Manish Chandra

Manish Chandra

“Pursue your passion, be bold. This is the one time you have nothing to lose, just be bold.”  ~ Manish Chandra

What’s Next for this Ingenue?
Dawn Bonner

Interesting, smart, intense, laid back, and generous are but a few  qualities of Manish Chandra, co-founder of the social shopping mecca, Kaboodle.

Chandra recently said his good-bye’s to Kaboodle and is on a respite; or a thinking man’s  vacation.  For the first time in many years, he is not working on growing a company.  He is looking to the future and many opportunities while he is at home enjoying his family.

 

 

 

What Chandra is Thinking about Today

Chandra said, “It’s a great time even though we are in one of the worst recessions in history, it’s still a great time.  The unemployment in California dropped by a quarter of a percent, how sad is that?”

“It would be terrible if you are over 50 today and out of a job.  Qualified people, with college degrees are out of work or working at jobs they are over qualified for.  It almost feels like a new model of economy; people are still hard working, they want to live a good life.”

“How do you empower people on an individual level that allows them to engage and be productive at the same time. At Kaboodle we could empower them in their own way and in a highly interactive way. Instead of being part of this gigantic machine of an organization.”

“With information and communication it is so ubiquitous, you can work with people and collaborate in a meaningful way.  It is becoming easier and easier, with the cell phone and other means of communication. I can have a conversation in a café sitting there face to face or on the computer, or on the internet, texting, and several other ways.  With the new economic model, the societal aspect is paired with this evolution.  If you are an independent individual, there is a respect or acknowledgement in this society. That has been the whole challenge in our society with health care, etc., changing; it has become a trend and is going from being a nice thing to have to a necessity.”

Kaboodle registered 1995-10-17

Started Kaboodle 2-6-06

Raised 3.5 million 4-17-06

Sold to Hearst, Inc. 8-8-07 Hearst Acquires Kaboodle for $30+ million

Meeting 9/20/2010

1997 the internet had come and we were building a Microsoft platform in 98 we had to rebuild the company around the internet in 97 we had to lay off half the staff, I left the company in 2001, and handed in my resignation 1.1.01. Had the presence of media, drive and we let in the car, strange feeling in Sept 11, and 12. 2001 and 2002 the darkest time silicon valley had ever seen, I was working mokume, it also working in a small company name versant, made the role of catalizysing the acquisition, joined as head of marketing where I met Julia, we started remodeling the home, as I was doing that has to shop for online products as we were shopping had to send ideas to my wife and my mother in law, this was so hard to do hard to find great products to buys, once you finished the whole shopping thing, six mos. Later friend said where did you buy the chandelier, you forget, by 04 had conceptualized the idea of Kaboodle formed a kitchen sink cabinet. One of the important things to do in a start up is to get the right team together. You have to work without pay, no benefits, started this kitchen sink where we met with people once a week, by the end of 04 had formed a core team, by the beginning of 05 had started a company in my garage, ordered cabinets from IKEA, dell…next job was to raise money, the investment market had just opened up after being closed for so many years, Google had awakened form being open investors’ point of view.

We launched our company in 06 at a conference, we got a fantastic opening, social shopping from being bring together in a social circle, share ideas, organize thoughts, we launched the site, my cofounder decided to take a trip to Columbia, in the mean time we were rounding up our next line of financing on the Monday he was supposed to come back got a call from his wife Kiernan had a nasty accident he fell on a fence, got electrocuted, one week before closing our next round of financing, a challenging time for me and him, he is in Columbia, not Florida and our company is  so early it could have just died, in investing you have to disclose this immediately, a company could have just died.

Electrocution paralysis, all sorts of bad things, plus in Columbia no idea of what kind of treatment he had, fortunately my investors stood by me, I was able to make a full back up plan and get what he was able to do done by someone else, eventually he was able to get med0vaced to Miami, the day he was spiked there was he was wearing an all metal watch his wife gifted him, it circled the watch, his writ was burned went around his circle tummy, his face upper body and organs were saved, went out his leg, leg and left arm and left had was amputate, everything else was saved, otherwise his body functions were saved, eh went in for 30 surgeries, in 6 months he came back.

 Julie said he was amazing, the energy was just a little low in the meeting, I have known kienan longer than I have known Manish, he said keinenan had a really bad accident, shut the door.  How do you two women get together and know much more than I do, it was scary times, he was like an extreme sports kind of guy, and he was a strong guy.

Manish, big partnership with a publishing magazine Con de Nast traveler with their website concierge, then we reach the fall of 06 with all the turbulence of the company we were still doing well, we were trying to do too many thing, that is the challenge of a company, when you are an entrepreneur you are trying to do too many things, that syndrome is to be avoided, because we were trying to do too many things we were doing a anything well and our growth stalled, our investors said w e like what you are doing, but show us some growth, we had to refocus our energies by going back to our beginning concept, our primary focus was on women, our design products, focused on fashion, form, beauty, most people around women, that we founds helped us start growing, we were just an 100,0o00 a month, then flat, then we went to 200k, to 300k, up to million, mark, it is a great place to be separate yourself from the pack of the people, right around that time, I was ran out of money, got in the car, a couple investors decided to write checks  to get me over a few week s or month, I couldn’t talk about it we were so close to the edge you can’t really talk about it, as a CEO you are on your own, we were able to solve it, we were growing, then we had an adventure capitalist approach us, then we started talking about acquisition, before we started with the adventure capitalist, Hearst corp. talked to us.

In June of 07, the first ennpart phase is a unique opportunity in that Hearst lets you run the company, they have a unique structure, made up of Hearst acquisitions and media, we were at 1 to 1.5 m visitors to the site, the second phase were close 15 million visitors last summer. Another interesting thing w ewer able to do at caboodle, we build around an interesting collaboration, everyone was still there, great culture, build out of several things, a very excruciating interview process, it is a multiple step process here are several things you that happen when you go through that process first thing is when you get through it we love you, the second thing it did was expose you to all key parts of Kaboodle marketing, ext. they all had their say before we hired you, s o when you join the company you have a set of allies when you are hired, they all had the say so they are all invested in you, the third thing, it really created a dialogue with everyone, so you could be a 22 year old interne and you could come to me and discuss things, particularly when you are looking at creating fresh new products and idea, so there are great idea coming from them than veterans, because it was geared to them, last thing was creating ambitions goals, but not critical, if we could reach them it was okay, if we didn’t allowed people to fail without retribution in technology you are not sure if they will succeed or fail, at time something that may look like a failure at the time, you can adjust and it will be successful, something can pay off immediately. We went to access our site to be more accessible to Google and it made millions come to our site, we tried to adjust blogzines, and that didn’t work when people started to post photos then it took off…we morphed it today, girls are taking pictures of each other and posting it, fashion, home ides, most recently right before I left Kaboodle a pop pictures, the idea as a consumer you come and choose products and you vote on it, the top ten products go on sale at a heavy discount, we partner with the retailer, let’s say a trench coat, eye glasses the necklace, they go for sale at 30 to 30 percent off, that is in the early stages, looking back after 5 and 5.5 years, it is a lot of hard work and a lot of luck, the most important part is getting the right investor, the right tam at the beginning.  Hearst corp.

It was a great, great process, getting involved with Hearst..

Caboodle, com I bought from a woman, kit, that is interesting story, I could never buy caboodle it was owned by a publishing company, it was owned by kit brown with a k. for caboodle, she was never interested in selling…we got a bunch of names from people domain access, we even had some locals and branding, two months before we were to put the site out, no one like the name, you know the name caboodle, we like that, 2 or 3 most we still didn’t have the site. I called kit, you have to sell it to me, she said no, I hear Kaboodle is for sale, we never heard from them, it disappeared, then I called kit again, she said yes, for small amount of money, she said yes, two weeks before we were to launch, I spent tens of thousands of dollars to rename the company, when people talk about naming I was about to tear my hair out, that is not my specialty. There is a company names lexicon, many years after I started Kaboodle he asked me how did you name Kaboodle, we just started laughing. I came with caboodle, in 04, it was kit and caboodle, and you just put things together and 2.5 it was

I thing she like having the name kit and caboodle .com

You need that luck and you need persistence I think I had called a dozen times.

How did he get the ideas of the interview process? It evolved that part I learned from my many startups. Initially in the interview process you start talking about the process, when we were starting out, people were skewing everyone, who doesn’t have weaknesses, even the best you can tear them apart, I would work on selling the people my team were not into hiring. I came up with a thing, let’s start at a positive note, you have to go around the table and force yourself to say 3 or 4 positive things about the person, that immediately helped us to expedite the problem of hiring, then we were go around what problems do you see? That would immediately let us know if they were weeded out or not. If we didn’t see a majority of 90 plus percent come up for the candidate. We would either reject or reschedule if no thumbs up then we actually did the reference checks, once you passed through all of these hoops then you would be welcome, sometimes this would take multiple days or multiple processes, and typical interview candidate would meet with 12 to 15 people. Then we knew it was a good fit, we wanted people who would know they wanted to be there. Companies like this have an intensive culture; people engage with each other a lot, it is intense.

A lot of people just worked in a large sort of office, mostly we had open offices, so you could stand up and just talk to someone, not a lot of closed doors, the approach is really over communicate, share more than necessary, information creates power sources of the company, wanted to break that apart, so no one . it also encourages a lot time a great team of people who are good, but maybe not ultra good, could be a couple of ultra good people who do not communicate, it was able to beat many of our competitors, because of this.

Two children 15 year old boy and an 11 year old girl.

The fact that your dad and my mom are doing these things, it adds to the quality of life, my dad passed away 2 to 2.5 years ago, with this she feels very connected, she doesn’t, nobody sends emails, so now for facebook she is able to interact with her grand nieces and cousins and everyone who is sort of there.

Julie, I just recently posted a cake I am taking a cake decorating course.

That is why I am posting in all these places, it is fun, and that my mom just posted I was j blown away.

Julie’s family is all physically all around, we don’t use those tools so much because we are right there, but I have a bazillion cousins, it isn’t like my immediate family.

Balance, family and business, you really don’t balance, I think startups need to do something if someone says they lead a balanced life, they are either lying or the business doesn’t do so good, and you really need the support of family, at the same time you really need to make a lot of sacrifices, in 06 with the crisis we had to reschedule our family trip. In 07 had to change the whole Disney land trip because one of my investors the only time he could meet with us was the first day in Disney. I am really very grateful of the support of my wife, there is so much that falls on them.

The balance bar is just hard; it makes demands on you at all odd times, of things that really impact on your life. One of my investors told me when you are juggling balls, all them will bounce back the only one that stays the same if your family.

For me not doing it is stressful, once you get into that mindset, it is something you can’t live without. Once you get into that mind set, even the journey on entrepreneurial ship you will outgrown your mentors, at one point you need new mentors, at another point you need metal mentors it is an interesting process, even with people I see that were great mentors on my journey in caboodle some are applicable, some are not.

Now that I am looking into a new future, the opportunities are when you look at silicon valley the number of people who failed the second time after being successful, the number who fail are almost as high as the ones who failed the first time. I am trying to understand the things to watch out for, how to embark on a journey that may be fulfilling.

The itch to start something new, the desire to start something completely different, I promised Hearst some of my time, I stayed a lot longer than I promised, my business brought me into a new group of people the team was still in time…they call it the entrepreneurial time, five to seven years is a good time, that seems to be a little bit of a pattern in my life.

Got to keep your creativity, it is hard, but in a narrow focus. It is a hard problem because the very instincts the very instincts that make you a great entrepreneur work against you.

The great entrepreneurs control themselves against that, the awful syndrome get another find opportunity, I can do that and that and that and that, pretty soon you have taken your team and you are doing five or six team, everything seems okay, but because you are doing so many things, you are not growing. By its very nature you are trying to do a lot of things, you talk about the salon business my clientele is the person who wants to spend xyz, but if you keep taking young clients, the same things when you are trying to do travel, shopping, evya, it confused people because w e had a little bit for you, but we when you come here we had to but when we focus it became very easy. It wasn’t that the focus changed, we changed the color, the appealing, and everything felt like home. It was harsher. Those things really make a big difference.

When I mentor one of the biggest things is focus.

Public relations…we will see, I say hopeful, Julie helped me launch the very first version of Kaboodle. We worked hands on pretty much from the very beginning, the only time when you weren’t focus d on caboodle was when you were having holly, when we got merged Julie helped me do the pr process on that  wgike tgubg,’

Whole thing.

Creating something bigger than him, it feels really great, it is sort of humbling to see that and it also goads you into doing things bigger and better, it gives you the confidence.

Most of the team is still there, the original founders are gone, and the original people we recruited are still there. Companies go through their phases, things change and move on. Hearst believes in building businesses that really stay around a long time, 50 year 100 years. That was the attraction for me…

Julie said the really high powered guys just really down to earth I was impressed

And how does it feel to be boomer hot…

It feels great to be boomer hot.  A little embarrassing…

Completely shocked when Hearst walked into the door we were literally ready to sign the papers when they walked in the door, it was a very interesting and exciting and challenging sort of process, because when you are trying to do a deal of this kind, there are so may constituencies involved there are so many interests to watch out, to make sure everyone s interests are honored and respected and taken care of a very complex process because very one reacts to the whole situation process differently

For employees in particular it can be very traumatic, they don’t know if they are going to have a job. Hearst…kept everything intact. They try to keep businesses intact. A little more integration in our case because we were in silicon valley and a unique technology involved allowed us, in time integrations does take place it has, generally it tends to be more a federation of companies instead of one, it works out well for them,. Every organization has it wons same look at Google they swallow it up.