

MixergyNotes on Gurbaksh Chahal, founder of gWallet and self-made millionaire. - mixergyNOTES
http://mixergynotes.com/gurbaksh-g-chahal-gwallet/

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starkfist
I watched the Mixergy thing and read these notes, and have read other stuff
about this guy. I was in Silicon Valley when he built and sold his startups.
At the time, I did not understand what his startups did, and I still do not
understand how ad startups like this work or make money. I especially don't
know why they make $300M instead of $3M or even $3000. How does the product
work? How is it sold? Who buys this service? Does it require heavy hitter
sales people or are customers just entering their credit card number in to a
web form? Do you just make up the prices as you go along?

Sadly, I believe my lack of understanding means that I'll probably never be
successful as an entrepreneur. I'm still trapped in the "I must build a better
iPhone to succeed as an entrpreneur" mindset. Obviously one can build an ad
network instead. But I just. don't. get. it. Please advise.

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il
If you're doing any sort of Internet startup, you should really try to develop
an understanding of the online ad market, either to monetize your app or
market it.

Ad networks are very simple- they connect advertisers with publishers and take
a cut(usually 30-50%) of the advertiser's spend.

The reason BlueLithium was(and remains) so successful is that instead of
targeting the entire network of publishers or simply segmenting them by
channels/topics, they pioneered some rudimentary behavioral targeting to show
ads to people who were more likely to click on them. This led to lower CPA/CPC
for advertisers, which means they were willing to pay more for impressions.
That led to BlueLithium being able to pay publishers more, resulting in rapid
growth for the network.

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cj
_gWallet raised $12.5 million, 2 months after launch_

You mean after gWallet's second launch? I find it interesting that G never
mentioned that gWallet initially launched as a coupon website (similiar to
retailmenot.com), totally unrelated to virtual currency.

Mentioning a few of Gurbaksh's failures would have been enlightening.

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10ren
$40 million at 18 is mindblowing.

The "hire developers to make it" approach is not for me personally, but there
are important pure-entrepreneur lessons here that some of us inventor-
entrepreneurs forget all too easily:

\- “When you go to market, you don’t need the best thing, you just need
something.”

\- “Startups primarily exist to execute faster and more efficiently than
bigger companies that have gotten lazy and bureaucratic.”

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trevelyan
Is this site run by Andrew Warner as well?

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paraschopra
Doesn't look like that is the case. Though I see the site adding value over
existing material on Mixergy.

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shafqat
Its a bit annoying that there is no link to the actual mixergy interview (or
if there is, I can't find it!).

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robryan
The suspect thing I see about this is that it doesn't link back to Mixergy at
all or even mention that it is summarizing another websites content.

Seems to step a little bit over fair use if it's an unauthorized site.

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NZ_Matt
Andrew mentioned mixergyNotes in one of his interviews. He supports it and
encourages others to find ways to use his content.

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robryan
Ahh ok, that's fine then.

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zain
Flagged as spam.

The submitter, mixergyNOTES, has two submissions total, both pointing to
mixergynotes.com; also, he has four comments (two of which were killed), all
of which spam mixergynotes.com and are only tangentially related to the topic.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mixergyNOTES>

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paraschopra
Why spam? The site seems to provide value and I enjoyed reading the summary of
mixergy interviews. I don't think self promotion, if relevant to HNers, should
be marked as spam.

