Why The Man Who Already Changed The Internet Forever Is Trying To Do It Again
This post is part of the "Small Business, Big Ideas" series, in which business leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators share their stories of overcoming obstacles and achieving success. "Small Business, Big Ideas" is sponsored by Chase.
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Applied Semantics built technology that connected related online content. In 2003, around a year before its IPO, Google bought the company for more than $100 million dollars, and used the technology to create AdSense, which automatically displays ads based on a web site's content.
As part of the deal, Gil joined Google, and headed up the company's engineering office in Santa Monica until 2007.
AdSense helped establish Google in advertising — its most important business — and earns it nearly $10 billion in revenue a year.
Most entrepreneurs would rest on their laurels, or stay at that comfortable Google job. Elbaz decided to take another crack at changing the digital world by starting Factual. This time, he wants to collect, and make accessible, as much of the world's data as he possibly can.
Its core database covers more than 65 million local businesses and points of interest in more than 50 countries.
We spoke to Elbaz on what he learned from his time at Google, why he's jumped back into the entrepreneurial arena, and why he thinks data is the future.
What he learned from Google
If you want to learn about creating an innovative company with a great culture, Google's a pretty good place to start. Elbaz was there right as the company entered a massive growth phase and helped create one of the products that sparked it.
He learned a few things along the way that he's applying to Factual.
"One thing that I learned at Google that I feel like I've applied is rigor to hiring. I think we did well at hiring at Applied Semantics, and I think we've upped the bar even more at Factual," Elbaz said. "What I learned from Google was to have independent thinkers evaluate people and to simply set the bar very high."
It's one thing to say you have a high bar, and another to do it in practice. Elbaz has a few pieces of advice for maintaining that high standard.
First, you need patience. Even if it takes a while to find the right person, it's worth holding out.
And second, though brilliant and focused people are essential, that's not all you need. "Obviously hard working, and focused, and smart; those are all key attributes. But I think what I've learned is that growing a culture is more than that; it's deeply rooted in people, their own personal motivations, and making sure that their own passions can be aligned with what we're trying to do as a company."
Hiring the best people is only part of the battle. You have to get the best out of them as well. Elbaz takes his cues from Google there, too.
"I think that Google is very much a 'bottom- up' culture, where the leaders readily admit that they don't have the good ideas, and that the best they can do is build a culture where those ideas are likely to filter up. I certainly believe in that concept of hiring the most creative people and making sure they have the room to experiment, the room to come up with ideas."
Along those lines, the company recently did something Elbaz describes as "very Googley" and had a hackathon where everyone competed to present a product or idea. At the end, there were 21 projects, a few of which are already in production.
Why he's coming back for another round
Elbaz didn't need to start another business after the sale of Applied Semantics, or to leave a position at Google where he was highly regarded.
But he did it for the same reason many entrepreneurs do: because he had an idea he truly believed in. It's a really big idea too. Factual's goal is to fundamentally change and improve the way data is structured in our world.
The company reflects a fascination he's had since he was a child, Elbaz told us.
"The idea started shaping before I even saw a computer in the '70s in a pretty real way. It was before I knew what a computer looked like that I got addicted to structured information," Elbaz said. "My favorite books, I remember very clearly, were 'The Guinness Book of World Records,' the 'Book of Lists,' and 'Farmers Almanac,' that had all this weather data. And then when we got cable TV I loved the ticker symbols and tracking sports."
That fascination with data led to a desire to make it as accessible as possible in a way that's standardized and simply works.
Applied Semantics was a start, Elbaz says. Factual is the continuation of that big idea.
Elbaz's goal of changing the world of data helped attract investors. They liked the size, ambition, and purity of the vision.
But investors aren't the only part of the equation. One of the biggest issues the company had was to convince other companies that they needed this kind of data.
"A lot of them don't go for vision," Elbaz said. "They go for value, for solving a pain. And we feel like we've cracked the nut now, but that took a little bit longer to turn our idea, our vision, and technology into real easy-to-integrate solutions that address what managers care about today."Getting customers on board took a bit of a pivot for the company. When they started, the company was intended to be an aggregator of pretty much all types of data. "It turned out that that's hard to market because it's clear in your messaging that you don't specialize in any one industry," Elbaz said.
It was clear they needed to find something more specific that resonated with businesses, and prove that they could produce something incredible with that.
That's a hugely important lesson for businesses. It's hard to convince people that you can do everything well. It's even harder to do it. So Elbaz and his team chose to focus on local data, and businesses have responded. And by proving they can succeed in one area, they'll have businesses' attention when they move to the next one.
Entrepreneurs who are unwilling to change are the ones most likely to fail. That's one of the great things about a small business. You can constantly adapt and change.
Elbaz has come a long way from his first company, which he funded with his own money. "We had a culture of frugality out of necessity," he says.
Many people would have chosen to stay at a great job at Google where they were highly regarded. But there's something fundamentally appealing about working with a small group of people to make a big change.
That helped draw Elbaz back into the startup world for a second round.