In 2008, I built a website for my daughter then sold it for seven figures. In 2022, Josh Wardle sold Wordle to The New York Times for seven figures. Amazing, right? This proves it’s still possible for someone to make millions in a matter of months. Listen, I’m not as smart as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg – …
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Lots of great things began with two guys in a garage: Think Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (Apple); Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft); Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google). Now think a middle-aged guy and his 10-year-old daughter in my garage-now-office, staring into computer screens on a Saturday afternoon in October 2008. Sophie had a problem. Which meant I …
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Today’s tech titans were once Davids facing Goliaths. Early in their careers they relied on loopholes that allowed them to stay within the rules, even if they violated norms. Skirting the law may offend your delicate sensibilities or sense of fair play, but you gotta do what you gotta do. None of these “early Davids” broke any rules, or busted …
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Let’s talk business models. But if you mention the word “hope” in the same breath as your revenue scheme, I won’t be holding my breath until you succeed. That said, I’m not gonna be an iconoclast and insist that you have your business model resolved before you deploy your online presence — or whatever endeavor you’re pursuing. Arguably, the most …
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Amazon released the Fire Phone in 2014. It was a flop. It cost Amazon more than $100 million dollars, but Jeff Bezos was fine with it. “You can’t, for one minute, feel bad about the Fire Phone. Promise me you won’t lose a minute of sleep,” Bezos told Ian Freed, a key leader in the Fire Phone’s development, according to The …
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Entrepreneurship is not easy. It’s your time and your money. Your heart and soul. It’s personal. People who tell you not to take it personally don’t know what they’re talking about. Buckle up. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride. As the Blind Seer says in O, Brother Where Art Thou? “You will find a great fortune, but it would not …
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Sometimes a book can change a life. A book changed mine. It was written by Tim Ferriss. It’s called “The 4-Hour Work Week.” What, you were expecting “The Power of Now?” Let me be clear: Tim’s book is not morally uplifting. But it had what I needed to build my site. Specifically, the three things that I would have never considered otherwise. And those …
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In the early days of the Internet — think 1995 — virtually all domain names were registered in one place: Network Solutions. The prices were extortionate and the service was terrible. But they were Network Solutions. They didn’t care. They didn’t have to. Bob Parsons had a solution to Network Solutions. In 1997, he launched GoDaddy, which offered domain name …
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In the Beginning, there was Yahoo — where a team of editors curated the internet by hand. Seriously, I am not making this up. Back then, Google didn’t even exist. While there is no doubt that the world is forever indebted to Larry Page and Sergey Brin for their invention of the Google search engine, the thing that made it …
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People loves stories. Reading them. Hearing them. Telling them. According to Arthur Brooks of The Atlantic, “Stories bring people together. They possess the power to unite.” Before you can sell a site, an app or any endeavor, you need to sell it — verbally. So get your story straight, make it as compelling, relevant and interesting as possible, then get …
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