
The $100M ARR Club - intheairtonight
https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/10/the-100m-arr-club/
======
ignoramous
WalkMe's and Druva's humble beginning [0][1] remind me of two of my personal
favourite $100M+ ARR companies, Madras-based start-ups that did not seek
investments for a long-time: Zoho [2] and Freshworks [3]. The latter was co-
founded by u/girishm after being inspired by a comment on news.yc [4].

Zoho, founded by u/sridharvembu, a competitor to GSuite and Salesforce [5],
has a unique recruitment strategy: Educate and train small-town teenagers, who
typically cannot afford higher education, at _Zoho University_ , for whatever
career it is they want to take up at the organization [6].

I sometimes wonder if u/girishm applied to YC and didn't make it?

\---

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/walkme-walks-you-
through-w...](https://techcrunch.com/2012/04/02/walkme-walks-you-through-
websites/)

[1] [https://www.druva.com/about/](https://www.druva.com/about/)

[2] [https://inc42.com/buzz/sridhar-vembu-shares-the-secret-
sauce...](https://inc42.com/buzz/sridhar-vembu-shares-the-secret-sauce-with-
which-hes-run-zoho-profitably-for-21-years/)

[3] [https://inc42.com/buzz/freshworks-launches-
freshworks-360-as...](https://inc42.com/buzz/freshworks-launches-
freshworks-360-as-it-crosses-100-mn-arr/)

[4]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340732)

[5]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5836569)

[6] [https://qz.com/india/1029316/zoho-corporation-is-
building-a-...](https://qz.com/india/1029316/zoho-corporation-is-building-a-
million-dollar-empire-with-an-army-of-high-school-graduates-in-india/)

~~~
Abishek_Muthian
Zoho is my goto example for bootstrapping and Mr. Sridhar Vembu's quote about
it when it comes to Indian startup ecosystem.

>Go outside your home and see the coconut vendor or the chaiwala(tea seller).
They are bootstrapped. - Sridhar Vembu[1]

This is true for a developing startup ecosystem like India, where startups
have been treated just like any other Business and Valley philosophies need
not necessarily apply.

>Madras-based start-ups

At the same time, I refrain from quoting Zoho as the rule-book for Indian
startups as starting AdventNet(Zoho's original name) in California by a
Princeton Alumni accelerated it to become what it is now and I don't want
misrepresent facts by telling Zoho as 'Slum dog millionaire' story(Not
directly relating to your statement).

Zoho has re-established itself as an Indian company after the IT Boom and as
an Indian Startup in the ongoing Startup boom.

>unique recruitment strategy: They educate and train small-town teenagers, who
typically cannot afford higher education, at Zoho University,

It's truly unique. But it wasn't completely altruistic(it needn't be) because,
recruitment in India is done on the basis of degrees and in the early days;
those graduated from the Zoho university(not real univ) without proper degree
were bound to work there and so extremely low attrition.

[1][https://inc42.com/buzz/bootstrapping-for-21-years-worked-
for...](https://inc42.com/buzz/bootstrapping-for-21-years-worked-for-zoho-
sridhar-vembu-tells-how-to-make-it-work-for-you/)

P.S. Your archive of HN threads and users (from your profile) is very
impressive. Do you have any tools in place to store and monitor them?

~~~
ignoramous
Thanks. I wish I could tell there was a sophisticated workflow behind it
all... but it simply involves a lot of rote, time spent searching and reading.

> Your archive of HN threads

Thread discovery is usually through
[https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com), recalling from memory,
looking at a user's past submissions and comments, and bookmarks; in that
order.

> (from your profile)

I tend to research a lot on tech I am interested in by looking at comments on
news.yc (hn.algolia is pretty good for this), and it isn't long before I find
the same set of users expertly discussing things on the said tech. I, then,
note those users down in my profile [0].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19556720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19556720)

------
mkagenius
If you are an entrepreneur reading this and having ARR much lesser than this
but you are profitable to the point you can sustain your business -- you have
my respect. Its a feat to just be profitable enough to keep the business
running.

Lets not let these headlines demotivate you. $500K ARR is equally cool.

~~~
rubyfan
Net Income is cooler

------
randomchars
All these 'extra crunch' articles seem very high quality, but it's beyond
annoying that I haven't been able to ready any of them.

I understand why services like Netflix are only available in some countries,
but an online publication? That's just crazy. Take my money already!

~~~
tyingq
[https://outline.com/MaMput](https://outline.com/MaMput) Also easier to read
on mobile.

Edit: Ahh yeah, sorry. Gets cut off at the same point. I didn't understand the
paywall kicks in pretty far into the article. At least the folks getting the
regional block can read the teaser portion.

~~~
kamikaz1k
Indeed! Much better mobile layout!

But still seems to be missing stuff in the end... Unless it was meant to end
abruptly.

~~~
randomchars
No, these articles are usually pretty long, so the point where it gets off is
only at the beginning of the article.

------
atemerev
"We’re sorry. Extra Crunch membership is currently only available for readers
in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, and Spain".

Well, I'm not in any of these countries. I am in Switzerland. And for some
stupid reason I can't read this.

The Internet was supposed to transcend the national boundaries, but they seem
to persist. We need to either fix this Internet, or build the new better one.

~~~
marvin
It’s not the Internet that’s the problem here though, it’s a combination of
stupidity/laziness (the easiest part to fix) and bad incentives, business
practices and regulations.

The latter part is very hard to fix, because it reflects very diverse human
motivations...

~~~
dmos62
I'll add that internet is also in many ways a combination of
"stupidity/laziness (the easiest part to fix) and bad incentives, business
practices and regulations". Actually, you might be able to say that about any
public resource, because the bad parts of most things are some configuration
of those problems.

------
netman21
I wish HN would just ban links to paywalled sites altogether. I am so
frustrated I no longer read NYT, WashPost, the frigg'n LA Times, even my local
newspaper. The content web is seriously broken. Even Medium is paywalled now.
I hope Wired stays open. Otherwise we will be down to BBC, NPR, and TV News
sites, which are so plastered with ads you have to grit your teeth before
clicking on a link.

~~~
rco8786
Serious question - how do you expect news sites to deliver their content
without you either paying them directly or them showing you ads?

~~~
code_biologist
I think it's reasonable to ask with respect to HN policy. It's hard to have a
meaningful discussion when only a small percentage of the people on HN can
read the full article.

What percentage of HN visitors do you think can read the full text of this
article? 1% seems like a high estimate.

~~~
sealthedeal
I beg to differ. HN’ers can always find something so abstracted from the
article to debate about. This thread now, “Should news sites have paywalls?”
“Should we ban pay walled news sources from HN?”. HN’ers are always down for a
good debate!

------
esotericn
This article isn't available on the world wide web, only on specific
countrywebs.

Can we please [tag] articles like this, and the GDPR 'not available in your
country' stuff?

Paywalls are one thing; this is literally impossible to view for me without
signing up for a VPN.

~~~
thatguyagain
Difficult for the poster to look up every country the link works for, don't
you think?

~~~
esotericn
Right, so it can be changed when someone reports it.

There are also some domains that are well known to just block the entire EU
for the bants, for example.

