Risk & Business Magazine Cal LeGrow Fall 2016 | Page 9

MAP YOUR FUTURE STRATEGY

LESSONS FROM DAVID KARANDISH,
CEO OF ANSWERS.COM

Map Your Future
Strategy

Lessons from David Karandish

D

avid Karandish is a giant
in the tech field. Since his
time as an undergraduate,
he was founding companies
(such as Expo Group) and
working as a consultant in e-commerce.
In 2006, he and a partner founded AFCV
Holdings, and in 2011, David and his
partner decided to purchase Answers.
com. Through his leadership as CEO
and the strategies that he set forth since
then, the company was acquired by Apex
Holdings during 2014 in a deal that was
reportedly worth $900 million. There
are a number of key business lessons
that David has learned from his past
successes. Though these were learned
in the tech industry, they translate
surprisingly well to any business.
One of the most important things that
David seeks to impart to businesses
and potential business owners is to
think not only about the product or
service you are hoping to sell but also
the distribution channel, or your “goto-market strategy”. How you distribute
the product that you create is often just
as important, if not more important,
than what the product actually is.
From a business perspective, these
differences can mean drastic changes in
cost. As a quick example, consider the
difference between the overhead cost
of running a brick-and-mortar retail
location and that of an online retailer.
Another important lesson is to weigh
the advantages of operating your
business either in a “big pond” or in a
“small pond”, from a physical-operations

perspective. The advantages of a small
pond are not always so obvious. In tech,
for instance, it is better to be a startup
in the Midwest than it is to be one in
Silicon Valley. Why? Cost, the ease of
finding quality talent, and the ease of
building a good team. Think about the
ways that your company could benefit
depending on what size “pond” you decide
to locate your business in, geographically

“ULTIMATELY,
KARANDISH
BELIEVES THAT
PASSION IS
THE DRIVING
FORCE BEHIND
STARTUPS AND
BUSINESSES IN
GENERAL.”
or spatially speaking. Would a lot of
competition help or hurt your business?
How might your team be different
depending on your geographic location?
The most important lesson that David
outlines, however, is twofold. Most
industries have innovations and changes
that come in waves, meaning that it can
be easy to be either too early or too late to
“catch a wave” and ride it to success. The
example he often uses to describe these
waves is that of YouTube, which formed at

the perfect time to become a juggernaut.
Though dozens of other similar companies
existed, YouTube opted to utilize Flash
technology in their videos, which not only
opened them up to a universal user base,
but also foresaw the rise of Flash as an
internet standard a few years later. The
best way to find your “wave,” according to
Karandish, is to “jump ahead” ten years
into the future and think about what your
industry might look like. You can then
work backwards from there and determine
what the right course of action might be.
Thinking about the future and planning
for it is one of the keys to success in any
industry. Don’t be caught on the receding
tide of the wave; ride right at the top of it.
Ultimately, Karandish believes that
passion is the driving force behind
startups and businesses in general.
Whether your passion is for the business
itself or for the product that you are
creating does not matter, as long as
the passion is within you for what you
are doing. Without passion, there is
nothing to get you through the bad days.
David’s passion is creating things in the
technology space. What passion do you
have? What is your driving force? +
David is responsible for setting
corporate strategy and driving revenue
partnerships. Prior to joining Answers,
David was the CEO of Expo Group,
an online resource in the consumer
mortgage industry. He has also served
as a consultant at MonsterComme