Catch of the Decade

CHAPTER 7Time to scale

‘No offence guys, you've done a great job to get the business this far, but now we need some rock stars to take it up a notch!’ said Lee Fixel, the man from Tiger Global.

What he really meant was:

Let's bring in some more experienced people who've run a business many times this size to help you run this show.

Tiger Global had just invested $80 million for a 40 per cent share of our business, and Lee was here on their behalf to make sure we delivered on it. It's not uncommon for venture capitalists to surround the founders with people of their choice, and this situation was no different. They believed that a CEO and a stronger management team (with corporate and public company experience) would always be a safer bet than two founders with no real track record of running a corporate business.

Prior to their investment in May 2011, the Catch and Scoopon businesses were run by a management team of Gabby, Hezi and Anees, backed up by Vijay, Catch's first employee, who took care of logistics and operations. None of us carried any titles, and if there were major strategic decisions to be made about hiring, firing, marketing or negotiations, we all had a say. None of us had executive assistants or highly paid advisers. We still checked all our own emails, booked our own meetings and thrived on the adrenaline of making it all work. We were a real team. We ran what we considered to be a small business. It was a fast‐growing small business, and a very profitable ...