Selling Your Startup

Forewordby Bhavin Turakhia

I believe it is our moral obligation to make an impact that is proportionate to our potential.

I have always had a passion for reading books and credit a lot to this habit inculcated into me during my early childhood. Reading enables you to shape your life from the wisdom and experiences of others. Stand on the shoulders of giants.

Growing up, I was a quintessential nerd—with a penchant for math and physics and a natural affinity for writing code from the age of 10. I was fortunate to find my passion early on and spent every spare moment in the computer room, when PCs were monochrome terminals with MS-DOS and 5¼-inch floppy drives. I devoured biographies with fervor and learnt much from the success and failures of Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, and countless others. It was clear to me then—I wanted to start my own company in this revolutionary new world.

Seven years later, I was raring to go, and along with my younger brother Div and $300 of borrowed capital from Dad, we started our first company—Directi—a web presence provider and domain name registrar.

Fourteen years later, we were number four worldwide, with 10 million domain names, a network of over 50,000 global resellers, and $70 million in revenues. Hari, then CEO of Endurance International and now a close family friend, approached us with an offer to buy Directi and I still remember to this day being very conflicted about it. However after six months of them courting us, and several deep ...