Connecting The Censored Internet: AnchorFree CEO David Gorodyansky, Mountain View, CA (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Do you have partnerships with companies like Skype, Facebook, or other sites that you enable in censored countries?

David Gorodyansky: We don’t, but we probably will at some point. I think they know about us because we send such a huge amount of traffic to them. We are happy to talk to them about partnerships, but it is not necessary because we have a sustainable revenue model already in place.

Sramana Mitra: I was not thinking about the money aspects of the partnership but rather the potential for market penetration. Your 1 million users in China could shoot up to 5 million pretty fast.

David Gorodyansky: I agree that there could be some good benefits for distribution. We want to get to 100 million users as fast as possible.

Sramana Mitra: I am a person who is very familiar with technology, yet today is the first time I have heard of your company. What are the touch points that you are missing in the Western world?

David Gorodyansky: That is a good question. We are trying to figure out how to get the average soccer mom who is not tech savvy to use our product. There is a practical pain point, but the problem is that people do not perceive it. In emerging markets we don’t have to sell it because they need us very badly. We do have a product called ExPat Shield that helps people connect to their home continent. Some people use it to watch Hulu abroad or when they are working in or stationed in censored countries. That pain point is easy for them to see. We connect them back to the U.S. or U.K. and they can access the Internet like they would otherwise. We need to get average Western users to find the same value.

The aspect I am most excited about is running a very profitable company that truly makes a social impact. We have tons of people emailing us to tell us how they are helping with their democracy movement. We feel like we make a real impact on people’s daily lives. I have friends who have been offered jobs at Zenga, and they have turned it down because they sell virtual cows and goats. They want to do something that is real. If you don’t want Google to track what you do online, turn us on and be safe.

Sramana Mitra: Silicon Valley is booming, and it is hard to hire quality engineers. How do you handle that?

David Gorodyansky: Our real competition are the companies trying to hire the engineers whom we are hiring: Facebook, Zenga, and Google. We hire only the best people, and those who do come work for us love the social aspect. They get all the benefits of working for a venture-funded company in the Valley with lots of stock, and the company is profitably while growing very fast. At the same time, they get the chance to have a real social impact. That is the real difference. We are helping people get democracy and freedom. That is very real.

Sramana Mitra: Facebook would not be able to work in censored countries without you, but what would you do there without Facebook?

David Gorodyansky: There is still a lot of demand for other sites besides Facebook. Facebook is definitely one of the biggest platforms for activism. People who choose to work with us are people who appreciate complex technical tasks. We have to make sure China does not block us, and that is not easy. We are on their radar. They know who we are.

Sramana Mitra: Can they block you? Is it technically feasible?

David Gorodyansky: The answer is no. They can try to block part of our traffic, but we have an entire architecture that prevents us from being blocked. That is our core value proposition. We have an entire team of engineers who do nothing but that.

Sramana Mitra: This has been a very cool story; thanks for sharing it.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Connecting The Censored Internet: AnchorFree CEO David Gorodyansky, Mountain View, CA
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