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CONTEXTUALLY ADAPTIVE

HEMANG'S BLOG ABOUT STARTUP LIFE AND MOBILE TECHNOLOGY

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* Timeslide

1. Feb
20

A SMALL PRICE FOR FACEBOOK'S MOBILE ASCENDANCY

I'll admit that Whatsapp isn't exactly a household name here in the US.
Therefore some collective head-scratching might've been in order when you
read that Facebook paid $19.5B (yes, B, as in BILLION) to acquire the
Silicon Valley-based mobile messaging startup. In fact, twitter was flooded
with glib jokes about this deal becoming the latest piece of evidence that
the bursting of this next bubble is upon us.

Call me a contrarian, but I simply don't see how anyone could find fault
with Facebook's rationale here. Yes, $19.5B is a lot of money. But in this
case, it's money very well spent.

Two years ago when Facebook announced filing their S1, there was one
critique that was heard time and time again. It was that web 2.0
poster-child Facebook didn't get mobile. In fact, because Facebook was
behind the curve in mobile, they paid a shocking (at the time) ~$1B to
acquire mobile darling Instagram.

Fast-forward to yesterday and Facebook now owns three of the
most ubiquitous mobile apps anywhere. The combination of Facebook +
Instagram + Whatsapp puts Facebook in just about every smart phone on the
planet. And to make that happen, Facebook has spent about 11% of it's
overall market cap. That 11% means that Facebook now owns the world's
biggest social networking mobile app, photo sharing mobile app and
messaging mobile app. So where two years ago the critiques were valid, now
Facebook is the unquestioned 800 lb gorilla in mobile. Or as a16z analyst
Benedict Evans quipped on twitter, "Facebook is being pretty aggressive in
making sure it's the next Facebook".

And beyond the strategic value, the growth numbers for Whatsapp are simply
mind-boggling. Two year ago the company had ~70M monthly users. A year ago,
that number had grown to 200M. Now, we know that number to be over 450M. So
the growth is actually accelerating. In the past four months, Whatsapp
added 100M user. Today we learned that they're adding over a million users
each day. All these numbers are too difficult to fathom until you look at
this chart:

So how long before Whatsapp blows past Facebook's MAU numbers? A year?
Less? After all, there are already far more Whatsapp users than there are
Twitterers. And let's not forget that each of Whatsapp users happily pays
$1/yr for the app, so it's not long before that revenue is quite
meaningful.

Chalk this up as a win for Facebook. They are sending a clear message that
they don't care about what anyone thinks about how they use their currency.
They're focused on the big prize. Five years from now, is it really that
hard to imagine that Facebook would have significant mindshare on nearly
every mobile phone -- globally?? All in, I'd say this is a master stroke
for Facebook.

P.S. -- If you haven't read the Forbes story about Whatsapp founder Jan
Koum, take ten minutes to read it. His journey is incredible and inspiring.
Here's a guy who came to this country twenty years ago with almost nothing.
His mom struggled while working hard to make ends meet. At one point they
even had to collect food stamps. And now this guy is worth $6-7B and will
be somewhere around #200 on the Forbes list of Global Billionaires. Unreal
movie script type of stuff. Only in America.

Agree? Disagree? Still think Facebook paid way too much? Tweet at me on
Twitter @hemang
Posted 20th February 2014 by Hemang Gadhia

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2. Sep
7

DO ACCELERATORS PROVIDE VALUE?

Say what you will about Valleywag, but they're certainly never boring (in
the same way that car wrecks aren't boring either I suppose). Earlier this
week, Valleywag outed a NYC accelerator that was at the center of the
maelstrom in an anonymous posting on David Cohen's blog.

In the anonymous letter that Cohen posted on his site, a founder makes a
loooooong list of complaints and accusations about the NYC accelerator that
he entered his startup into. The lesson that Cohen imparts on his blog
readers is a valid one, which is essentially... caveat emptor. Startups
should certainly be aware of what they're getting themselves into and do
their DD before giving away chunks of equity in their company.

But amid all the rumors, innuendo and ensuing heated discussions is a
pretty darn good debate about the true value provided by most accelerators.
Sadly, even once you throw out a lot of the hearsay and gossipy BS, you're
still left with real questions about the benefits that most accelerators
provide.

The notion of rarely present mentors, poor follow-through on curriculum,
funding issues, less than ideal working space, and lackluster demo days
with few real investors is something that's applicable to 90% of the
accelerators out there. So for that 7% that you're giving up for a tiny
slice of cash and the supposed pathway to getting your company off the
ground and funded, are you really getting your money's worth??

To me, any founder who has the right entrepreneurial DNA can find great
quality mentoring from high quality people without paying a dime. There are
boatloads of good, solid people who've been there/done that who have a
strong desire to "pay-to-forward". If you as a founder can't figure out how
to engage with and get some of these people involved with your venture,
well then you probably aren't cut out for this line of work anyhow.

That's not to say that there aren't very good accelerator programs that
would provide benefit for some very specific types of startups. Just make
sure you know why you're really entering one of these programs. It can't
just be for advice and mentoring, because in the startup world, great
advice shouldn't cost a thing.
Posted 7th September 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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3. Aug
8

STARTUP CULTURE, PART TWO: THE PROBLEM WITH BUZZWORDS

Building culture is twofold in that it encompasses tightly embracing the
principles that you hold dear as well as karate-chopping those you despise.
For us, that means a lot more doing, less pumping.

As such, we've devised a handy list of words that are banned in our
workplace. Feel free to print out this list and post it in every bathroom
in your office to ensure that employees know that these words are to be
avoided by anyone not certified as a brogrammer.

THE BLACK LIST

* BOOM! (unless you're talking about the Die Antwoord video [NSFW])
* Crushing It
* Ninja/Rockstar/Guru
* In the Cloud
* Growth Hacker/Hacking
* Gamification
* Viral
* Pivot
* Disruptive
* Revolutionary

Boom! and Crushing It are the ones that make my skin crawl the most. They
make me want to toss heavy objects at whomever is uttering them. Why?
Because their overuse has caused them to lose any hint of actual meaning.
Instead they stand there as vacuous superlatives that people just tack onto
any which sentence. If you're out there using crappy buzzwords like these,
it also means that you're probably more focused on pumping up your crappy
startup than you are on building something meaningful.

So for us, hopefully as a newly born startup, we can focus more on the
doing, crafting, building part and less on the preening.

Agree? Disagree? Have more words that you want to add to our blacklist?
Tweet at me on Twitter @hemang
Posted 8th August 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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4. Jul
29

GROWING THE RIGHT STARTUP CULTURE / PART ONE

I'm at one of my favorite points of time in the lifespan of a new company
-- at the very embryonic stage where you get to contemplate the overarching
vision for what your want your new company to be. My co-founders and I have
spent a lot amount of time talking about the importance of culture and how
we'll ensure that our company is steeped in a culture that we can be proud
of.

Here's a small sample of some of the things we've codified:

1. Stop the meeting madness - Every engineer I've worked with has a zone
where they attain their optimal level of productivity. While in their zone,
engineers are perhaps five to ten times more productive than at any other
time. For a startup to be successful, you must ensure that engineers are in
their zone as much as possible.

Nothing kills being in the zone faster than incessant meetings. I can't
tell you how many companies I've seen suffering from meeting paralysis
where it seems like all people ever do is go from one meeting to another.
Our solution? We'll have two days every week with zero meetings on the
calendar. If someone absolutely NEEDS to schedule a meeting on one of those
days, they can do so by paying $50 into our "culture fund". This way,
they'll think long and hard about how important that meeting really is
versus the team's overall productivity.

2. When you do have meetings, be on time and be focused - How many times
have you gone to a scheduled meeting only to wait 5-10 minutes for the
meeting to start because everyone is waiting for one or two people who
are persistently late? Or how often have you seen a colleague far more
focused on texting/emailing/web browsing on their phone than on the meeting
itself? Both items make for meetings that are longer and less productive
than they should be. To combat this, we have two simple rules. First, no
phones or laptops during meetings - they get left at your desk. Yeah, sucks
to have to take notes analog style, but removing distractions is more
important. Second, if you are late to a meeting, you donate $1 into our
culture fund for every two minutes you are tardy. I can guarantee you that
people who are persistently late for meetings will kick the habit
eventually.

We have quite a few more items of this variety, but I'll save those for
another post. Let me know what you think so far. I'd also like to hear what
you've done to make your company culture something you love.

Agree? Disagree? Have something to say? Tweet at me on Twitter @hemang
Posted 29th July 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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5. May
13

STARTUP EXITS - IT'S ALL BS UNTIL IT'S NOT

Over the past two years or so, I can recount a dozen instances where
first-time startup founders have reached out to me to discuss something
that they needed urgent advice on. In each of those cases, the founder had
gotten an acquisition inquiry from a current or prospective partner and
they needed to figure out how to handle it.

I'm reminded of this because the topic came up last week when I was
speaking on a panel at Potomac Tech Wire's Mobile Outlook event. I was
asked about the most important lesson we learned having been through the
acquisition process. My answer to this question always has been and always
will be the same: It's all total BS until it's not. The vast majority of
the time, this turns out to be much ado about nothing and the less time you
spend going down this rabbit hole, the better.

As a startup founder, you will at some point be approached by someone whose
stated interest is in acquiring your company. The first time this happens,
founders tend to get all aflutter with visions of new Teslas dancing in
their heads. This is understandable since an exit is the only way founders
get anything that resembles fair compensation for their time. Momentary
daydreaming is perfectly innocuous, so long as you don't waste a lot of
time prior to vetting how real the inquiry is.

So how do you know when the inquiry is real and when to ignore it as noise?
There are a few tell-tale signs that you should look for. If one or more of
these signs exist, it's something you need to take seriously and
investigate further. If not, you should keep focused on your business
priorities and don't allow yourself to get distracted by the shiny object.

First, any potential acquirer would need to have detailed conversations
with you about your business. Beyond that, they would also expect that
you'd have lots of questions about their business and how you fit into it.
As such, it would be in everyone's interest to have a transactional NDA
executed between the two parties. Normally, this is not just a boilerplate
NDA document, but rather one that is crafted by the company's lawyers
specifically to address the issues that come up during serious M&A
discussions. The fact that the company took the time to craft a specific
NDA rather than just giving you something boilerplate speaks volumes.

The next thing to look for is material cost incurred by the acquiring
company. Acquisitions, even small ones, are risky business. That means any
serious acquirer will spend money to throughly vet a deal to make sure it's
a good fit in the longterm. One example of this is when the
would-be acquirer engages an outside law firm to start working on the deal
process. Outside counsel isn't cheap, typically costing well north of $500
per hour. The fact that they're spending the money here indicates some
serious commitment to moving the process forward.

Another sign to look for is when senior level executives spend significant
time working on your deal. Senior execs have busy schedules and won't waste
time unless there's real value. In fact, I first realized that Millennial's
interest in Condaptive was genuine when I started seeing time being
expended by C-level execs. After a few early flirtations, I was invited to
come up to Millennial's headquarters in Baltimore to talk more about how we
could work together. I had no idea what to expect. When I walked into the
conference room and saw that their CEO, CFO, COO and CTO were all assembled
there for our meeting, I knew that this was something I needed to take
seriously. That was the moment that it went from being all BS to
something significantly more.

Agree? Disagree? Have something to say? Tweet at me on Twitter @hemang

Posted 13th May 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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6. May
2

THE MENTORSHIP VACUUM IN THE #DCTECH COMMUNITY

(credit to Valerie Coffman for a more apropos image)

Over the past year or two, it's become far too fashionable for people to
work in and around tech startups. So much so that we now have legions of
wantrepreneurs and “community builders” who want to find their fame and
fortune within the startup universe. And to some degree, that's absolutely
awesome. The more people involved in the startup world, the better and I’m
all for being inclusive of people who genuinely want to learn and grow
within the ecosystem.

Unfortunately, I see a downside of this as well. Mostly because we now have
far too many people who have never built or worked for a tech startup who
have morphed into “thought leaders” or “mentors” within our nascent startup
community. In my view, this does a great disservice to nurturing the young
entrepreneurs who are just starting on their entrepreneurial journey.

Why? A few reasons from where I’m sitting.

First, there’s a clear degradation in the signal-to-noise ratio, which
means that young entrepreneurs have a harder time getting to something of
value in terms of content. There’s a lot more noise from people who have no
idea how to build stuff but seem to have lots to say about this topic.
Young entrepreneurs will mistake puffery for good advice and take far
longer to learn lessons that could’ve been ingested far more efficiently.

We also have to ask ourselves if we’re being deluded into believing that
there is not a massive vacuum in mentorship in this region. Folks who have
big success in building their startup seem to regularly disappear from the
local tech community. Here in DC, we have a ton of people who have sold
their company for $100MM+, and yet only a small percentage of them are
engaged with mentorship in any meaningful way. Just imagine what type of
rich experience and knowledge someone like this brings to any tech scene.

Maybe it’s because we’re complacent about what passes as mentorship
nowadays. Maybe we don’t take the extra ten steps to rope in the people
who’ve had big success and make sure they stay engaged in the community.
Maybe it’s because these true titans don’t see that the community actually
needs them to stay engaged and they don’t see an obvious role for
themselves. We must do better. We must do a better job not just celebrating
the huge successes we have but also making sure these people know that they
are very much needed as active members of our community and that there is
an important role that we need them to play.

I should disclose that for me, this is something of a personal issue. As
someone who has had some success in the past and is now looking to start
his third startup, having very senior level mentorship would be of
tremendous value. I’m actually fortunate since I do have a number of people
who I can call upon whose depth of experience is much richer and deeper
than mine. But I could definitely use more. And there is no doubt in my
mind that the younger entrepreneurs starting out could certainly use more.
A lot more.
Posted 2nd May 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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7. Apr
25

WHY I LOVE ZOMBIE VCS

If you're anything like me, you've probably heard the term Zombie VC
bandied about in various conversations recently. This all started a few
weeks ago when Danielle Morrill started a bit of a shitstorm with her blog
post which was entitled Zombie VCs. In it, Morrill formulates a list of VCs
who haven't been doing a whole lot of investing lately according to recent
Crunchbase data. Morrill's point was seemingly confirmed by Dan Primack's
post earlier this week where he references data that illustrates an 80%(!!)
contraction in the number of active VCs in just the past twelve years.

Methodology aside (see Fred Destin's related post), every entrepreneur I
know has experienced frustration with Zombie VCs over the past few years.
At the end of those interactions, entrepreneurs inevitably felt duped for
having wasted precious time during their fundraising cycle. It's no
surprise then that the conventional remedy being prescribed to
entrepreneurs amidst all this chatter is to steer clear of the Zombie VCs.

I'm here to tell you that this is terrible advice. In fact, Zombie VCs are
an invaluable resource that every entrepreneur needs to leverage to the
hilt. Why just meet with one Zombie VC when you can meet with a dozen? I
say this with complete sincerity because Zombie VCs can provide you a high
value, low risk service that you won't find anywhere else. Namely, they can
give you critically important real-world pitch practice that no amount of
prep work can replicate.

Even if you've practiced your pitch in the mirror a hundred times, you'll
be amazed by how much you learn from your first five VC meetings. You'll
figure out what tempo works best for you as you're presenting. You'll learn
how to handle interruptions that you weren't expecting. You'll hear a
variety of tough questions that you hadn't thought of. Most importantly,
you'll develop confidence while getting real feedback on the overall
efficacy of your pitch. Write down every question, every comment and soak
it all in. You'll use these invaluable insights to iterate upon your pitch
until you get it to a place where it feels just right.

And what better audience to have for you first few (highly imperfect)
pitches than the non-check-writing-but-surprisingly-eager-to-take-meetings
Zombie VC? Wouldn't you rather that your worst performances -- the ones
where you're still honing your craft -- are in front of investors that you
know will never invest? This is precisely why it's so important to rank
your prospective investors. Of course, you should be mindful of why you're
having these meetings and don't allow yourself to get sucked into the
vortex of follow-ups beyond the initial meeting. If the Zombie persists in
wanting to follow-up, tell them honestly that your goal for the first
meeting was to solicit feedback and to get to know their firm a little bit.
And be sure to say thank you. Because the Zombie helped you more than you
would've ever imagined.

Now go meet with some Zombies.

Agree? Disagree? Have something to say? Tweet at me on Twitter @hemang
Posted 25th April 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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8. Apr
22

MAVA TECHBUZZ & DIVERSITY OF VIEWS IN SEED INVESTING

On Tuesday, April 23rd, I'll be participating in a CEO/Investor panel at
the MAVA TechBUZZ Spring event in Bethesda. There are some great speakers
throughout the day and the attendee list looks really impressive. It should
be an excellent learning opportunity for all of you early stage founders
who want insight on how to go from zero to seed with your startup.

But what I'm most excited about is the vast diversity of seed-stage
investors that will be on the panel I'm participating in. There will be a
few angel investors (like me) who are focused on fostering the local tech
ecosystem. There are folks from traditional venture funds, who likely have
defined methods for how they evaluate seed stage opportunities. You'll also
get the perspective of two folks who help run state funded venture funds
(MD Venture Fund & CIT), which tend to have different investment criteria
than traditional venture. And finally you have someone representing the
corp dev and strategic side and who likely views opportunities through an
entirely different lens.

The great thing about this assortment of views is that the sixteen
companies pitching will get wide-ranging opinions that reflect the unique
interests and roles of the panelists. It's a pretty good bet that no two
panelists will have the same criteria for what defines a good investment.
This dynamic mirrors what you'll see in the real world. Nearly every
investor you'll meet has their own unique criteria as to what makes for a
good investment. What one investor sees as prince, another will see as a
toad. Where one sees clear sailing, another will see stormy seas.

When you're out there pitching your early stage company to investors it's
important that you don't lose sight of this dynamic. You're going to hear a
fair number of investors saying "no". Don't get discouraged. Your company
isn't necessarily broken or ugly. It may just not be the right fit for that
particular investor. Keep improving your pitch, keep getting detailed
feedback from every meeting, and make sure you take the time to understand
how each investor you meet with defines their investment criteria. With the
right approach and sufficient effort, you should be able to find an
investor who sees the big opportunity in what you're working on.

Later on this week, I'll be posting how I define my own investment criteria
for angel investing. Subscribe to the blog feed and stay tuned!
Posted 22nd April 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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9. Apr
20

RANKING POTENTIAL INVESTORS

It's incredibly important to figure out which investors are the right
investors for your startup. As you've probably heard, fundraising is an
all-encompassing, time consuming, pain-in-the-you-know-where process. It
always takes longer than you think. And unfortunately most of us waste a
hefty chunk of time on pitching the wrong investors -- people you have no
hope of ever collecting a check from.

The goal then, is to avoid those time-sucking meetings and to focus your
time on investors who are more likely to invest in your startup. Because
the less time you spend on fundraising, the sooner you can go back to
spending your time and energy on actually building your company.

In order to do that you first have to rank all of your potential investors
to figure out who you should spend your time chasing down. And notice that
I keep saying "investors" and not "VC firm". The reason for that is that
while the history and reputation of a VC firm is important, ultimately it's
about the individual partner that you're going to be working with.

So then what is the criteria for ranking potential investors? When we were
looking to raise an A round for Condaptive, here's how I went about the
ranking process:
1. The Laundry List -- Start by making a long long list of all potential
firms that you think are reasonable targets. Make sure you factor the
stage at which these firms invest when you're putting together the
list. If a firm only does later stage deals and you're raising a seed
round, it's a waste of time to talk to a partner there.
2. The Qualifier -- The single most important criteria is what I call "The
Qualifier". If your research indicates that a firm or individual angel
fails the qualifier, remove them from your list immediately. The
question is simply: are they really & truly investing money nowadays?
To figure this out, use a combination of Crunchbase and Google (or
simply ask) and you should be able to quickly determine how frequently
the investor is putting money into new investments (not follow-ons, NEW
investments). If you don't see any new investments in the past two or
three quarters, it's not likely to be a fruitful lead for you. This is
especially true of angel investors. For some reasons, lots of wannabe
angels spend time taking meetings even when they haven't cut a check
for a very long time (if ever).
3. The Fit -- Once you've eliminated all the prospects who aren't cutting
checks, the biggest part of my criteria is how well an individual
partner & the firm fit your company. Start by looking at their
portfolio. Do they invest in the vertical that you're in? Some VCs only
do consumer deals, so no matter how great your enterprise software
company is, it won't be a good fit. Some of the best VCs have outlined
the "themes" that they invest in right on their websites. Do you fit
one of those themes? Nearly every investor uses investment hypotheses,
and if you don't fit into one of these hypotheses, you won't get a
check. Have they funded a potential direct competitor of yours? If so,
most VCs won't create a conflict for themselves -- even if they might
happily take the meeting (you can imagine why this could be very bad
for you). Do they have domain expertise, connections and credibility in
your space? That could be very helpful for you in the long run. Can you
tell anything about their culture that might indicate whether you'd
have good or bad chemistry? Do they have a reputation for making fast
decisions or do they take forever? Are they widely respected by
entrepreneurs and other investors?
4. Geo Rationalization -- While the fit is clearly the most important
thing to consider, don't overlook geography. Investors tend to have
clear patterns in where they will invest and if your startup isn't in
one of these places, you'll have a hard time convincing them that you
should be the first check they cut for that geography. The reason for
this is simple. For VCs, investing often means taking board seats.
Board seats mean board meetings -- normally the in-person variety. For
angels, they prefer investing in their own back yard. Most of them are
investing to foster the startup ecosystem, and they normally want to
focus that effort in the community they live/work in. With all that
said, you shouldn't be dissuaded from pursuing that cross-country
investor who you've heard so many good things about. But, make sure
they have a history of investing in stuff in your area. I know of a
fair number of west coast VCs who happen to have a decent number of
east coast investments in their portfolio. Those guys already have to
travel east for board meetings and other business. For them, geo is
less of an issue than for their colleagues whose portfolio is comprised
solely of companies that are within one hour flight time.
5. The Warmer Intro -- It's a pretty good bet that investors are far more
likely to invest in people they already know. In fact, you're probably
10x more likely to get an investment from an investor who knows you
than from one you met for the first time yesterday. But because you
have only a few investors you know personally, you'll have to rely on
getting "warm intros" to others on your list. The warm intro is
incredibly important. If an investor doesn't know you personally,
they're not likely to respond to your email or take your phone calls.
You can waste a lot of time this way. They will however respond to your
email if you can find someone the investor does know and trust and get
that person to make an introduction for you. The better the investor
knows this person, the more seriously they'll take you. For that
reason, it makes a ton of sense to make sure that you get an intro from
someone who has a real relationship and past history with the investor
you want the intro to. Be picky in who you ask to make intros. Because
an intro from the right person will not just help you get your foot in
the door, but it can help you even more as you get further down the
path.

Now that you know all of the criteria, make good use of it. For us, we put
all of this data into a spreadsheet that we used as a way to track our
communication & progress with various investors. Here's what my spreadsheet
looked like:

Note that the "Score" wasn't just a straight adding of each criteria. We
actually weighted each criteria since some were more important than
others.

The other HUGE way that this ranking was helpful for us was that it told us
which meetings to pursue and when to pursue them. This was extremely
important! When you're first starting to pitch, you do NOT want to pitch
investors who are at the very top of your rankings. No, you need a lot of
practice first. You need to hone your pitch, listen to a bunch of questions
that other people ask you, revise your deck a few times and make sure you
really have the whole thing down to a science. Only then do you want to
pitch the high value guys. So your first meetings should be with people who
aren't nearly as high up on your rankings. Use those meetings to work out
the kinks and get good feedback. Practice your pitch every opportunity you
get. Only then will you be at your best for the meetings that really count.
Posted 20th April 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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10. Apr
19

ANOTHER RESOLUTION TO WRITE MORE...

In the weeks and months after my company Condaptive was acquired by
Millennial Media. I thought a lot about all of the things I learned in the
entire startup process from A to M (we hadn't quite gotten to Z yet). I
made a long list about all fo the topics I wanted to write about and told
myself that I was going to get better about blogging/tweeting and generally
being more productive within the startup community. Well, if you're reading
this blog now, you can see that never really happened. I keep making
resolutions to write regularly, and keep finding other things that take
priority.

I mention this because Paul Singh asked a question on one of the Facebook
group boards that we're in together about how to stack investors. That
happens to be one of the topics that I jotted down, so I figured it's time
to make yet another resolution about writing more.

Before I get started, there are a lot of people who can offer you
incredible advice because they've seen a situation a thousand times and
have expertise in the startup space. I'm not one of those people. I'll just
tell you about my experience and what we went through in starting, building
and selling a startup, and hopefully there's some insight there for you to
glean.

With all of those disclaimers in place...
Posted 19th April 2013 by Hemang Gadhia

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About Me
About Me
Hemang was the Founder & CEO of Condaptive, a mobile ad tech startup that
derived behavioral insights by deploying advanced data mining techniques while
processing exceptionally large data sets. Within a year of its founding,
Condaptive was acquired by Millennial Media, a leading mobile advertising
network.

After the acquisition, Hemang was SVP Audience Intelligence for Millennial Media
where he and his team were responsible for building the industry’s most advanced
data intelligence platform. Millennial’s data platform was the industry’s first
solution that allowed advertisers and developers to leverage advanced audience
targeting in generating highly relevant mobile experiences.

Given his background with data and digital advertising, Hemang is a frequent
speaker at industry conferences and events. He is also an active angel investor
& advisor for early stage startups focused on building technology that relates
to mobile, ad tech or big data. Hemang lives in the DC area with his beautiful
wife and two amazing kids. While he is a truly terrible golfer, he enjoys the
game and aspires to be slightly less terrible at some point in the future.

<img width="150" height="150"
src="https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/2883766316/895b6007dcc75aea8de12f245cb9cfa3.png"
align="left" hspace="15" />Hemang was the
Founder & CEO of Condaptive, a mobile ad tech startup that derived behavioral
insights by deploying advanced data mining techniques while processing
exceptionally large data sets. Within a year of its founding, Condaptive was
acquired by Millennial Media, a leading mobile advertising
network. After the acquisition, Hemang was SVP Audience Intelligence
for Millennial Media where he and his team were responsible for building the
industry’s most advanced data intelligence platform. Millennial’s data platform
was the industry’s first solution that allowed advertisers and developers to
leverage advanced audience targeting in generating highly relevant mobile
experiences. Given his background with data and digital advertising,
Hemang is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events. He is also an
active angel investor & advisor for early stage startups focused on building
technology that relates to mobile, ad tech or big data. Hemang lives in the DC
area with his beautiful wife and two amazing kids. While he is a truly terrible
golfer, he enjoys the game and aspires to be slightly less terrible at some
point in the future.

Blog Archive
Blog Archive
* 20141
* February1
* A Small Price for Facebook's Mobile Ascendancy
* 20139
* September1
* August1
* July1
* May2
* April4
* 20121
* October1
* 20116
* May1
* January5

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