Proof that $400m does not make you any smarter
by Tushar Burman
I just read this article on Rediff, detailing the upcoming ventures of Hotmail founder, Sabeer Bhatia. I always thought his hyped status as some sort of biz/tech whizkid was insanely optimistic, but I guess $400m can make anybody feel a tad overconfident. Hotmail was a matter of being at the right place at the right time. It didn’t take killer technology or particularly ingenious ideas, and it wasn’t the first.
Bhatia made an attempt at another business with Arzoo.com, which, as far as I can recall, was something of a marketplace for customers and professionals to trade services. That bombed, but is pending a relaunch “on the lines of Expedia”. His new projects are even more pedestrian:
A Skype wannabe with built-in games. I quote,
“Entertainment has a great opportunity in the country, and this is what is going to be the differentiator considering there are a number of other VoIP providers like Skype, Yahoo, MSN and GoogleTalk,”
Umm… don’t the competitors, barring Skype and Google, also have games and links to gaming content built-in? SkypeOut also does POTS calls plenty cheap, so I’m not sure how much impact the one rupee rate will have.
Another Bhatia project aims to speed up Hotmail, because users are complaining. Can you say Greasemonkey with spyware? Still another project aims to “increase the capacity of Hotmail”, and the article mentions the discrepancy between the email storage space available to Indian and US-resident Hotmail users.
And the icing:
“My services are always free, and I make my money from the advertisement revenue,”
Sweet. Why didn’t I think of that? Sabeer, a word of advice chief: put some of that $400m into a fixed-deposit and get some of that Section 80C loving. I think mutual funds are probably beyond your level of sophistication right now.
Technorati Tags: hotmail, sabeerbhatia, arzoo
Comments
cut him some slack, the rich deserve to blow up their money in any stupid way they please, he is creating temporary jobs for hungry programmers.
Most entreprenuers have a high failure rate, we remember them only for their successes, 5 failures to one success is not a bad ratio.
Actually why not suggest a good idea of your own and ask him to fund it, i saw him partyin at taika in bangalore some time back , I am sure if you have any good ideas he will be happy to fund.
-not sabeer
About the success/failure ratio: fair enough. He’s entitled to some failures on his way to another (hopeful) success. But come on! How disconnected from reality is this guy? Does he not get any web buzz?
And as far as my own ideas are concerned, I guess it’s a case of “those who can’t, bitch”. Been there, blown stupid effort and money behind someone else’s stupid venture. Got burned. Call it sour grapes, or a general dissatisfaction with the superficiality of the technology industry, which has been growing for some time now. I feel another rant coming on.
Tushar
I never saw any place where Sabeer said that $400 million made him smarter. It is easy to pass off fiction as fact and then tear it down. But it is also cowardly.
Tell me, my friend – what great achievements do you have that the whole world knows about and uses? It is very easy to rant and be a critic.
If you have a specific complaint with any of Sabeer’s products then you should really provide constructive criticism. Say how you would do it better. Only then will you get even a modicum of real respect. Otherwise please shut up and stop being a jerk.
You should remove the word gentleman from your blog’s tagline. You apparently dont know he meaning of the word.
Manisha
Manisha,
Yes, I realise Sabeer Bhatia has never claimed to have become smarter due to the swelling of his bank balance. That would negate any need for critique and ranting about his products; his personality would have sufficed.
As for my great achievements, refer to the previous comment and aforementioned savoury fruits. I may have had some constructive criticism had there been something to construct upon, which in my opinion, is not the case here. Perhaps you believe there is. Good for you. Write about it on your own weblog.
And don’t forget your pom-poms on your way out.