A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the next move?

Moshe Vaknin: I co-founded a company called CheckM8. I did like the world of the Internet and I didn’t want to move away from that. I wanted to stay in that field. I realized that I know the ecosystem. We built a rich media platform. When everybody was doing banners, we came up with dynamic advertising. We registered a patent on it. At that time, dynamic advertising was a pretty big story. It was pretty easy to get funded.

Sramana Mitra: Yes, because you already had one exit.

Moshe Vaknin: Exactly. I got big funds from Japan. It was a pretty good experience – good and bad actually. One thing though is that I gave too much control to the Japanese. I had about five venture funds in Japan and another one from the US. Now they’ve changed with the way they think about entrepreneurship and founders. Back then, they really wanted to control the company. They don’t like to sell companies. That’s the problem.

They invest money to have your product for their own business. Every venture fund in Japan is not really a venture fund. They’re corporate funds typically. They invest in a lot of companies. They didn’t want to sell the company. After seven years, I sold my shares to them and left. My partner stayed there for almost 15 years. He continues to hold some shares. It was a pretty nice return for us and a good experience for me. It’s really important to have a very good relationship with investors.

Sramana Mitra: This brings us up to 2007?

Moshe Vaknin: Exactly. Then I founded a new company called TodaCell. In 2007, I shifted to the mobile world. Mobile had just started. I had an idea to try to build a big marketplace for mobile advertisers and mobile content. We wanted to build the technologies that will help advertisers get good inventory for a good price. It was pretty good at the beginning. The first two years was a good journey. I wanted to raise a lot of money. I learned that if you want to build a big media company, I think you need money to run fast. You cannot just rely on small amounts.

Sramana Mitra: What was the idea that you were building on?

Moshe Vaknin: The idea was pretty unique. Mobile advertising had just started. I remember going around asking investors. They didn’t believe in the story. There were not that many companies and investors who believed in mobile advertising. Now, it’s obvious. At that time, the biggest phone was Nokia with the small screen. I remember going to a bunch of funds that I had known. They told me that they didn’t believe that it was going to fly. It was extremely difficult to convince people. Eventually, we got money for the company. I stayed there for five years. I realized that I cannot make something big out of the company. I decided to leave. The company didn’t do well.

This segment is part 3 in the series : A Serial Entrepreneur’s Journey: Moshe Vaknin, CEO of YouAppi
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