I am incredibly happy to see Slideshare's founders - Rashmi, Jon and Amit - find such great validation for their vision of bringing together the world's professionals through their content. Congratulations also to Ross and the rest of the team in the US and India.
LinkedIn's acquisition of Slideshare is a great outcome and I'm sure both organizations will grow symbiotically together. As an avid user of both, I look forward to many more technical and product achievements over the coming years.
I remember meeting Amit in Delhi on one of my visits from the Bay Area in August 2006 as he was blogging at Webyantra.net about the web in India. We kept in touch - he told me to keep a lookout for something they were about to launch. And then Yee Lee reminded me of Slideshare when they were starting on their fundraise. We got to meet Rashmi and Jon at that time and appreciated not only the care that they had for the Slideshare community but also the power of the content to draw you in for long periods of time. Subsequently, David Siminoff and I led the Slideshare Series A financing at Venrock. After the fundraise, we got to know many other people in and around Slideshare, including the inimitable Dave McClure, Ross Mayfield and many others at Slideshare in San Francisco and Delhi. The rest, as they say, is history.
One other note: I am excited that this upcoming transaction will do a lot to boost the entrepreneurial eco-system in India. A good portion of the Slideshare team is based in Delhi - they have proven that teams in India can innovate on product at a world-class level. In addition, given the relative newness of the venture eco-system here in India, it is great to have so many people find value in their stock options - hopefully this continues to prove to aspiring entrepreneurs and employees at startups in India that their equity can pay-off handsomely.
For old time's sake, here's the presentation that Slideshare put out publicly in May 2008 after the Series A funding. Brings back some good memories...
Comments