A Serial “Data” Entrepreneur’s Journey: Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData (Part 2)

Bassel Ojjeh: Backing up, what’s really important when I started my career at the database company in Ohio was coming in and saying, “We’re working out of someone’s house.” At that time, we shipped products. You put it in the box and put it out the door.

We had to stop whatever we were doing at 4PM to make sure that we go to the shipping room and be ready for UPS. I saw the company grow from there to the point where UPS would send empty trucks on an hourly basis to load up all the boxes we had every day. I saw how we grew to that point.

Microsoft acquired us. I went to Microsoft and worked on different products including online. This is where I started gravitating towards not so much data technology but more around data usage. How do you leverage data?

I was trying to do that at Microsoft, but I felt like it was very limiting. That wasn’t a priority for everyone. Whatever you do, you have to think about it from the platform perspective. It wasn’t about solutions to the business; it was about platforms given to somebody. I felt constrained. Microsoft was not interested in leveraging it. Optimization was not a priority.

Along with two other colleagues, we decided to build an analytical company that helps companies understand their data. We started it, and we were building a subscription model. At that time, it wasn’t called SaaS. We take data, host it, process it, and provide you the analytics. 

Sramana Mitra: What year was that?

Bassel Ojjeh: Early 2000. We went off and signed up customers. We were building the technology based on the subscription model. We got overfunded. We raised around $40 million. 

Sramana Mitra: In Seattle?

Bassel Ojjeh: Yes. Then the dotcom crash happened. Things became very clear. You have your burn. You have revenue that’s not covering your burn. Meanwhile, getting customers is also getting difficult. The company pivoted. I left.

I did another startup that is smaller. It’s bootstrapped. I wanted to do the same thing, but I wanted to do it for a few large customers. We wanted to do that for industries that are not in tech. In that process, we came across Yahoo!. That was in 2004.

The premise in the online world is, if you look at Yahoo!, they didn’t really have products that they were selling. They had a lot of data. They needed to build an advertising platform. They were looking around how to organize themselves around that capability.

Me and a colleague of mine started working very closely with Yahoo! I came up with a number of recommendations. They bought the company eventually.

Sramana Mitra: When you sold to Yahoo!, it had a lot of venture funding?

Bassel Ojjeh: No. I exited the venture-funded company and started another one.

Sramana Mitra: How much did you sell the company for?

Bassel Ojjeh: We never disclosed it.

Sramana Mitra: Were you the only shareholder?

Bassel Ojjeh: There were two of us.

Sramana Mitra: The two of you built a bootstrapped company, sold it to Yahoo!, and made a reasonable amount of money at that point. What year was this?

Bassel Ojjeh: 2004.

Sramana Mitra: Did you have to go to Yahoo?

Bassel Ojjeh: Yes.

This segment is part 2 in the series : A Serial “Data” Entrepreneur’s Journey: Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData
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