Hi all -
I call myself an "Ex" entrepreneur - we all know that once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur! - but I took a hiatus for a while being saddled in a corporate job and now it's time to revamp my efforts.
A few years ago I started a computer consulting company. I was very fortunate: I built it up from myself and no capital to a 28 person employee, $3 million revenue per year business. I then made some rookie mistakes, mostly related to hiring a salesperson who royally screwed me over. After a protracted legal battle which I "won", I was burnt. After spending 5 years doing 120 hour weeks, everything from being billable, to doing admin, HR, payroll etc, I had had enough. I joined the corporate world. In retrospect, a lot of mistakes. I'm sure I walked away from a potentially good exit valuation but being a services company, the multiplier is not huge.
While on my corporate job I continued to dabble in a number of other ventures, none of them succeeded but none of them failed...it was only a time commitment and all were a learning experience. My last venture is a forum that in 6 months has grown phenomenally....I'm at 13k visitors per day, 3.3 million page views per month and over 25k registered members. Unfortunately, the content is such that Google will not allow advertising on it...no, it's not adult content or anything like that, but Google is quite specific on their terms and the nature of the site is such that it may be frowned upon. However, my demographic is 16-28 year old females, mostly from the US so a potentially lucrative market (they live on my site, including chatting, blogging etc). Amazingly, I just haven't been able to monetize it. I'm already at the point that I needed to move to a dedicated server to support the traffic so hopefully I'll crack this nut at somepoint. The affiliate offers do not seem to convert well and with little options for advertising, I'm somewhat stuck on this one at the moment
Finally, here I am now having just finished the Millionaire Fastlane...great book. It has reenergized my efforts. I *think* my focus will be towards App development but I'm still exploring options. I hope to learn a lot here from many others and may we all achieve our Fastlane.
Chris
I call myself an "Ex" entrepreneur - we all know that once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur! - but I took a hiatus for a while being saddled in a corporate job and now it's time to revamp my efforts.
A few years ago I started a computer consulting company. I was very fortunate: I built it up from myself and no capital to a 28 person employee, $3 million revenue per year business. I then made some rookie mistakes, mostly related to hiring a salesperson who royally screwed me over. After a protracted legal battle which I "won", I was burnt. After spending 5 years doing 120 hour weeks, everything from being billable, to doing admin, HR, payroll etc, I had had enough. I joined the corporate world. In retrospect, a lot of mistakes. I'm sure I walked away from a potentially good exit valuation but being a services company, the multiplier is not huge.
While on my corporate job I continued to dabble in a number of other ventures, none of them succeeded but none of them failed...it was only a time commitment and all were a learning experience. My last venture is a forum that in 6 months has grown phenomenally....I'm at 13k visitors per day, 3.3 million page views per month and over 25k registered members. Unfortunately, the content is such that Google will not allow advertising on it...no, it's not adult content or anything like that, but Google is quite specific on their terms and the nature of the site is such that it may be frowned upon. However, my demographic is 16-28 year old females, mostly from the US so a potentially lucrative market (they live on my site, including chatting, blogging etc). Amazingly, I just haven't been able to monetize it. I'm already at the point that I needed to move to a dedicated server to support the traffic so hopefully I'll crack this nut at somepoint. The affiliate offers do not seem to convert well and with little options for advertising, I'm somewhat stuck on this one at the moment
Finally, here I am now having just finished the Millionaire Fastlane...great book. It has reenergized my efforts. I *think* my focus will be towards App development but I'm still exploring options. I hope to learn a lot here from many others and may we all achieve our Fastlane.
Chris
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