A Serial “Data” Entrepreneur’s Journey: Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What happens next?

Bassel Ojjeh: We got our first few customers. We wanted to counter what the software industry is used to. We went open source. The goal was ubiquity. What we found out fairly quickly is, if you’re selling to traditional companies, they’re not used to buying open source software. It became counter-intuitive to them.

We got advice from our first few customers. They said, “Call it whatever you want to. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that we’re buying a license.” We decided to abandon the notion of open source. It became a disabler.

We went back to a traditional model. It is subscription-based. When we look at the data world, you’re looking at an evolution of traditional software like Oracle, IBM giving the software to a vendor and system integrator who deploys it with a customer. The success rate is around 30%.

We’ve shifted our thinking into saying we want to be able sell a solution including the deployment. We said, “We will sell you a solution. Our software is part of it.” We call that DaaS. We would deploy it. 

Sramana Mitra: What year are we up to now?

Bassel Ojjeh: Probably the last two years. 

Sramana Mitra: This company that you’re talking about is the one that you started after Yahoo?

Bassel Ojjeh: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: But this is not the company you are running now?

Bassel Ojjeh: The company I’m running now is LigaData. We took this learning from Yahoo. In between, we had a detour. 

Sramana Mitra: I’m a bit confused. I’m missing the link between what happened after Yahoo and the company that you’re running. When was LigaData founded?

Bassel Ojjeh: I joined Yahoo in 2004 to about 2009. I left Yahoo with that same premise that I mentioned. I had a stint with a company that I got funding for. We ended up restructuring it to be LigaData. I wanted to sell to traditional brands.

We came across a massive marketing and advertising agency with access to all these brands. You’re building a car and Mercedes wants to fund you. I went down that path. We got funding from what’s considered to be a strategic. We went down that path.

In about a year and a half, it became clear that their goals and our goals don’t match. Our maturity and theirs don’t match. It ended up being a total nightmare. There was a total mismatch. That was painful. When we realized this, it became a race of saying, “We’re running out of funding. The products aren’t generating the revenue we want.”

At that point, it just became too late to do something. That’s when I restructured the company. We were scrambling, trying to figure out what to do. That’s when we came across the angel investors who helped us create LigaData.

Sramana Mitra: You just washed out the old funding partners?

Bassel Ojjeh: There was an effort from their side to do an acquisition. At the 11th hour, it went sideways. The lesson learned is if you don’t have the maturity or revenue to get funding from a large company, that could be a kiss of death. Their decision-making took weeks to a month or two. We agreed that this didn’t work for both parties. That’s the point where I restructured. 

This segment is part 4 in the series : A Serial “Data” Entrepreneur’s Journey: Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData
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