Session Overview:
This session brings together veteran entrepreneur Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati and now Offbeat Guides, with investor Abrar Ahmad, Partner at Travel Capitalist Ventures. Sifry will talk about where content is going, where it wants to go, how you can free it and give it context and customization. Abrar, whose portfolio companies (including Offbeat Guides) have transactions totaling US$800 million, will talk about what he’s looking for in the next big thing in travel startups and share the nuances of travel investments in emerging markets.
• Abrar Ahmad, Partner, Travel Capitalist Ventures
• David L. Sifry, Founder and CEO, Offbeat Guides
Back from lunch – here we go. Siew Hoon is excited as she says a lot of effort has gone into this afternoon’s content. It’s great to have such an energetic host.
Siew Hoon introduces the two guys as the ’one with the money’ and the ‘one with the content’.
It wasn’t terribly difficult to get an investor interested, says David. Interestingly, he says, the idea for Offbeat Guides came from a real problem he himself kept having when he was travelling. He says the travel info he had access towas either out of date or way too broad in its scope.
Over to Abrar (an investor in Offbeat Guides) who says he didn’t know Dave, but he knew ‘of Dave’. He says that Dave’s product was very appealing.
When asked about his energy and drive, Dave says his inspiration comes from asking himself if he could keep passionate about something during its downtimes.
He needs to love the idea, he says. From the other side of the fence, Abrar says there is no lack of ideas but crucially he needs to understand if there is a ‘business around it’.
Dave’s idea had the ability to scale but Siew Hoon wants to know how important having an exit is. Abrar says that, as investors, the timeframe is longer so on his side, ‘an exit will come’ he says.
Dave says the blog search engine that he founded, Technorati, is going very well – the advertising market is coming back, he says. He looks at his companies as ‘his children’ but at the same time recognizes that everything is always for sale ‘at some time.’
Siew Hoon continues with the theme and suggests that the idea of the personal attachment could be a double-edged sword with the owner perhaps hanging on when they shouldn’t. Abrar says that there come points in a business when clearly ‘something has to happen’. Dave says you then have to ask yourself those important questions when these points come and the ‘rest kind of takes care of itself’.
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Why would I want (and pay for) a travel information when there is so much out there, even if it is customised, asks Siew Hoon? Information also wants to be expensive (as well as free) says Dave. It’s about supply and demand.
“How do I cut the wheat from the chaff,” he says, “I’m paying for the convenience of having a ‘curator’ put the information together. That’s what they are paying for. He asked himself how he could sensibly bridge the digital and the real. He added that figuring out how you do distribution is key and ‘you gotta be thinking about that’. “If you can’t figure it out, you’re never going to get to the million.”
When asked about future investment opportunities, Abrar says social travel is very important and growing in Asia, so are location travel on a mobile device and friend searching and various mashups. Which is bigger, asks Siew Hoon, China or India? Both he says but for now he’s focused on India.
Final question to Abrar – what’s the worst investment you’ve made? He says they’ve all been good but there are some companies he regrets not being able to invest in.
Dave says he’s made so many mistakes but it’s a question of getting back up and dusting oneself off. Make new mistakes – not the same ones again, he concludes.
