4 ms·
The author mentions 10+ years experience at running startups but according to the blurb he's 26. It also looks like he was doing consulting work to pay the bil
by gizmo 17y ago
The author mentions 10+ years experience at running startups but according to the blurb he's 26.
It also looks like he was doing consulting work to pay the bills between his 3rd startup and Carbonmade... for a full 18 months. That doesn't make much sense to me. How can you first sell 3 profitable companies and then go back to consulting for 18 months while trying to bootstrap a new company?
I can only guess to the explanation...
I also question some of his advice. "Your first dollar validates your product, your business model, and everything else" contradicts my experience. So I'm a little skeptical.
- mikekarnj 17y agoJust because you sell your company doesn't mean you want to invest all of the money into your own startup. It seems like he wanted to make sure Carbonmade had a proven model before he invested additional time or money into the idea. Pushing that aside, I think a lot of the advice he gives is very relevant and applicable to bootstrapping startups.
- alain94040 17y agoAlthough it would be nice for the health of the startup ecosystem if entrepreneurs put back some fraction of their success into angel investing.
- spencerfry 17y agoI've actually been doing Internet businesses starting at age 11. But my first real business was at age 16 when I started an ISP, web hosting, and shell service company over the summer. We did very well and made a nice tidy profit on that. But I began by starting and selling small websites (forums, game review sites, etc.). I then started my second real business at 18 where we sold game server hosting, web hosting, and ventrilo services. This company lasted about a year until I took the web hosting clients, built the web hosting services up, and then sold that to a much larger NYC based web hosting company to pursue what would be lead to my third business. Note the progression in size. My third business was a voice over IP company for computer game players called TypeFrag. I started that in 2002 during my sophomore year of college, and ran it for five years and five full-time employees all while in college until getting a buyout offer of my 50% share that I couldn't refuse during 2007 when I was 22 years old. During that time, I also launched a software company called GameComm under the TypeFrag brand. That company won first place and $75k during a business plan competition and we hired two full-time guys to build out the software for us. That's company number four. After selling TypeFrag and GameComm, I started in on Carbonmade when I was 22 and have been working on that since. Carbonmade is company number five -- I say company when it's a registered LLC and cash positive and profitable -- and continue to work on that to this day. So, technically, I actually have 15 years experience working on the Web, but tend to shorten that to 10, because my first "real" company (not just a small money making forum/review site, etc.) came when I was 16... 10 years ago. You can see my bio here: http://www.crunchbase.com/person/spencer-fry http://www.crunchbase.com/person/spencer-fry
- outotrai 17y agoHow did you and do you decide which services to provide? How do you gauge demand as you're thinking of possible products?
- tptacek 17y agoDO NOT DUMP THE MONEY YOU MAKE ON M&A BACK INTO YOUR NEXT COMPANY. LIFE MISTAKE. If HN supported bold type, I'd have used it there as well. Having retirement, mortgage, and college funds paid up will make you a far better entrepreneur than a couple hundred thousand dollars of funding ever will.