> <i>Yadav had reportedly written a resignation letter on April 30 to the board and investors and questioning their "intellectual capability" and giving them a one-week deadline to "help in the transition". However, on May 5, he withdrew the resignation and apologised for his outbursts.</i><p>I call unstable. This CEO isn't maverick, world-changing bastard. He is simply unstable.<p>Moreover, there are huge questions about quality of hiring at Housing. Their website, app have had same bugs for 6 months, and they still remain. Over 2000 people can't make a decent bug-free website to see property listings?<p>The whole point of Housing was Airbnb style property listings - real verification, owners -only, professional photos and VR. And somehow their UX is one of their weakest points.
To anyone monitoring the housing.com story, this just seems like the latest in a series of increasingly erratic events by housing.com CEO Rahul Yadav.<p><a href="http://www.livemint.com/Companies/DQevn4TkemzICqPeSNe8vI/Its-business-as-usual-for-Housing-CEO.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.livemint.com/Companies/DQevn4TkemzICqPeSNe8vI/Its...</a><p><a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-05-05/news/61833210_1_nexus-venture-partners-softbank-housing-board" rel="nofollow">http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-05-05/news...</a><p><a href="http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/housing-com-ceo-rahul-yadavs-victory-sign/articleshow/47235790.cms" rel="nofollow">http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/housin...</a>
Housing.com is dot-com-bubble era extravagant startup with no good forseeable business model. In their initial rounds, they spend $1M ( 40% of funding ) to get the fancy domain and phone number. Its almost as if they are doing exactly opposite of Sam Altman's every advice - low burn rate, focus on product, hire slowly, build and iterate. One of my friend who works there told me that they are working simultaneously on 16 projects.<p>I don't believe a company like this would find itself existing in the next few years unless, they get a new CEO who knows how to get shit on track which would mean firing of lots of people and cutting down on their stupid campaigns. I don't know weather this move was because of his sheer goodwill or to save his face or to get back on news again but considering his moves in past few months, he is an arrogant cocky teenager-like mentality person who doesn't think twice before making a move
<a href="https://housing.com/in" rel="nofollow">https://housing.com/in</a><p>Unfortunately 'Our Brand Story' video on their homepage, made 0 sense to me. Its probably me though.
And HackerNews calls the man unstable, deranged, insane. Nothing is valued here but greed to some folks.<p><i>Edit:</i> The downvotes don't really prove me wrong, guys.
Most comments here are so sad. Looks like most people are simple jealous of Yadav's success. People calling him a bastard and mentally unstable. Shame on you guys. Make me wonder what these commenters have achieved. Especially @arihant. Calling another a bastard and unstable is more telling of @arihant himself rather than yadav.
Why, just why would anyone do that? I understand wanting to give 50%.. 70-80% even, but all of it?
Does that seem crazy only to me or is there a hidden motive to it somewhere?!
1. His stake might be all options or at best illiquid stock so unsure if it's comparable to "cash"
2. He's not on the best terms with his VCs and owns <5% of company: might be on the verge of getting kicked out.
3. Yadav already made his $$ with each round; he just bought a Porsche.
That's incredibly awesome.<p>Many CEO's get paid so ridiculously much that the stock just pushes it into absurdity.<p>It's great to see folks realize the work input of all employees at a company is about the same and to share the wealth more equally.<p>The Gravity payments CEO was another great example - clearly he already pulled in a lot and had a lot of stock, but this is setting things right - <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/business/owner-of-gravity-payments-a-credit-card-processor-is-setting-a-new-minimum-wage-70000-a-year.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/business/owner-of-gravity-...</a> (I'd also argue his original salary was massively more than needed).
Eccentric. To draw a parallel, Rahul reminds me of Evan S of SnapChat, but only that Evan managed to correct his act and that's down to the mentors he had.<p>Either way, there much to learn from Yadav and his amazing team at Housing. They managed to create a great business in a short amount of time, sustained growth and managed to iterate rapidly. Now, I don't know for sure if all that growth happened inspite of Yadav, or because of him; but its hard to find fault with him, and he's achieved a lot in his short career already, and has to be credited for a lot of wealthy individuals he's now created in the process.<p>So much money has been poured into Housing at absolutely sky-high evaluations ($900m in a round led by Japan's SoftBank a few months back), Housing.com's competitor CommonFloor.com has its founding team intact (and one that's much mature in terms of experience). So there is some cause of worry.<p>Indian start-up scene is going through an unprecedented amount of growth propelled by all the talent that isn't leaving the country any more (most unicorns are founded by IITians that otherwise would have left the country for Silicon Valley) as VCs and Angles continue to pour a lot of money into the ecosystem.<p>IMO, Housing is a success story (as much as Ola Cabs, Zomato, Snapdeal are).<p>Orig comment: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491156" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491156</a>
> Rahul Yadav has decided to allot all his personal shares[...]<p>So I'm not very well versed in options but does this <i>literally</i> mean all of his shares or is there a difference between personal shares and some sort of other shares? Did he really give away <i>every share he owned / is entitled to</i>?<p>Edit: erm, thought questions were okay. Why the downvotes? I just wanted to know if there is some sort of legal distinction with "personal" shares or if it simply means all of his shares.
A founder CEO puts(should put) in more than anyone while getting paid industry standard salary or less in best cases. The only upside/motivation for them is the equity which can make him/her a millionaire. With that out one would look for the nearest exit because it's a thankless job and people don't care how you feel or how many sleeping nights have you had.
Their pitch is a work of beauty, but it doesn't tell me much about what they actually do. It's definitely the most memorable ad I've ever seen.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyYyKRiJR4M" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyYyKRiJR4M</a><p>They learned well from Simon Sinek's <i>Start with Why</i>, but I'm afraid they jumped the shark: it comes off as <i>trying too hard</i> to inspire.
I think this guy has an OCD, constantly trying to achieve publicity by using the "Yadav" image for marketing Housing.com. I just feel like this is another similar move, to re-establish his image after all those hatred going around him to the point that he was called the Rahul Gandhi in IT.<p>He could be X times more successful than me, I'm not going to waste time fighting that argument otherwise I eagerly want to hear out his argument for this move.
it's easy to forget that he <i>raised</i> $90mm to begin with. So somebody came away impressed enough to drop the money into the company:<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/15/softbank-housing-dot-com-india/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/15/softbank-housing-dot-com-in...</a><p>With the money they didn't stand still, they started hustling and built an outstanding buy/rent site that kills the ugly competition (magicbricks, commonfloor, indiaproperty).<p>Have to admit that the "Look Up" campaign has been nothing short of silly.
I don't know much about Mr. Yadav, but quite likely my own mental illness would put his completely to shame.<p>At the same time, whenever I have four dollars, I use it to buy a slice of hot pizza for a homeless person. Many of my professional colleagues - who earn quite a lot more money than I could ever hope to - regard that as irresponsible of me, to feed the poor.<p>What you describe here in the comments - I haven't read the India Times story yet - sounds like Bipolar Mania.<p>But even so, some people really do practice sincere generosity. The simple fact that Mr. Yadav gave away all his stock doesn't mean there is something wrong with him.
Rahul Yadav is good man and good thinking beacuse he should not give money to people who are money minded but give to charity or open something poor people.