Jambool is a young startup based in San Francisco that has carved out a strong niche in the social media space. I first met Vikas Gupta, CEO and co-founder of Jambool sometime in August/September of last year when they had just developed their first social widget on sharing photo memories. We actually did a great video interview then and I was so happy to have finally canned a great video interview. But, the file got corrupted and I was unable to use the video. And then two months ago I discovered that in a short span of 6 months Jambool had gone places. It is now one of the top Facebook app developers and has an array of social widgets and is building some more.

Prior to Jambool, Vikas worked at Amazon and was one of the original team members that helped set up Amazon’s office in Bangalore, India.

KB: Tell us about Jambool, and the reasons for starting your company?

VG: I started Jambool with social collaboration in mind. I moved to San Francisco in 2006, and at that time I had left Amazon and was yet to decide what I wanted to do next. During this time, my wife and I were looking for an apartment, a car and were always looking for new places to eat, visit. Going through this I felt there wasn’t an effective way for her and me to share what we do online, or to collaborate for a common goal. That became the seed idea for Jambool.

KB: Where does Jambool fit into the fast evolving social networking landscape?

VG: Jambool is a developer and distributor of widgets, allowing users on social networks to accessorize
their profiles with various content of their choosing and connect with friends across multiple social networks. While widgets have always been a fun method of expressing yourself, our applications now offer an opportunity for companies to market and monetize on the Web.

KB: What products or services has Jambool introduced so far?

VG: Jambool has several applications with a total of 10 million users. Our most popular social applications thus far has been Hug Me and Send Good Karma. In January of this year we launched an enthusiast application, Ski & Snowboard, letting people find ski areas on a maps, collect badges for places they’ve been to and confirm their friends ski levels.

We collaborated with our users to build an extensive database of ski resorts around the world, and now have probably the deepest ski resort directory on the web. We also recently launched an application, Cutest Baby, targeted towards parents who want to show off their babies’ photos. Users of the app can vote to decide who is the cutest one!

KB: What trends will effect your business?

VG: Adoption and popularity of social networks such as Facebook and Myspace definitely affects our applications currently, as the traffic to our applications so far is driven from there. While most of these platforms are quite open, the rules have changed over time, and this affects our applications. Finally, this space is exciting for us as long as there is monetization — so effectiveness of our applications and social networks for advertisers is also something we keep in mind.

KB: How do you work on maintaining your competitive edge in this fast paced social networking space?

VG: This is a very new space and at Jambool we work hard to be thought leaders and innovators.
We rank among the top 15 companies that have applications on Facebook. We pride ourselves on the ability to measure our applications and how users interact with our applications. Besides this, our ability to build, deploy and launch multiple applications and scale them at low cost is something that sets us apart from the others.

We have very detailed internal metrics that we constantly monitor, that tell us how our apps are doing, what the virality numbers are, how engaged our users are, and how our growth and traffic is as compared to the week before, where our users come from, what features work and what don’t, etc.
The other aspect of our development that sets us apart is our ability to build scalable platforms on which to launch many different niche applications. As an example, we are following the Cutest Baby application with three more applications this week. This gives us the ability to innovate at a very fast pace, and also to keep our costs and ongoing maintenance low. This, we believe, is innate in our DNA having spent years at Amazon building their e-commerce platform.

KB: You mentioned that Jambool can help companies in their brand building exercise. Could you elaborate on that? Have you helped or are working with any companies to do that?

VG: Sure. The important differentiation with widgets, as compared to other forms of advertising is that we can measure in specific detail the ways that users interact with the widgets. Because users are in control of this experience and it becomes a very personal interaction with the brand. Not only is this a much richer advertising platform, it is also a way to engage users who are becoming blind to other forms of advertising on the web.

Jambool has a suite of applications that millions of users interact with every week. The opportunities we provide to brands vary depending on the kind of interaction they are looking for. It can vary from sponsoring an application, promoting a movie, or branding a user to user interaction — each of which would be coupled with a means to spread out among the users’ friends.

Currently we are working with brands to integrate with virtual hugs application as well as the Skiing and Cutest baby application.

KB: Are you doing anything in India or for the Indian market?

VG: We are exploring all growth opportunities and have been approached by a couple of social networks focused on the Indian market, and we might consider launching a set of our applications with these networks in due time.

KB: What is your business philosophy?

VG: We focus on building social applications that work for users. As long as we build apps that add value for users, monetization and success will follow. We are passionate about the user experience with our applications, and it drives a lot of our decisions.

KB: What are your guiding principles?

VG: Our guiding principles are quite simple: Translate ideas into products quickly, Start simple, be ruthless about ideas or products that do not succeed, and Have fun.

KB: What is your yardstick of success?

VG: User adoption, engagement and response are the primary yardstick we measure our products.

KB: Let me switch tracks. What prompted you to quit Amazon, and start your own business?

VG: I think it was always the desire to do something on my own, outside of the large company that Amazon was. I had dabbled in a small startup even before I took up grad school, and even within Amazon I started new groups three times over, including the Amazon’s India development office. After 7 years with Amazon, it just felt it was time to explore something outside of Amazon.
What I also felt then, and still believe, is that cost of innovating has come down significantly, thanks to the open source platforms and Amazon’s infrastructure web services. And now, with the open platforms on social networks, the cost of customer acquisition has also come down drastically — though we are still early in this space to see the real benefits.

KB: How difficult was the decision to become an entrepreneur? What was the biggest misconception you had about starting a business?

VG: I think the decision wasn’t the hard part — the follow through was. Luckily I had great support from my wife — and I stuck with it.

The biggest misconception I would say I had was that I had hugely underestimated the task of starting a company and making it succeed. But in hindsight, I felt it was the right decision. The learning experience is one I wouldn’t have got any other way.

VG: What were your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?

KB: The biggest challenges for me were to get the right advice, get the right team and eventually to hit the path for customer adoption.

VG: I have to attribute most of our successes to luck — though we did do our best to grab opportunities as they came along. I tapped into my network for advice, and for co-founders. Facebook platform came to us as a boon — it became instrumental in us finding feet. Fortunately, my co-founder Reza Hussein and I were able to adapt to this new technology and produce our current suite of applications rather quickly.

KB: At what point did you realize that things were beginning to go your way?

VG: I would say it was in November 2007 — when we started to see scaling problems. We were seeing cheap, viral growth, and we were starting to see ad revenue come in. Even though small at that time, we knew we had turned the corner.

KB: Did you have a mentor? How did it help having a mentor?

VG: We didn’t have a specific mentor, but we had a network of entrepreneurial contacts who gave us invaluable advice when we needed it. I think it’s really important to listen to your advisors to help you make decisions. Also, we were lucky to get someone like Rick Dalzell to l invest in us — that’s been instrumental in our success.

KB: Who is a competitor you respect most?

VG: In the social applications space, we respect companies like Slide and RockYou who are not just pioneers in this space but continue to innovate and improve their applications. Besides them, Facebook itself is a great company to work with as they truly understand the needs of the developers building social applications. Other networks are largely trying to replicate their success with the platform, and Facebook has definitely change the game on their competitors.

KB: If you had to meet one entrepreneur who would it be?
VG: I think I would love to meet Steve Jobs. I’m constantly amazed at how he was able to turn around Apple into a market leader in the consumer space, and continue to show innovation within his company. I would be hard pressed to find someone else who exemplifies clarity of vision and purpose, and the leadership to make it happen.

KB: What goals do you yet have to achieve?

VG: When I worked at Amazon, we prided ourselves at our number of customers. I would consider it a huge milestone when Jambool’s registered user base exceeds that of Amazon.com.

KB: How many friends do you have on Facebook?

VG:I think somewhere between 200 and 250.

KB: What is your favorite place to hangout in San Francisco?

VG: It depends on the time of the day. I spend many mornings at the South Beach Cafe, converting coffee into code. Besides that, there are many restaurants in the Mission area that we frequent, especially Ramblas. And Shalimar remains an eternal favorite for Indian food.

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