Hotmail's founder warms up new ideas
Sabeer Bhatia's status as India's firstcelebrity "technology entrepreneur" appears impeccable. The Stanford-educated engineer jointly dreamed up Hotmail and sold it to Microsoft in December 1997 for $395m. A telegenic thirty???-something, he is as popular with the media as he is with Bollywood and technology geeks.
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"Frankly, I see a celebrity partner who also happens to think out of the box as a marketing asset," says Yogesh Patel, a partner of Mr Bhatia in a start-up.
One of their new ventures, an internet telephony service, takes off this month, alongside another start-up that sees Mr Bhatia move into the world of blogging. The two launches, with more promised, amount to Mr Bhatia's busiest period of new business activity since he forfeited $30m by unlocking a golden handcuff with Microsoft in February 1999 and starting out on his own.
"I'm at the confluence of where real-world problems meet technology's ability to come up with a solution," says Mr Bhatia. "Entrepreneurship is one road map; but it is a hard choice. You are often left alone with only the strength of your idea, which is why the single most important thing is self-belief."
Mr Bhatia's self-belief was always going to be vulnerable after the success of Hotmail, the original free e-mail service - a project that was emblematic of the first wave of internet mania. At the same time, his decision to walk out on Microsoft, amid protests that his creativity was being cramped by compliance with corporate culture, would be put to the test with whatever he would create as an independent innovator-investor.
His first solo venture was a disaster. Arzoo, launched in 1999, tried to create a virtual classroom with experts answering technology queries from companies and individuals. In hindsight, Arzoo's timing (launched as dot.com fever ebbed), technology (unproven) and employees (attracted to the man, not the model) seem an unusually rich mix of bad moves.
Mr Bhatia says he invested $8m of his own money and raised $7m more. With 50 programme developers in the US running up costs of $500,000 a month, Arzoo was nowhere near generating revenues, still less profit, when Mr Bhatia declared, after 24 difficult months: "This is enough."
He admits the experience of Arzoo has made him a better judge of opportunity. But he rejects the view that his "money-bags" status has turned him into an investor and diminished his standing as an innovator.
"My role is an 'innovator-founder-backer'. This allows me to contribute product ideas and leverage my connections. You see, what venture capitalists do is narrow and not exciting. I get emotionally stuck to damn good ideas and want to develop them. When money goes to developing good intellectual property, you know that if you do not have a market today, you will one day. That is the power of superior ideas." He believes this approach is playing out in his new business portfolio.
First in this portfolio was Navin Communications in the US, in which Mr Bhatia acquired a small stake as Arzoo was folding and before he took a 12-month sabbatical to get over the disappointment (he spent the time travelling and improving his golf). Owned by multiple US-based Indian investors, Navin started by designing internet voice messaging and went on to create a high-speed way of plucking data in real time from databases and sending them back to cellular phones as text messages. VoiFi, the internet telephony platform with an Indian touch that includes local games, and blogeverywhere.com complete the portfolio of privately held assets.
Each business reflects Mr Bhatia's approach to assessing an opportunity: there must be a large market for the product; the technology must be "an elegant, not brutal" problem-solver; and Mr Bhatia must click with the prospective partner-innovator. Yet, in his first post-Arzoo venture, at Navin - where he says he has so far invested $5m, in part to support product development by 50 engineers in Mumbai - the people woes followed. He hired a highly recommended chief technologist, only to find that the personal chemistry wasdisastrous.
It was a time-consuming and expensive way to learn the truism that human capital is the most important asset in technology, he says.
The solution at Navin, by now controlled by Mr Bhatia, came with Yogesh Patel, chief technology officer. The two "clicked" and have collaborated on VoiFi, which allows computer users anywhere in the world to dial a landline or mobile number in India for Rs1 a minute.
Similarly, blogeverywhere is a partnership built on personal chemistry. Mr Bhatia was introduced to US-based Indian Shiraz Kanga via Silicon Valley's influential Indian network. Mr Bhatia warmed to the former Cisco engineer's proposition but said "no" when he requested $5m to develop his product.
What he did say reveals another theme central to Mr Bhatia the investor. "I said 'come to India and we'll develop the prototype together there but for $2m'."
Like most Indian entrepreneurs-cum-technologists in Silicon Valley, Mr Bhatia has accepted two truths about his homeland. First, its low costs are crucial for a new technology venture. This means new ideas can be driven to India by Indian backers in the Valley.
Second, India will be one of the big markets of the future after the US and China. The opportunities will be varied, covering anything from marriage services to e-commerce.
"Lower telecom costs have driven the revolution in mobile communication. The cost of broadband must be immensely subsidised be-cause it will drive so many economic activities. That's how to leapfrog decades of slow economic growth," says Mr Bhatia.
The excitement of India, though, is tempered by the evidence that Bangalore is mirroring Silicon Valley in 1999 when recruiting was a merry-go-round of competitive offers. It is one reason why blog???-everywhere has chosen to base itself in Pune, a smaller engineering town still untouched by the rising wages and infrastructure logjam of frothy Bangalore.
Mr Bhatia's portfolio also reveals another strand of his thinking: he invests only in products, not services such as maintaining IT systems that dominate the Indian industry. He regrets the lack of "courage" that inhibits product development, whose long lead-times make it risky for companies used to earning revenues within three months of commencing a project. "I am prepared to make a two-year commitment to an idea," he says, which, along with a celebrity status he clearly enjoys, marks him out among India's technology titans.
Hotmail创始人的新点子
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为印度第一位“技术企业家”名流，沙比尔?巴迪亚(Sabeer Bhatia)的地位堪称完美无缺。这位斯坦福大学(Stanford)毕业的工程师与他人联合创办了Hotmail，并在1997年12月以3.95亿美元的价格将Hotmail出售给微软(Microsoft)。三十来岁的巴迪亚倍受媒体追捧，而印度宝来坞(Bollywood)电影界和那些技术奇客(geeks)也一样对他着迷不已。
巴迪亚所在的一间初创公司的合伙人约根什?帕特勒(Yogesh Patel)称：“坦率地说，这个同样偶尔突发奇想的名人伙伴在我眼中就是一项营销资产。”
他们两人合作创立了两家初创公司，标志着巴迪亚开始进军博客(blogging)世界。其中一家是互联网电话服务公司，本月开始投入运营。这两家具有诱人前景的公司，将巴迪亚带入离开微软之后最繁忙的创业时期。巴迪亚1999年2月离开微软开创自己的事业，并为打开“金手铐”（golden handcuff）交纳了3000万美元的违约金。
“我正处于现实世界的问题与能解决问题的技术能力的交汇处，” 巴迪亚称，“创业是一座独木桥，这是一个艰难的选择。你经常独自一人，只有思想的力量与你在一起。这就是为什么自信最重要。”
在Hotmail取得成功之后，巴迪亚的自信常常受到质疑。与此同时，作为一个独立的创新投资者，他的“成就”将验证他离开微软的决定是否正确。Hotmail是最早的免费电子邮件服务，曾被视为第一轮互联网热潮的象征。而他当年离开微软，理由乃是公司文化磨灭了他的创造力。
他的首个独资企业简直是个灾难。创建于1999年的Arzoo试图建立一个虚拟课堂，由专家们回答企业和个人提出的科技问题。事后看来，Arzoo的创建时机(在互联网热退潮之时推出)、采用的技术(未得到实践验证)和招募的雇员(被公司的雇主所吸引，而非公司的模式)都有问题，就像一个糟糕大杂烩。
巴迪亚表示，他自己出钱投资了800万美元，又另外筹集了700万美元。在美国雇用50个程序开发人员，每月成本高达50万美元。当巴迪亚熬过艰难的24个月之后宣布“我受够了”的时候，Arzoo几乎没有创造收入，更别说盈利了。
他承认，Arzoo的经历使他能更准确地辨别机遇所在。但他反对这种观点：他的“富翁”地位已使他转变成一个投资者，弱化了他作为创新者的身份。
巴迪亚表示：“我的角色是‘创新者-创始人-支持者’。这种角色令我可以贡献我的点子，并充分利用我的人脉关系。你知道，风险资本家的作为有限，而且也没意思。我非常喜欢提出好点子，并希望将其付诸开发。当投资开发一项优秀的知识产权时，即使当时没有市场，你也知道总有一天会有市场。这就是好点子的力量。”他认为，这一方法正在他新的业务组合中发挥作用。
这个组合中的第一项是美国的Navin Communications。巴迪亚在Arzoo关张之后购入了这家公司的少量股份，之后，为了排遣失望之情，他休假12个月(他把这段时间用来旅游和提高高尔夫球技)。Navin由一批在美国的印度投资者拥有，公司最初是设计互联网语音信息系统，之后创造了一种高速方法，从数据库中实时接收数据，并把这些数据以文本信息模式传回到手机。巴迪亚的业务组合中还包括VoiFi和blogeverywhere.com，它们和Navin一起，构成了巴迪亚的私有资产投资组合。VoiFi是一个连接印度和外部世界的互联网电话平台，其中还有一些本地游戏。
每项业务都反映了巴迪亚评估机遇的方法：产品必须有广阔的市场；技术必须能“优雅地、毫不粗糙地”解决问题；而且，他本人必须与未来的合伙“创新者”一拍即合。然而，作为他关闭Arzoo之后投资的第一个公司，Navin还是出现了人事悲剧。(迄今为止，他已经向那个公司投入500万美元，其中部分资金用于支持孟买的50名工程师进行产品开发。)他雇用了一名受到大力推荐的首席技术专家，结果却发现人际关系一团糟。
他说，用那样的方法来学习人力资本是科技行业最重要资产这一真理，确实耗时而又昂贵。
约根什?帕特勒作为首席技术官加盟Navin，解决了Navin的人事问题。该公司目前由巴迪亚本人掌控。他们二人“一拍即合”，并合作创建了VoiFi。VoiFi可以使全球各地的电脑用户拨打印度固定电话或手机号码，一分钟只需1卢比。
同样，“blogeverywhere”也是建立在私人交情上的一种合作。通过硅谷颇具影响力的印度人际网，巴迪亚结识了生活在美国的印度人希拉兹?坎加(Shiraz Kanga)。巴迪亚对这位思科(Cisco)前工程师的提议颇感兴趣，但是，当坎加要价500万美元开发产品时，他的回答是：“不”。
巴迪亚当时说的一番话，体现他作为投资者的另一个宗旨。“我说‘来印度吧，我们在这儿一起开发这个项目，但只需要花200万美元。’”
正如硅谷大部分集企业家与技术专家于一身的印度人一样，对于他的祖国，巴迪亚也信奉两条真理。首先，印度的低成本对于新科技公司至关重要。这意味着，新的创意能够由硅谷的印度支持者推向印度。
其次，印度将成为继美国和中国之后，未来最大的市场之一。从婚庆服务到电子商务等各个领域，将存在各种各样的机会。
巴迪亚表示：“电信成本的下降推动了移动通信领域的革命。宽带成本必须大幅下调，因为这将推动大量的经济活动。通过这种方式，可以跨越（印度）数十年经济增长缓慢的鸿沟。”
不过，印度的“激情”因以下迹象而有所缓和――班加罗尔正成为1999年的硅谷：当时，招聘就意味着争相提供富有竞争力的报价。浦那是一个规模稍小的工业小镇，尚未受到班加罗尔那种薪资不断上涨和基础建设停滞的影响，这正是blogeverywhere选择那里为根据地的原因之一。
巴蒂亚的投资组合也反映了他另一方面的想法：他只投资于产品，而非在印度工业中占主导地位的IT系统维护等服务。他对于自己缺乏限制产品开发的“勇气”感到遗憾，因较长的开发周期，会使那些习惯于在项目启动3个月内获得收入的公司面临风险。他表示：“我已作好准备，为一个想法投入两年的时间。”这种态度，加之他显然具备的名人身份，使他在印度科技业巨头中显得卓而不凡。
