Cry me a river – “Mr. Hotmail”, no more

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It’s tough to pity the guy – CNN.com – ‘Mr Hotmail’ seeks new challenges – Aug 26, 2004.

(CNN) — As the inventor of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia is the pin-up of India’s IT revolution; the boy from Bangalore who went to Silicon Valley and made his fortune. Bhatia was in his mid-20s when he developed the idea of web-based email accounts in 1995, raising $300,000 in investment to launch the revolutionary service the following year. Within 12 months Hotmail had 10 million users and Bhatia had sold his creation to Microsoft for $400 million.
Launching his new company in 1999, a one click e-commerce venture called Arzoo.com, Bhatia claimed it had the potential to be twice as big as Hotmail. By mid-2001 the dotcom bubble had burst and Arzoo had folded.
“The last couple of years I was quite depressed because I didn’t have an idea or a vision or a goal that would be world-beating like Hotmail. I often wondered if that would be the only success that I would have at the end of my life.
“I would rather not be known as Mr Hotmail anymore,” he says. “What is in the past is over. Now I’m looking for the next big thing.”

Don’t get me wrong, I have respect for Hotmail and Mr. Bhatia BUT, can’t he and his fawning masses attribute just a tad of his fortune to Timing and Luck? Hotmail was one of the keystone companies of the bubble – no revenue but lots of eyeballs. In any other world, it wouldn’t have been a name-making $400M venture….. There’s a helluva lot of Attribution Error goin’ on…

Maybe I’m just jealous. 😉

4 thoughts on “Cry me a river – “Mr. Hotmail”, no more”

  1. The sophomore slump is a real problem in all fields where the precocious can soar. E.g. in literature, Zadie Smith’s Autograph Man didn’t hit anywhere near the same heights as White Teeth.

  2. bhatia can sophomore slump through the rest of his life, though, given his 400 million dollar payday! 🙂

  3. Tech cashout numbers tend to be highly inflated. There are many nibbles at the apple: the majority goes to VCs, some to angel investors and some to execs foisted upon you by the VCs. Not all of the founders’ options/shares may be vested, and there are often financial targets and other conditions placed upon full vesting at acquisition time. There’s often massive windfall taxation if the acquisition is structured poorly. Payout is often in stock rather than cash, and the stock may be restricted.

    Founders are often tortured by the distance between the public inflated figure and the actual, limited payday.

    But when you’re in the driver’s seat in an acquisition, as Hotmail appeared to be, you often do make out well. Not $400M in a single person’s pocket well, but well.