Founder Profile: Arjun Dev Arora, Founder of ReTargeter

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Arjun Dev Arora, Founder of ReTargeter

Name:
Arjun Dev Arora

Member Cohort:
February 2012

Location:
San Francisco, Ca.

Education:
UC Berkeley
BSc, Electrical engineering and computer sciences / Entrepreneurship & Technology

Prior Experience:

• BD & Strategy at Yahoo! Real Estate
• Investment Banker at Jefferies Broadview
• Angel Investor, 500 Startups LP, Thiel Fellowship Mentor

Current Startup:
ReTargeter
– Focused on providing retargeting and targeted display solution for medium sized and enterprise level companies. ReTargeter serves your ads to your audience after they leave your website.

Mission:
To help companies optimize their ad spend online and “wow” their customers via the web by showing a site’s banner ads to its users after they leave the site.

Milestones:

• 400% rev growth in 2011
• Grew headcount from 1 person to 30 in less than 3 years without outside funding
• Increased reach to billions of imipressions via ad network and ad exchange

Lessons Learned:
“The biggest thing was learning to articulate and clearly live by our company values. This was a huge lesson learned for me. When we first started in hustle mode our focus was on getting things done. So we hired a lot of folks and a few of the people we hired did not align with our values. We ended up having to let them go, even though one of them was our top performer. Even so, this was the best decision we made. It allowed us to floursih and grow.”

Staying Motivated:
“For me motivation is innate. Its something that’s always present. I mean low points happen but if you are aware of where and why they happen you can fix them. We spend lots of time on EQ and we know that we have to be masters of it.”

Biggest Mentor:
“My biggest mentors are serial entrepreneurs. What makes them great mentors is that they truly understand issues that we, as founders, are dealing with and where we are coming from. It is almost always about having someone who has been there before, who has confidence or experiecne to get you going, or inspire you. For me mentors are informal. They are good friends and peers like Adam Jackson, Ron Bouganim. I don’t really have any formal mentors. I just learn from everyone around me.”