Jeremy Weisz

How Sachin Monga went from Prototype to Y Combinator to a $3M VC-Backed Social Space Application Founder

Sachin Monga is the co-founder and CEO of Cocoon, an app that provides a secure and private space to keep up with your closest friends and family members. Before co-founding Cocoon, Sachin worked at Facebook for seven years, holding various positions. Now, his goal is to bring new technology into the world that augments natural social behavior and makes us better humans.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

  • How Sachin Monga's app, Cocoon, brings close family members that live in different locations under one digital roof
  • Why Sachin left Facebook to design a more personal and private app
  • Sachin shares his experience of transforming Cocoon from an idea into a prototype
  • How do we behave differently on our phones versus our desktops computers: The concept and research behind Cocoon's MVP
  • Sachin explains how Cocoon made it into Y Combinator (YC) and succeeded
  • The motivating factor that drove Sachin's team to keep learning and improving
  • What it was like raising a seed round for a seemingly “unfundable” private social network
  • The Cocoon business model and it's top selling point
  • Where to learn more about Sachin Monga and Cocoon

In this episode…

In our modern world, even the closest of friends and family members often live in different locations around the globe. And despite advancements in technology, it can be a real challenge to stay connected in a personal and private way. With occasional phone or video calls, texts, and posts on oversaturated social networks, there is still a lack of a digital safe space to call your own. 

However, Sachin Monga is trying to change all that. After working at Facebook for seven years, Sachin realized that he didn't have an intimate digital space to connect with his family, who lived far away. This led him to co-found Cocoon, a private social “space” that brings close friends and family members under one digital roof, no matter where in the world they currently live. 

In this episode of the Big Break Software Podcast, Geordie Wardman takes a stroll down memory lane with Sachin Monga, the co-founder and CEO of Cocoon. Sachin discusses leaving Facebook to design a more personal social space, the challenges he faced when building the Cocoon MVP, and all the other exciting milestones of becoming a software entrepreneur. Stay tuned.