gWallet. I didn’t even have to think about it. I’d always been a frugal guy. My intention was to help people pinch pennies the way I pinched pennies, to do it the gWallet way.
In March, I wrote e-mails to every venture capitalist on my Rolodex, letting them know that I was about to launch a third venture and that I might be looking for investors. Every single one of them wrote back with a near-identical message:
Let’s meet. When are you available?
I lined up twenty meetings in the space of two weeks, and it became immediately clear that I’d have no trouble getting funding. But later, when I thought about it, I decided that I should go it alone. If I took on a financial partner, I’d be forced to give away a large chunk of the company—that’s the way the game is played, and that’s what it’s all about. (Remember that $11.5 million in funding I got for BlueLithium, money that was never used? The investors went home with about $100 million after only two and a half years, which was a pretty spectacular return.) I also knew, as any businessman will tell you, that I would be much better off waiting until gWallet was up and running, because at that point I’d be negotiating from a position of strength. I would give away a
much smaller share of the company for a comparable investment, the smart way to go.
On May 2,
VentureWire
ran a story about my new company. It quoted me as saying that “gWallet is designed to help mitigate the financial burden of purchasing goods with an easy to use online platform” by helping users find the best Web deals. I noted that it would be several months before the launch, and also that I felt the company had huge potential. If I didn’t think it was going to be bigger than BlueLithium, I noted, I wouldn’t be pursuing it.
On May 13, while I was thigh-deep in gWallet,
The Hollywood Reporter
announced the coming lineup on the Fox Network, which included
The Secret Millionaire:
a new series ... in which wealthy benefactors go undercover in impoverished neighborhoods. For about 10 days, a multimillionaire meets financially destitute locals and experiences what it’s like to live on a meager budget for the first time in their lives. At the show’s conclusion, the millionaire reveals his true identity to the community and gives a minimum of $100,000 of his own money to at least one deserving person.
“How often do we see somebody who’s homeless on the street and wonder what it would be like to live like that?” Fox president of alternative entertainment Mike Darnell asked. “Whereas the super wealthy are so
detached from that experience. This is a really clever conceit and has a great emotional arc to it.”
The show was scheduled for December 2008 and suddenly Hollywood was knocking at my door. Did I want to be on a
Bachelor
-style show? Did I want to be on the celebrity edition of
Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?
Would I want to do
Dancing with the Stars?
I got a good laugh out of this last one, and thought back to my interview with Neil Cavuto the previous December. “Here’s what I want you to promise me,” Cavuto had said. “Do not do
Dancing with the Stars.”
“I promise,” I said.
“I think that’s a bad career move,” he added.
Career? I thought I already had a career. I am, first and foremost, an entrepreneur. But I am open to anything (except
Dancing with the Stars,
I guess since I wouldn’t want to embarrass my family on live television). I think life should be lived at full throttle, and I have no intention of slowing down.
In the summer of 2008, as I explored opportunities in Hollywood, I continued to work on the gWallet business model. The deeper I got into it, the more I thought back to the early days of Click Agents and to everything I’d learned since. I hadn’t forgotten a single one of those lessons, and I was applying all of them to this, my latest venture.
Let me walk you through a few of them:
- Listen to your heart. We tend to do well at things we love, so find something you love—or learn to love what you’re doing.
- Forget noble motivations. Success comes from wanting to win, so you’ve got to want it bad—you really need that killerinstinct. At the end of the day, no matter what they say, it’s not about how you play the game, but about winning. As American football coach Vince Lombardi reportedly said, “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”
- Adjust your attitude. Without the right attitude, you’ll never succeed. You have to believe in yourself, often to the point of madness, because until you prove yourself the only people who believe in you are your mom and dad (if you’re lucky). If you have any doubts, get out now.
- Figure out what you’re good at. Very few of us are gifted, so we need to work with the gifts we have. If you’re five-foot-two and you love basketball, let me be the
first to tell you: It’s probably not going to happen. (But don’t let me stop you.) - Trust your gut. We are complicated creatures. That inexplicable feeling you get sometimes—well, it tends to be right a lot more often than it is wrong. Try not to overanalyze it. Some mysterious Inner You is trying to help by pointing you in the right direction.
- Do your homework. Before you start anything, make sure you know exactly what you’re getting into. Ignorance is dangerous. What you
don’t
know can and will hurt you. - Be frugal. The only person you need to impress is yourself, and you’ll be impressed by success, not by a sleek office with Giorgio Armani couches. It boils down to need versus luxury, and a fancy office isn’t going to improve your performance.
- When it comes to staffing your company, however,
don’t
be frugal. Find the
right people for the right jobs, and pay them what they’re worth. We all love and need rock stars. - Hire the smartest people you can find. Smart people make beautiful music together. Lots of smart people, working in unison, can have the force and power of a Beethoven symphony.
- Don’t expect perfection from yourself or others, but never stop striving for it, and try to inspire others to strive for it too.
- Learn to listen. Everyone has an opinion, and everyone is entitled to an opinion, and even wrong-headed opinions can open your eyes to things you might otherwise have missed. So listen, even to the people you disagree with—and maybe to them more than the others. Then process what you’ve heard and have the courage of your convictions.
- Own your mistakes. At the end of the day, every decision you make, even if it
was inspired by misguided advice, is
your
decision. Nobody wins when you start looking for someone to blame. Let it go. Keep moving. Forward movement is everything. - Never compromise your morality. We all need to live by a moral code.
- Never lose sight of the competition. While you’re playing, someone else is working and catching up, so learn to play with one eye on the competition. You’re not going to be on top forever.
- Watch your back. Somebody should make a T-shirt that says: “For every back, there is a knife.”
- Don’t procrastinate. Procrastination is just another word for wanting to fail. If you’re not hungry enough, if you’re too lazy to move forward, you’re never going to get anywhere.
- Don’t do anything by half-measures. Remember: Mediocrity is for losers.
-
And speaking of which, take the advice of that late great comedian, Jimmy Durante: “Be nice to people on the way up because you will probably meet them on the way down.” - Always negotiate from a position of strength. If you need something from the other guy, you’ve already lost. People want what they can’t have. Become the thing people want.
- Expect the unexpected. If you’re ready for anything, you’ll still be unpleasantly surprised—but at least you’ll get through it.
- Remember: Perception is reality. What they see is more important than what
is,
so show them what they want to see and tell them what they want to hear. (Read that sentence again. It’s really quite simple, and it makes perfect sense.) - Don’t get emotional. Logic and emotions don’t mix.
-
Be fearless. The road to success is paved with failures. If you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never succeed. - Pick your battles. The fighting never really ends. Don’t let the meaningless skirmishes sap your strength; you’re in this to win the war.
- Grow a thick skin—a
very
thick skin. People will question your ability to succeed, and the loudest among them might make you doubt your own talents, so you’ll need a thick skin to drown out the noise. The silence will help you focus on your objective, and you will prevail. - Take chances. Without risk, there is no reward. But make sure it’s
intelligent
risk. Only a fool bets against Tiger Woods (until it’s time to bet against Tiger Woods). - When you commit, you really have to commit. Become unstoppable. And don’t quit. As Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu put it, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”