36 Unicorns do Exist 37 People at a Billion-Dollar Scale 38 Advice from Billion-Dollar CEOs 39 Getting Acquired Notes Index About the Author
Acknowledgements I’d love to thank the following people for all their help, input, opinions and support throughout the process of creating this book: Tina Baker, Niqui Berkowski, Samar Chang, Brad Feld, Jay Bregman, Steve Brumwell, Poppy Hope, Michael Varley, Matthew Osborne, Dominika Dudziuk, Anthony Gell, and my editor Zoe Bohm.
It will share my insider’s view of this world with you – along with the interviews and conversations I have been so lucky to have with these amazing ‘mobile’ entrepreneurs
In early 2011, I had just completed the sale of my startup (a video-dating site called WooMe) and was relishing the chance to take a few months off in the sun, when I saw a cryptic post on a tech website from the entrepreneur Jay Bregman and couldn’t help but get in touch. I shot him an email, met him in person and found myself intrigued by his idea for a new mobile startup – an app that allowed passengers to hail a taxi from their smartphone. But his approach was fresh and disruptive (and in this book I’ll be using ‘disruptive’ to describe something that brings about a step change, shakes things up a bit). It directly solved the problem of how to build up a community of drivers before any passengers were using the app. From my very first conversation with Jay I realised that his vision for the company was global – an app that any person could use in any language to catch a taxi in any city in the world. I was sold. Jay needed someone with my experience to translate his great vision into a concrete business strategy, to refine the business model – and build the technology and software to turn it into an app. And so, in early 2011, only a few weeks after the company was incorporated, I joined the tiny startup as the Head of Product. The company was named Hailo. Since then it’s been a meteoric trajectory, growing from a handful of people on the HMS President (an old warship transformed into budget office space which bucks, rolls and creaks with the River Thames traffic) to more than 250 people in 7 countries and hundreds of millions of dollars in taxi fares. My experience at Hailo tount about what it takes to achieve success on a huge, global scale and proved that anyone with a great idea for an app-centric business has the potential to turn that idea into reality – and a global success.
Whether you’re a newcomer to mobile technology, a gifted developer, seasoned entrepreneur or just intrigued by what it takes to build a billiondollar company in this day and age, this book is for you
Why This Book Is Different This book will help you get inside the head of people who have built billiondollar apps.1 It will help you to see the world as they see it – and take you on the journeys that they have been through. As an entrepreneur – and an engineer – I want to tell you the loans payday Virginia way it really is. I want to talk about what happens behind the scenes and behind the computer screens. I’ve read enough stories about the glamorous side of technology startups, where billionaires are created overnight as if by magic – but, to hit billion-dollar heights, there is a huge amount that goes on behind the scenes that your ultimate success will depend on. I have been lucky enough to work with and meet some of the most talented, passionate – and lucky – entrepreneurs out there. I have also had the chance to work with some of the most experienced mobile-technology investors in the world – including Accel Partners, Union Square Ventures, Atomico, Index Ventures and Wellington Partners. This book is a distillation of countless late nights, years of hard work and a great adventure. It’s not just a theory My bookshelves are piled high with books brimming with great advice about how to build a great business, about how to cross chasms and be an effective executive. Biographies of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, investor Warren Buffett, Google cofounder Larry Page, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and