Rolling Up Professional Networks: Dan Serfaty, CEO of Viadeo (Part 7)

Sramana: I can definitely understand why you would have the biggest challenge in India. It is an English-speaking country, and it is well connected to Silicon Valley and tied into America.

Dan Serfaty: The Silicon Valley connection is key. LinkedIn is very popular in Silicon Valley. Perhaps if India were tied into the Midwest it would not be the same issue for us. We believe that we will still be able to develop there, and we are moving fast. We have moved from 150,000 users to 1.5 million users in less than one year. We are focusing on providing local services such as horoscopes. I can’t tell you how important that is for Indian people. It is key.

Sramana: People don’t pay there. If you required people to pay, you would have very little in the way of a user base.

Dan Serfaty: For now, that is OK. For the moment it is about growing.

Sramana: India is full of spam machines. Unless you put some sort of a pay wall in place, it will continue to be that way.

Dan Serfaty: That is true, but for now we will focus on growth.

Sramana: Your international strategy has been to complete a roll-up. What are you going to do about America? LinkedIn pretty much has the American market.

Dan Serfaty: Yes, I think so. There are two things that are interesting here. First, forget about LinkedIn and America for a minute. We want to be a world leader, and LinkedIn is failing in China, Brazil, and other countries. They do not take into account the local way of networking may not be the American way of doing things.

I have one platform and I roll it up. It does not work in some countries. A ‘take it or leave it’ approach does not work at all in Russia. LinkedIn works in the United States, the UK, and India. They are close to the United States and have similar business structures. Israel is another.

Sramana: Those are all countries that are deeply tied into Silicon Valley.

Dan Serfaty: Exactly.

Sramana: If you go to the mid-level managers and salespeople in Brazil, then you have an interesting possibility.

Dan Serfaty: For me, the challenge of this business in the years to come is to finally become useful to people. I am crazy when I say that. How many times a week does someone use LinkedIn?

Sramana: I go a lot, but I still don’t pay for it. They have 70 million people on the network, but they can’t get us as customers. I was one of the first 100 who made LinkedIn. People like me built it.

Dan Serfaty: I don’t think that we deliver 5% of what we should be delivering for professionals. When we speak about a dating website, you know what you need to bring to the picture. How does that work for a professional social network? If you are a journalist, you have specific needs. If you are a researcher, you have different needs from those of the journalist. You can’t do everything. The game in the future will be made by people who fulfill the needs of professionals.

External partners need to be included in the platform. If you can know more about your customers or the people who viewed your profile, then the tool becomes more useful. We need to open the API to third party developers. Those developers are in Silicon Valley.

Sramana: Where is your company located?

Dan Serfaty: We are headquartered in France. We have half of our workforce there. We have 60 people in China, 30 to 40 in India, and another 20 in Silicon Valley. Things happen here. All of the countries that link with the United States do it through Silicon Valley when technology is in the picture. That is why we need to build our presence here. I have personally moved here.

Sramana: Good luck! I look forward to following your story.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Rolling Up Professional Networks: Dan Serfaty, CEO of Viadeo
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