Fab.com, an online ‘deals’ website specifically targeting ‘design’ items, and co-founded by True Sparrow Systems, has just closed a $40 million round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Fab.com started off as Fabulis, a social network for the gay community, but pivoted to a daily design deals site.
This is the second Pune-startup by Jason Goldberg, co-founder and CEO of Fab.com. Earlier, he had started social|median, again with True Sparrow Systems of Pune, and this had a successful exit to Xing in less than an year.
In general, Jason Goldberg seems to have perfected the art of co-founding a startup with a development team in fully in Pune. This is not outsourcing in the regular sense of the word; he works with Pune based True Sparrow to build a dedicated team for his startup, he works very closely with the team, involving them in the conceptualization, architecture and design of the product, and spends one week out of every 6 in Pune. For more details on how he does this, check out this PuneTech post from his social median days: How social|median is Developed out of Pune
In any case, the full article about Fab.com’s funding is here
This is great, but wonder why True Sparrow is not capable of building their own products? This is a typical problem why we are not seeing great products coming out of India yet.
@Sarang, I can’t speak for True Sparrow, but here are a few thoughts:
1. Two startup successes by a Pune company in 3 years is a huge achievement by any standards. They had equity in both, not just an outsourcing contract.
2. What True Sparrow is doing, i.e. being a co-founder in a startup, and taking on some of the risk, is a huge improvement over what other services companies are doing (i.e., time & materials outsourcing)
3. It is very, very difficult to have a successful startup out of India without the CEO or at least a high powered sales team being in the US. For example, note that the CEO of druva.com has moved to the US. So, what True Sparrow is doing is actually an ideal setup in many ways.
This is cause for celebration, not complaint.
Not complaining, only “wondering”. I started with “This is great”.. of course it is something to feel proud of.
Fab.com and its partnership with True Sparrow is truly inspiring for me. I have been a loyal customer since a few months. Congratulations to the team.