Mashing Together A Job Search Engine: SimplyHired CEO Gautam Godhwani (Part 3)

SM: Your work at AtWeb concluded in 2000. What came next?

GG: At that time I really had a sense that I wanted to do something else. For me personally, and for a lot of the folks who had experienced the run-up of the internet, there was confusion about what to do at that time. It was great that I had a lot more flexibility with my time, but I just felt that I needed to get space and do something different. I felt some of the same things that I am sure many others have, so I took a year off.

SM: What did you do during the year off?

GG: I spent some of it in town but I realized very quickly that being in the Valley while not being engaged in a startup felt strange. It felt like I was in the game, but I wasn’t. I decided to start traveling. I spent about half the year traveling, and most of that travel was done in India where I went through a dozen states in India, 15 or 17 cities, and several villages. I gained a better sense of the country because I had not spent a lot of time there.

SM: What did you see?

GG: I am not big on sightseeing per-se. I care much more about getting a true sense of what is going on in the city. Typically I would arrive at a city and I would spend the first 3 or 4 hours getting the sightseeing over with, then I would spend the rest of the time chatting with people I met in cafes and other ad-hoc places. If the opportunity existed I would touch base with some distant connections. Sometimes the people I talked with were involved in areas I was interested in so we had good exchanges. I spent a lot of time walking through the city. Every day I would walk several miles.

SM: What cities did you see?

GG: I went through the entire western side of India. I started out in Dehli, Agra, Vadodara, Jodhpur, Bhopal, Ahmadabad, and Bombay. Then I went further south into Kerala where I visited Cochin, Shertallai, Kayankulam, Varkkallai, and just continued down the south of the country. I also went to some places in the east as well.

I was basically getting to know the country I had left at a very young age. It was more about connecting to the people. I took a subsequent trip as well. Between the two trips I talked with hundreds of people, individually as well as in groups. I learned about their lives. I learned a lot about the development sector. I visited 6 to 10 of the top NGOs around India and got a sense of what they were doing in some depth. My brother and his wife had also done some traveling, and we both returned about the same time.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Mashing Together A Job Search Engine: SimplyHired CEO Gautam Godhwani
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