Sabeer Bhatia on building Hotmail, acquisition from Microsoft and the journey ahead

4.03 billion people!

That’s the most recent reported number of email users worldwide. No platform even comes close to the potential reach of email. The latest Facebook statistics give them over 2.8 billion monthly active users.

As of today there are almost 1 billion and 700 thousand active users of Gmail, being of the most popular email service providers. But it was launched on 1 April 2004. Prior to Gmail, the tech trend of that era was Hotmail, and if you had a Hotmail account, that was something worth showing-off. 

Founded in 1996, by the guest of our today’s episode Sabeer Bhatia and his co-founder Jack Smith, Hotmail was the world's first web-based email when it launched.

Back then, they sold it two years later to Microsoft for an estimated $400m. Since then Sabeer, became the face of tech entrepreneurship, and has been inspiring generations.

Recently last year, in 2020, he’s back with an idea, which might lead to another tech revolution, named ShowReel. Consider this as a short-video version of Linkedin, where your profile, all your posts, and feed will have just videos. 

During the episode, Sabeer talks about his vision with Hotmail, what are his current plans with Showreel, what all founders can learn from his entrepreneurship journey and much more.

Notes - 

01:02 - Right timing as an entrepreneur

03:06 - What led to Hotmail’s acquisition?

09:55 - His journey as an entrepreneur & investor post acquisition

11:27 - Problem statements being solved by ShowReel

17:21 - His opinion about Web 3.0

23:47 - “Only crazy entrepreneurs change the world.”

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