Presentation made at Pluggd.in Hackathon in Bangalore (Nov, 2011)

1. The MobStac Story
“From Hacker to Founder”
Ravi Pratap @ravipratap
#PiHackathon - Nov 5, 2011
says “India’s hottest young startup!”

2. About Me
• Open source hacker
• GNOME, Mono, libcurl
• Startup guy
• Early employee, Hillcrest
Labs, Washington, D.C.
• Co-founder & CTO,
MobStac

3. 1999-2001: Open Source Roots
Fascinated by
impact of open
source on the
world
Learnt how to
translate idea into
product
GUADEC 2001, Copenhagen

4. 2002-2003: CS Graduate School
Dove deep into
Computer
Science
Strove to become
the best at my
chosen trade
St. Louis Arch

5. 2004-2005: Morgan Stanley
Programming,
sure, but what
about impact?
Learnt about
what I did not
want to do
Radio City Hall, New York

6. 2005-2008: Hillcrest Labs
Learnt the ropes
of everything
Product, people,
project
management, you
name it
Seize initiative!
Hillcrest Labs office, Rockville, MD

7. MobStac: Early Years
Late 2008: Planning the
startup
Mid 2009: Moving to
Bangalore
Single-bedroom office, 2
employees
11 employees, MobStac
office, US corp.

8. Jan-June 2010
Chased enterprise publishers like Hindustan Times, Hindu, etc.
- ZILCH, NADA, NOTHING
Decided that what really mattered is “adoption”
Stuck to our core vision - turned down lots of services
opportunities
Experimented a ton: mobile ad server, vernacular rendering,
etc.

9. Oct 2010: Web Launch
!"#$%&'(#)*+&,#-#.-& 345&46&74*(.8#+-&
/01&/22& //0&
)!!"
Woah, what just (!!"
happened! '!!"
&!!"
%!!"
$!!"
#!!"
Iterate, iterate, iterate !"
#*+,-" .*+,-" #'*+,-" $$*+,-" $/*+,-" '*012" #$*012"

10. Traction Led to Rapid Iteration
Product improved leaps and
bounds
Learned about real
customer needs and
opportunities
Improved technology under
the hood relentlessly

11. Moving Faster
Stopped being scared of
running out of money
Continued to run
experiments
“Made more mistakes”

12. August 2011: Touchsite Experiment
Tablets are game changers
Figured the user experience
could be vastly different
from a PC site
Launched at TechCrunch
Disrupt SF 2011

13. Things That Have Stayed With Me
Dream big: know where you want to go
Build networks: people are important
Always strive for perfection: don’t ever stop learning!

14. Come Work At MobStac!
work@mobstac.com