Building a $50M Profitable Social Network Focused on Discovery: Greg Tseng, CEO of Tagged (Part 6)

Sramana: Where are you at in terms of revenue?

Greg Tseng: We did $43 million in revenue last year. We are currently on a $50 million run rate.

Sramana: What are the levers in the business at the moment?

Greg Tseng: At the highest level, it is growth in the registered user base. Based on the engagement level, you know the active usage level and based on that, you can anticipate the level of monetization that is going to occur. Our various growth engines to acquire more users would be some of our levers. Continuing to build a better product will result in higher engagement.

A big part of that today is reorienting our company and product to be successful in the world of mobile. Everything is becoming mobile, and we need to lead in that trend. The last piece would be optimization. This is not only features but also in terms of payment methods. We need to be able to easily collect payments from our customers.

Sramana: What financing strategy have you followed? Can I assume that you put in the funding from cash businesses into Tagged?

Greg Tseng: In the entire history of Tagged we have raised $12 million in venture capital funds. Our last round was in 2007 and that was enough to get us to profitability in 2008. Since then we have done a few rounds of venture debts. We are profitable, so we can raise debt and pay back over time. Right now we have plenty of money in the bank.

Cash is not our constraint. Our constraint is hiring really good people and making our current staff into a productive, execution oriented organization. We need more hands on keyboards and more output from those hands.

Sramana: Is the $12 million you refer to outside venture financing?

Greg Tseng: Yes.

Sramana: You did have some money from CrushLink that you put into JumpStart. Did that all go into this?

Greg Tseng: When we spun Tagged out of JumpStart, we raised money just for Tagged at that time. We used our funds to incubate Tagged.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Building a $50M Profitable Social Network Focused on Discovery: Greg Tseng, CEO of Tagged
1 2 3 4 5 6 7