Housing’s talking profitability, and that’s why startups need experienced investors

Housing’s given itself 2 years to make profits. Photo Credit:Pixabay.

Real estate portal Housing said on Tuesday it plans to be profitable within the next 24 months under chief executive Jason Kothari, as he works towards serious monetization.

On the line is Jason’s legacy as a man who cleaned up a messy startup, and not just as the guy who took over from Rahul Yadav – the founder who rattled big cages but was more recently contemplating quitting entrepreneurship.

“With all of the business fundamentals now in place, Housing is set to achieve its revenue and cost targets and poised to attain both exponential growth and cash flow profitability within 18 to 24 months,” Jason said in a statement.

While promises of hitting profitability are not unusual in the startup industry, for Housing, the announcement holds a special significance.

Housing’s Jason Kothari. Photo credit: Housing.

If Housing turns around, it means strong investor intervention can pay off. While founders can whip up storms in teacups, building a sustainable business needs more than media headlines. It needs help from seasoned investors.

The story of Housing is one that holds lessons of all the pitfalls of the startup industry.

The company started out with a bang, when a bunch of college students promised to make house hunting easy for Indians. But it shot to headlines with a very public fight between its founder Rahul Yadav and investor Sequoia, that eventually led to the founder’s firing.

Since then, Housing has been beleaguered with heavy restructuring, and for the most part, is still infamous for being the brainchild of a volatile founder.

When investors (including SoftBank and Sequoia) stepped in in July last year and eventually replaced the original team with a new C-suite, there were rumblings in the industry about founders’ independence and heavy-handed investors.

See: Housing after Rahul Yadav: time to make some money

But while the internet was busy debating whether it is right for an investor to pressure a founder to leave his own company and even compared Rahul Yadav to Steve Jobs, Housing and its new team largely kept its head down and worked to clean up the mess of what later turned out to be a hugely mismanaged startup that had grown without knowing how to handle that growth.