Imran Khan
speaker
171 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Aug 2024
last heard Aug 2024
Imran Khan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Second is, it's like when you run really fast, at some point, you know, it start hurting, right? So when you grow a little bit more deliberately, you can control those pains.
I think the decision where I probably contributed is hiring sales team and ramping and good people and ramping them quickly. and empowering our sales team to go take those meetings that everybody who wanted to meet Snap and educate them. So that was the first part, right? Educate people because most people didn't even know how Snap works. They saw their children use Snap.
They didn't know how Snap works. Just educating the world because when you're not telling your story, somebody else is telling your story. And so there's a lot of misinformation. There's a lot of misunderstanding. So we had to build a team who went and educate the world. So that was the first two years. And that probably took us from zero to 400. 2014, I think we did two or 3 million.
2015, we did 50. And 2016, we did $400 million annualized revenue.
and from there we need to automate the business and this is where we need to build self-service advertising platform this is we need to build attribution this is when and a lot of the things that's still happening that's just you know it takes time so the one of the challenge was you know hindsight because i went from 0 to 50 50 to 400 it was so intoxicating that if i were to go back i would
do the exact same thing, but probably start investing in bringing small businesses, building DR business much earlier, you know, so that it would smooth out the growth rate.
I would have done it a little bit earlier.
Yeah, or you ignore things because you feel like things are working. Because the reality is when you're growing that fast, you're driving that expectation higher. So you constantly have to think about it, that how I'm going to maintain that growth. So one of the thing that zero to 400, 400 to a billion,
We should have planned that in 2015 to get to 400 to a billion, a billion to three billion, right? So that's something, you know, but you're growing so fast and you're distracted, you know, you didn't get time to plan all these things, right? Do you think that's fairly valid today? I think Evan is one of a generation founder and the user they amass is incredible.
So I think people continue to misunderstand him. What do they misunderstand about him? There's a very few people who know how to build a great product. And he's one of them. And he has the skill to, sometimes when you build a great product, you don't have that install base. He has the install base. So I think with Evan, you're getting that install base and a track record of building great product.
So that's why I think it's a mistake to underestimate Evan. How did the 200 million Alibaba investment come to be? So Joe was a big fan of Alibaba from day one. Of Snap. So Snap, sorry. A big fan of Snap from day one. And when Evan offered me the job, you know, I went to Joe for his advice that, hey, should I take that job? He said, absolutely, you should take that job. Evan is a great founder.
And he said something that is very humbling. He said, listen, if the company works, you're going to look great. If it doesn't work, all the blame will go to Evan because it's his company. So what are you upset or worried about? I'm like, okay, when you say it that way.
But stop with him.
So once I invest, joined, you know, I told him that I joined. He said, listen, we would love to invest.
It's relatively easy because number one, we had developed relationship with public market investors in advance. They were in our cap table. So Fidelity invested, Tito invested. So they knew the story, they knew our numbers, they saw the ramping. So it's not like they were not familiar with that. So that's one thing.
And second thing with Snap, you know, while many of them didn't use the product, their children used it. 100% of their children used it. You know, the true story is when the day I got the call to go meet Evan for the job, I was not a Snap user. True story. I was 35, I think, at that time. How was the interview? It was great. He's an incredibly talented guy. We went for a walk.
My only struggling was he walks really fast and I'm a little heavier. I had to give up with him. Trying not to be out of breath. That was the toughest part. But yeah, Evan is an, people who knows him knows that he is one of the nicest person in the world.
I'm a big believer that market likes to make fool of the greatest number of people. So everything that everybody believes, take account, at least question that belief. And that's the right thing to do. You know, sometimes, you know, people are right, but in general, market likes to make fool of the greatest number of people.
I think it's a mistake. I think public market investors should not go deep into private investment. I've been in the business for now 24 years. Early days, nobody would do it. And then, like in 2007, the first deal I saw crossover was MercadoLibre IPO. Believe it or not, I was the IPO analyst. I took MercadoLibre public. No.
way i didn't know that marcos is a friend and he's a great dude great dude uh 800 million dollar ipo that today is 90 billion dollar market cap and phenomenal ceo and another example great business built in public market that was in 2007 august of 2007 and general atlantic which is not public market but uh tiger came in they wrote they were anchor investors on the deal they wrote a check and i think they signed a lock up
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