Who is chacha founded by

Thus, the new business model for tech startup seems to have become: start with an idea, burn millions of dollars from venture capital firms, pay them back with an ICO, and monetize by selling stocks to a bunch of clueless fellows! Many might claim that also companies like Google had to go through a few years of trial and errors before figuring out how to monetize.

However, when Google went public in , it was already a cash machine! Actually, Google was already profitable in In , would have anyone envisioned the wild success of the iPhone just a year later? In fact, as the technology landscape started to evolve at a faster pace, an idea that seemed bright eventually became obsolete. In Google started to work on ways to understand human language.

In short, Google wanted to be able to provide accurate answers to complex queries from its users. This quest led to innovations, such as the knowledge graph in And Hummingbird and RankBrain in and respectively. Those search algorithms changes made Google way more powerful. Those also allowed it to consolidate its growth. When Google SERP started to penalize the human-powered search engine, things turned awry, which leads us to the next point.

ChaCha had initially managed to scale up its operations when it started to create a knowledge base, with millions of queries that at the time was quite sophisticated for Google to answer. As of today, Google relies on Quora to get some of the answers from its users. Thus, back then it made even more sense. Even though, platforms like Quora do have the same risk.

Thus, had ChaCha introduced a mechanism based more on the social media rationale, rather than pure monetization, would have this been more sustainable? Well, in part they had contributors also. I wish there were a happy ending to this story.

We are left with a few lessons that probably are worth more than any startup success story. This is the story of a tech visionary, that started out with a bold idea to take over the search industry dominated by Google. It started with investments from other tech visionaries, like Jeff Bezos and companies with significant technological understanding like Qualcomm. It managed to raise dozens of millions over the years.

Then, the international launch in the UK. Yet after a decade of operations, ChaCha shut down. All that is left is a colossal failure and a few precious lessons. I could have told you the story of how Richard Branson conquered adversity. How Elon Musk became a billionaire. Or how Jeff Bezos disrupted several industries. Yet the only story I was able to tell you is about an original idea, which turned awry.

And tech visionary Scott Jones selling all his stuff in his home in Indianapolis. While failure is never a pleasant experience, there are many good things that can spring from it, as is constantly demonstrated in places such as Silicon Valley, where failure is sometimes even considered a badge of honor. How to get started with your business :. This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

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How did Chacha work? How did ChaCha make money? Investments are pouring in! The attempt to scale up? No sustainable business model? Time to shut down operations The boundary between vision and madness can be blurry Is an innovative idea enough? Lack of scalability: Never getting out of the startup mode Is profitability overrated for a tech startup? Did the iPhone kill ChaCha?

Did RankBrain kill ChaCha? The costs of hiring people to manual do research simply became too high, when comparing them with the results you could get from Google. And in addition, it became more difficult for the guides to give proper answers on subjective matters like politics, religion and so on. A content site for startups founders. We publish weekly interviews and short and long-form articles to help you become a better founder. ChaCha Search engine with a live human being.

What was ChaCha? Why did ChaCha fail and shut down? And then there were quite some investors who had put their money on the venture. On November 23, , ChaCha discontinued the guide program because of insufficient funds available, and on December 12, , ChaCha shut down operations due to declining advertising revenue, which left it unable to service its debt. Now, let us see a graph of 5 series funding rounds,. Now, you must be wondering that if everything was going well with ChaCha then what led it to defunct in the end?

Do tell us all your thoughts in the comments section below, we look forward to reading all the comments in the section below. ChaCha was an American human-guided search engine that provided free, real-time answers to the questions asked by people. Ojaswi is B. She loves to explore and learn new things with a positive outlook on life.

Also, she always wanted to be a creator and want to express herself with her words. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Published May 24, by Ojaswi Agrawal.