Founders at Work.pdf

Sabeer Bhatia 19
And then it occurred to us, “If that would solve our problem, it would solve
the problems of many others.” We didn’t know how many others, but email was
something that everyone used. To provide ubiquitous access to that email from
any web browser from anywhere in the world was the killer idea.
Livingston: This killer idea emerged because you guys were trying to solve the
personal email exchange problem for yourselves?
Bhatia: Absolutely. That we could access our email from only two places: our
homes and our work. And while we were at work, we could not access our personal
email accounts.
Livingston: Once you were onto the concept of web-based email, did you
immediately discard the JavaSoft database idea and go full throttle with
Hotmail?
Bhatia: We were kind of torn. Our plan was to use the JavaSoft idea to get
money from venture capitalists. But actually the killer arrow in our quiver was
always email because we thought that it was even bigger than the original idea.
Livingston: But you didn’t want to tell people about the killer idea because you
were afraid they’d copy you?
Bhatia: That they would copy us, or what if they just shared this idea with
Netscape? Or shared it with anyone else. You have to realize that in those days
we had nothing—just the idea. When we were approaching venture capitalists,
they would shoot us down for one reason or another—for reasons we thought
were frivolous like, “You guys, what is your background?” So we would tell
them that our background was in hardware engineering. “Why are you building
software?”
Many of them also said, “But you’re too young. Do you have any management
experience?” “No,” we said, “we’re two young kids; we have a great idea.”
The whole VC community has so many links with each other—you never
know. Netscape was building email servers. What if the VCs were just to say to
them, “Hey, why don’t you do web-based email?” And that’s it, that’s the idea,
right? There was not that much to protect in terms of IP. Whoever built it first
would win the market.
So we were afraid and that’s why we kept that as the secret. But we were
going to do web-based email no matter what, even if we got funding for the
other idea.
Livingston: I read that you judged the VCs by their reaction to the JavaSoft
idea. Did you plan this clever approach?
Bhatia: We actually planned to do this. You can’t get an audience with any venture
capitalist without sharing a business plan, but we didn’t want our business
plan floating around somewhere with the email idea. So we would go in with
the JavaSoft business plan.
If they passed the litmus test of not rejecting us for the wrong reasons and
said, “OK, we don’t mind that you’re young, we don’t mind that you don’t have