How to Validate Your Business Concept? Learn from Ashish’s Experience!

Ashish Baldua is the Executive Director, Project Management at JPMorgan Chase. He co-founded many startups, among them Wowzio and most recently Bloomspot which was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2013.

Ashish grew up in Mumbai, India. After getting his Bachelor’s degree, he moved to the U.S. and earned a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Stony Brook University in New York. He  went on to work in the technology department at Yahoo for 11 years, rising quickly to manage more than one hundred people and their projects.

He describes his life growing up, his years at Yahoo and lessons he’s learned in co-founding many startups:

Hear about Ashish’s early years in India and his life in a loving family.
Why Ashish left Yahoo, where he enjoyed working to co-found startups?
The joy creating something new.
Wowzio’s creation and success: Learning to asses monetization potential.
600 million of their widgets installed by bloggers but little revenue for the co-founders.
The guide they created in India which relied on opinions of friends rather than strangers.
Learning from the past: Considering monetization in the validation of their concept.
What was a crucial experiment that was helpful in the early days of their startup? 
Ashish discusses “day-one” of testing in the validation phase.
How they used Facebook for customer acquisition testing.
Why understanding unit economics is essential in creating a business?
What are two important changes Bloomspot implemented in response to data?
Ashish shares the moment of confirmation: people would buy directly from their website.
What are the difficult lessons experienced from growing too fast?
What can you learn from how they handled their acquisition by Chase?
What are Ashish’s parting words of advice?

Links: Email: ashish.baldua.01 [at] gmail. com

LinkedIn: Ashish Baldua