Valleywag recently commented about Riya and Like... here and here .
I don't know if the folks at Valleywag understand that we wear the business failure of Riya (on a user level Riya got 14MM photos uploaded - which is decent) as a badge of honor. A story of a close friend of mine explains our philosophy best (this is a true story).
My friend was a guy who grew up rich here in silicon valley. He lived in one of the largest houses in Hillsborough (a very upscale neighborhood just south of S.F). His father was a very successful startup CEO from the semiconductor generation. As part of a reinvestment strategy his father diversified into real estate. When the valley hit a recession and vacanies climbed, he defaulted and lost everything. His son (my friend) went from having everything to having nothing. If you meet him today he still has the old key to that Hillsborough mansion on his key chain. He keeps it as a reminder of how ephemeral success can be.
If you ever wonder why I talk so openly about what works and what doesn't... it is because I use it as a tool to remember of just the fleeting nature of success. I talk about our failures publicly as much as we talk about our successes. I do this more for me and the employees of Riya than for the outside world. Every article like the last two about being cheap (in the Chronicle) and about the business failure of Riya) is more for us inside the company than for others. It simply reminds me not to get too cocky or to get too arrogant as things go up.
If you would have met me in 1999 you would have met an incredibly arrogant 26 year old CEO. Now that Riya is growing because of the growth of Like.com (see Peter Rips blog for an update here ) these reminders are even more important.
So ValleyWag thinks that we are bragging about our cash our about being cheap to the rest of the world ... or even that the scepters of Riya are haughting Like, but actually ... in the end they are our "key" to remember all of this can evaporate at any time.
Many of you might not know why we named Riya as the name of the company (and it still is btw - Like.com is our name for the product - not the company). Riya is the name of my co-founders daughter. She was born with a small hole in her heart and had to have an operation at six months of age. She is a little fighter and has survived and grown. Her story is a parable of the life of a startup. There is no startup (even Youtube of Google) that doesn't have adversity. Some just choose to forget it and some use it to remind them of what happened in the past.
Now since we hit our February revenue target the entire Riya team is going skiing for the day tomorrow... join us at Kirkwood if you can take the day off...
Munjal,
Yes success is ephemeral and so is the understanding that success is ephemeral. Its tough to keep that understanding in existence and different people do it in different ways. Some hang a thing of their good old poverty days very prominently in their vast office just to remind them where they came from.
Whereas some do the opposite! They pretend that they have always been rich and successful and carefully remove anything (or for that matter anybody) from their lives that may point to a past that they have already disowned.
At the end of the day, neither is right or wrong!
If you are a true believer of 'This too shall pass' then you will be unaffected by glorious heights as well deep dips and that is a powerful way to live.
keep it up and have a great day.
Posted by: Badri | March 02, 2007 at 02:10 AM
I think the idea of Riya was very very good. In my view what happened here was you tried to create something which is way ahead of its time. A image search engine is not going to be fool proof rather it's going to make a mess of the search more often than not. You still did a really good job.
Although being one of the very people to learn and appreciate Riya, I feel bad that it could not be a very successful project. Maybe it's better to search purses, shoes and necklaces for now. As for searching faces, I bet you people would get it right though may be not at this point of time.
Best of luck for like.com
Posted by: piyush | March 11, 2007 at 07:46 AM
This is a very perceptive post. We need to remember that not only is wealth quixotic and fleeting, so is life. It keeps things in perspective.
Posted by: shel israel | March 16, 2007 at 10:31 PM
Very beautifully written Munjal. Hopefully, we can all learn a lesson or two from here.
Posted by: Jinal Shah | March 19, 2007 at 02:29 PM
rs audio
Posted by: patent | April 09, 2007 at 06:32 AM