The Ledger
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Toshniwal: Taking venture capital would have worsened financial outcomes for YML employees
“I think the outcome would have been, probably the personal outcome would have been worse for not just me, but also the people at YML.”
Toshniwal: Early founder liquidity unlocks fearless growth instead of defensive downside optimization
“When founders are not financially secure, and let's say they put in five, six years in the company. They became, they become so fearful as this is a hundred percent of what they own. Yeah. This is a hundred percent of what they own. They cannot let it go becau…”
Product design is hard to offshore due to missing cultural context
“And design is such a thing, it's very hard to offshore, because it's so cultural. Just imagine if, you know, someone has not experienced Disney, and they have not experienced how healthcare system works, or they have never bought an automobile insurance in the…”
Founder CEOs cannot scale without firing and rehiring themselves
“And I don't think any founder CEO can scale a company until they do this.”
Ahluwalia: Toshniwal sold YML for $350M with $25M peak EBITDA
“You started from Kolkata, lived in a fifteen-member home with one washroom, and now you build a company and sold it for three fifty million dollars. It had like twenty-five million EBITDA at its peak.”
Toshniwal: Apple later hired YML as iOS experts for healthcare initiatives
“Actually Apple became a client too, you know, after a few years. So we were working with Apple on some, you know, healthcare initiatives and this was like working with their team, healthcare institutes, and we were the iOS expert.”
Toshniwal: He rejected early Credit Karma equity for cash building their app
“We built their first product mobile app and we were offered, and they were also very small. Those were like pre series a company. And they were like, look, Kashish, why don't you take some equity instead of”
Top YML enterprise client accounts exceeded $70M over seven-plus years
“In fact, some of the clients have stayed with us over six, seven, eight years, and each account was worth maybe over seventy million dollars, you know, sometimes over a seven, eight, nine year period.”
Toshniwal: Individual enterprise client accounts generated over $70M in lifetime revenue
“Some of the clients have stayed with us over six, seven, eight years, and each account was worth maybe over seventy million dollars, you know, sometimes over a seven, eight, nine year period.”
Toshniwal: YML generated roughly $80 million in cash flow over six years
“That is a significant, because if you look at those six, seven years, you know, if I accumulate the whole six, seven years, I think our cash flow was close to eighty million dollars.”
Toshniwal: YML's early consumer apps brought major media fame but poor revenue
“Once we launched all these apps, it never did well. In the long run, it became, it made us famous. So, you know, we were on wall street journal, CNN, CNBC. We got a lot of fame, but I knew the reality. The business was very poor.”
Toshniwal: YML maintained a 59% average annual growth rate for a decade
“So our growth from 2016 to 23 was, I think, seven times, seven to eight times. I think if I look at the growth over the last 10 years before I sold, we grew at like 59% as an average annual rate of growth.”
Toshniwal: YML reached approximately $10 million in revenue by 2015
“I think two, 15, 16, we were close to ten million in revenue.”
Toshniwal: YML generated six acquisition offers in three weeks during 2015 process
“Like, I think he generated close to six offers in like two to three weeks.”