From a PhD drop out to building Google, Facebook, Square, DoorDashthe journey of Gokul Rajaram [Video]

Gokul Rajaram is fondly known as the ‘Godfather of Google Adsense’—he grew it from zero to over $1 billion in revenue. Later, he founded an NLP company, which was acquired by Facebook, where he led the Ads Product team as Product Director, helping grow revenue from $0.75 billion to $6.5 billion, and helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first.

Rajaram also helped Square, DoorDash, and Coinbase go public (IPO) as a member of the management team and a board. Additionally, he is a prolific angel investor, and has invested in over 300 startups, including Airtable, CRED, Curefit, Figma, Learneo, Pigment, Postman, Whatfix, and more.

In this episode, Rajaram shares insights on how to grow from startup to scale-up, quoting stories from his rich experience. He stresses on the importance of product-market fit (PMF), exploring its critical link to monetisation, and sound unit economics.

Understanding the three stages of company growth

According to Rajaram, companies generally …