Rafat Ali: Continuing to Drive his Digital Success

Rafat Ali, 37, had smashing success with his first online venture and rest assure…he’s just getting warmed up. Born in England, and raised in India, Ali studied both computer engineering and then journalism as a graduate student, exactly what he needed for his venture, paidcontent.org, a site covering digital media, launched in 2002. Now living in New York City and a US citizen, Ali is gearing up for another launch. We got a chance to speak to Ali about his career and his future projects.

Elan: Can you tell us a little bit about your professional background?

Rafat Ali: At Aligarh Muslim University in India, I graduated as a computer engineer in 1996, right when the Internet had just started coming into India. I became disillusioned two years into the coursework — dreading about the conventional engineering career –and wanted to get into writing. Hence I jumped into journalism, worked in Delhi for 3 years as a business journalist, and then came to the U.S. in 1999, to do my Masters in Journalism from Indiana University.

From there I moved to New York, worked at two dotcoms as a journalist. Both closed down as the first Internet bubble burst. Since then, I started paidContent.org, the blog covering digital media, and it grew from a hobby out of my bedroom into a full company. I raised one round of venture capital, and sold the company to UK-based Guardian Media Group in 2008, and left the company in summer of last year. I have been on an extended sabbatical since, and now in the early stages of starting my new start-up, this one in online travel sector.

Elan: You’re a successful Internet media entrepreneur. Can you tell us what your secret to success is?

RA: Not sure if there is a secret beyond your ability to outwork and out-execute anyone else, and your ability to change much faster than everyone. Internet brings about democratization of opportunity, which also means you are competing against a lot of people and ideas. Whatever you think of, however original you think it is, has been done before, so you have to be faster, nimble and better than everyone else, either in terms of product (design, ease of use etc) or the quality of content/service you provide.

Also, every new business is built upon a set of assumptions, and if you aren’t flexible about them, it could take you down much faster than the market would. In a start-up, there is no time to recover, no time to ruminate over your mistakes. You make decisions, live with it, iterate, experiment, fail or succeed, and move on.

Elan: What was your greatest challenge to overcome in starting a new venture?

RA: My own lack of any business background, I always fancied myself as a writer/journalist first. I learned it the hard way, by making mistakes. My own lack of financial knowledge meant the company didn’t get set up with the right structures until much later, which set us back in terms of execution.

Also, another challenge was the lack of growth funding. Nowadays, funding’s very easy to come by, and even pure content ventures get money, at least enough to start with. Back when I started, early 2000s, that wasn’t the case. So all the growth was incremental, and funded off money coming in.

Elan: You are about to start another online company focusing on traveling can you tell us about that?

RA: It is in the travel sector, but not really built upon my own travels over the last 20 months. The cliche is: a start-up guy sells his company, goes off to travel the world, and through his experiences during his travel, hits a brainwave on how to solve all the travel woes in the world. Thankfully, mine isn’t that.

At $1 trillion a year, travel is the world’s largest industry by revenue and the world’s largest employer. While digital advances have disrupted distribution and information systems, no intelligence brand has emerged that matches the industry’s size with its digital potential. My new company will attempt to be that. It sounds vague, but that’s all I can say right now as I am still a few months away from launching.

Elan: What would your advice be for upcoming entrepreneurs?

RA: Perseverance, above all else. Keep your head down, build stuff, and good things will happen. This world deals a lot in buzz, which can be hugely distracting and your whole existence can get swept up in it. Avoid scene-sters, and surely avoid becoming one.

Another big lesson I learned as a journalist, watching some of my senior colleagues: don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions. You would be surprised how many journalists are. I have taken that lesson, and applied it more broadly to my business and life. Ask hard questions of yourself, and to those around you, without fear.

To follow Rafat Ali on Twitter, click here.