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Meet the tireless entrepreneur who squatted at AOL
- cfinke 14y agoJudging by the gossip I heard while at AOL, he surely isn't the only person using AOL's offices and food without contributing to AOL, but he's the only one who isn't actually employed by AOL.
- alaskamiller 14y agoGood hustle, Eric. Sorry for dropping the ball on not getting back to ya but you've been making do better than I can.
- easy 14y agoThis guy is fantastic. If what he's doing now with the new incubator doesn't work out I hope he considers applying to YC. Living at AOL is at least a good a story as selling cereal.
- citricsquid 14y ago> Update 9:31 a.m. PT: This story has been updated with a response from AOL. What was the response? I can't find it in the article, would be interesting to see it.
- dangrossman 14y ago> Contacted for comment, David Temkin, senior vice president of Mail and Mobile for AOL, told CNET, "It was always our intention to facilitate entrepreneurialism in the Palo Alto office -- we just didn't expect it to work so well."
- DiabloD3 14y agoUnderstatement of the year.
- petercooper 14y agoThere's one thing you can say about AOL: they have a sense of humor.
- chris24 14y agoFrom that one statement alone, I suddenly have a lot more respect for AOL. That was hilarious.
- jconley 14y agoI wonder if he was eating our food. Playdom has three meals a day "up stairs" in that building, where we are headquartered and have an entire floor. There is also another startup incubator in this building. It's pretty funny they just mention AOL in the article.
- dpiers 14y agoShameless self-promotion: If you guys want to have three awesome meals a day, you should check out ZeroCater. We will hook you up with food from the best places around. :)
- jmtame 14y agoHe also has been solo the whole time, which makes it more impressive. He had a cofounder who gave up, but Eric never budged.
- duskwuff 14y agoReminds me of the story of Graphing Calculator: http://www.pacifict.com/Story/ http://www.pacifict.com/Story/
- jacquesm 14y agoThat's awesome, thanks duskwuff. Just one quote: "I asked my friend Greg Robbins to help me. His contract in another division at Apple had just ended, so he told his manager that he would start reporting to me. She didn't ask who I was and let him keep his office and badge. In turn, I told people that I was reporting to him. Since that left no managers in the loop, we had no meetings and could be extremely productive." If you have a spare 15 minutes you really should read this.
- dhimes 14y agoExactly what I was thinking.
- Mystitat 14y agoI hate stories like this. They set unrealistic expectations for managers of developers: "Well, if you won't, we can find someone who would love to do this for free."
- hkmurakami 14y agoReading this story made me incredibly depressed that I am no longer an engineer :( (Thanks so much for the link though, it was one of the most inspiring stories I've read this year)
- Mz 14y agoHomeless entrepreneurs: The new cool thing. Now I just need $50k or so.
- jarek 14y agoAnd a contact at CNET.
- uptown 14y agoAnybody know his Twitter username? The one linked to from the "About Us" page doesn't work.
- ericmsimons 14y agoHi! My twitter is http://twitter.com/#!/ericsimons40 http://twitter.com/#!/ericsimons40 - not sure why it didn't work from the about page :O
- andyobryan 14y agoEither your page is down OR your spike in followers just crashed them... Either way, good work!
- uptown 14y agoIt's weird, it works fine in Safari, but not in Chrome (Version 21.0.1145.0 dev).
- uptown 14y agoThis explains it: @Support: Some users are having trouble accessing Twitter on the web. Our engineers are looking into it. https://twitter.com/support/status/205735369034039297 https://twitter.com/support/status/205735369034039297
- dsirijus 14y agoI'm not are you aware of it, but you should pivot your start-up to something more in the lines of computer/bed/workplace/food sharing thingie for young enterpreneurs. And they pay you by their coding/designing man-hours (which you use to further your initial startup idea). As I've similarly leeched for 2-3 weeks at my companies infrastructure with 5 china shop shirts/undies/pants, I relate and kudo you.
- gonein60 14y agoToo bad his incubator wasn't at Google. He probably could have lived a little better down in Mountain View.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoIts a neat story. When I read the headline I thought it was a Mike Arrington story :-) We joked at Google that they really did want you to live there but their secops team would not let a non-employee do this. However for a potential investor this is a great demonstration of how committed someone is to their idea, and their passion. I don't doubt for a moment that Eric will be successful at what ever he sets out to do, you can't buy that kind of focus.
- nupark2 14y agoIt's also a demonstration of an ethical failure. It was theft.
- fragsworth 14y agoUnfortunately, many investors would not see this as a bad thing.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoI could argue it both ways (theft and non-theft) which, for me, puts it into the ethically 'grey' area of interpretation. I would reason to 'non-theft' based on an argument that AOL gave access to the building (badge) and provides services for people with access to the building, therefore giving access was tacit agreement to the use of the facilities. Other employees no doubt sleep there on occasion and that it also tacitly allowed. Therefore non-theft. I would reason to the 'theft' conclusion that AOL provides services to incubators and to employees but does not explicitly extend employee benefits to incubator attendees. Using services and consumables that are provided to AOL employees is outside the scope of services offered to incubator participants. Therefore Theft. Eric was aware of this grey area, clearly trying to stay outside the regular patrol of security, and thus actively trying to not force a resolution on the question of allowed or not allowed. His response when the resolution occurred appears to be 100% compliance. If I were considering investing in Eric's activities I would consider both parts of that story, the first where he exploits a grey area and the second how he responds to being discovered. In my experience it is people who take Eric's approach of interpreting grey areas in the most optimistic way until shown otherwise, and being 100% rule following on explicit rulings, are successful. There are thresholds of course, if there were signs that said "No one is allowed to sleep in this facility" or "At no time will anyone spend more than 12 out of 24 hrs in a day in this facility" or even more general guidelines that define a standard for defining 'living on site' and a express a prohibition against it. Something which might say "You would be considered to be living here if you spend more than 100 hrs a week or do more than 3 loads of laundry or sleep more than 12 hrs a week or eat more than 12 nominal meals at the facility" etc. AOL could call it out, but they haven't. And that leaves it open to interpretation. In the business world that is sometimes called 'moxie' or 'stones' or any number of euphemisms and its generally respected. What is not respected is explicit exploitation. So for example when I worked at Google the mini-kitchens all had refrigerators that were full of beverages. A small number of employees were found to be exploiting this 'perk'. An example of that which was given was an employee that prior to the weekend, would take an empty back pack and fill it with anywhere from 20 to 50 beverages to take home. That was 'theft' in the sense that the intention was for the beverages to be enjoyed at work not at home, even if you were working from home. But it was theft because of the quantity not because of the taking. Taking one beverage to drink while riding the shuttle home? Not a problem although you were not 'technically' at work any more. I think Eric intentionally interpreted the situation in a way that would support his actions, and recognized that those actions might not be completely inline with the intent, and waited for AOL to express its intent. I don't think he ever believed AOL would 'endorse' his living on campus while he worked on his startup (incubator participation not withstanding) but I could see a case for it being an open question if not explicitly disallowed.
- rdtsc 14y agoHearing about AOL throws me back to the late 90s. And whenever I hear about them it is never in a technical context as in "check out this new database AOL techs created" it is more of "remember how AOL used to send people a ton of CDs?" or "Check out the statistics of people still using dial up" I don't even remember what made them sort of quitely disappear from the radar? Was it broadband from cable companies and Verizon's Fios? So I am wondering what do AOL tech people do there? Is it just maintenance to keep the dial-up server pool working?
- cfinke 14y agoTech people at AOL not involved in maintaining the dial-up service are working on about.me, AIM, AOL.com, the Blogsmith CMS, features for blogs running on the Blogsmith CMS (Engadget, Autoblog, etc.), AOL Desktop, Games.com, Huffington Post, AOL Mail, Mapquest, Moviefone, Patch, Shortcuts, TechCrunch, and Winamp, to name a few.
- joshuamerrill 14y agoWhile I applaud Eric's inexhaustible dedication to his company and mission, taking advantage of AOL in order to accomplish it is disgustingly unethical. It just makes it harder for other entrepreneurs who share that dedication but have chosen to build their businesses above-board. I'm glad AOL has a sense of humor about this. But you can be sure that this incident will create additional requirements and restrictions for the [honest] entrepreneurs who still remain in the building.
- west1737 14y agoDo what you have to do. AOL is no worse for having someone sleeping on their couch.
- nupark2 14y agoAOL out the funds they spent on his theft of service and resources, and they're out the time they spent having security figure out why someone was sleeping there. They've been embarrassed in the press, and they're that much less likely to trust people that are part of their entrepreneur programs in the future. The security staff in question was probably reprimanded for their failure to detect the interloper -- he abused the trust he had gained by previously becoming a "known" face. You do what you have to do, ethically, to succeed.
- djloche 14y ago"They've been embarrassed in the press" They've actually been profiled as a reasonable company that invests in the future. How many people reading this article know AOL as "that company that first sent me discs in the mail" and previously thought AOL as a dead company? AOL gets free, positive press showing that they're not dead, they're investing in the future, and that they're reasonable. The positive spin this article gives them is worth every penny of resources spent.
- Scramblejams 14y agoYeah, this was the first time I can remember thinking of "AOL" and "cool" in the same sentence. On the whole I think it reflects well on them.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tannerc 14y agoThis is an entertaining story, at most. The pursuit of round after round of funding that Eric - and many other entrepreneurs, surely - are striving for is concerning. What ever happened to the pursuit of a savvy business that brings in real profit? The hunt for funding needs to be replaced with a hunt for sustainability. Am I wrong for believing that?
- freshhawk 14y agoI agree that it is concerning. The worst part is that I've seen attiudes subtly shift away from real entrepreneurial spirit and towards a "how do we make ourselves attractive to patrons" attitude. It's a pragmatic choice, if you are going to be the subject of patronage and treated as such then you don't work on building a business you work on pleasing the patron so he and his friends will keep giving you money. It's an unintended consequence of the very healthy VC/Angel ecosystem and consumer internet sites that are hard to monetize but still valued by the public. Maybe it's just a weird blip and not a big deal. But it's a direction that strikes me as unhealthy.
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoGreat story and lucky for Eric he wasn't locked up in prison. Worth noting he was involved in an earlier project at AOL and they hadn't deactivated his pass. A without this things may have gone the other way. I think Gates and Jobs spent nights at places they were working at, leveraging off free to use, latest technology. His startup idea is great. There are variations out there already but maybe this story and network will turn this into something successful.
- yardie 14y agoI had a friend that claimed he was squatting at Virginia Tech's Math Emporium. At the time I assumed he was joking (they didn't have showers) but now I'm not so sure anymore. And it's not like college students are renowned for their personal hygiene.
- ja27 14y agoWe had a homeless guy living in our dorm lounge for almost a week before someone realized he wasn't a student.
- cpeterso 14y agoI'm reminded of Rodney Rothman's My Fake Job (New Yorker, November 2000), a "personal history about the writer's tenure at an unnamed downtown Internet company where he did not actually have a job": http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2000/11/27/2000_11_27_120_TNY_LIBRY_000022173 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2000/11/27/2000_11_27_120_T... * Reporter's fake job irks real dot-com: http://articles.cnn.com/2000-12-05/tech/reporter.irks.dot.com.idg_1_employees-luminant-worldwide-dot?_s=PM:TECH http://articles.cnn.com/2000-12-05/tech/reporter.irks.dot.co...
- iblaine 14y agoBreak the rules when it fits your own interests. This kid should leave the valley and move to Wall St.
- edw519 14y ago...given just $20,000 by the incubator, and after the four-month program ended, the money was gone... ...after pivoting and focusing solely on letting teachers share lesson plans, Simons said he was able to score $50,000 in seed funding from Ulu Ventures and Silicon Valley VC Paul Sherer. Now, Simons said, he's looking to raise an additional $500,000. So is Simons just a kid with a particularly honed entrepreneurial spirit? Exactly when did the definition of entrepreneur change from "build a sustainable business that provides value to its customers" to "survive long enough for the next round of investment"? I admire Eric for his tenacity (most others would have quit long ago), but I'd much rather hear about when he actually sells something.
- vladd 14y agoHe used AOL infrastructure to build his company, I'm wondering if he disclosed that to investors as he's pretty liable to them otherwise. It's lesson number #1 (don't use your employer's computer off-hours when working on your own projects) for people that try to build something outside their company's influence.
- danvideo 14y agoMight be wrong, but isn't California law especially lenient about ownership of work produced outside of work hours? (vs. here in NYC, for example)
- bodyfour 14y agoEspecially lenient, but not infinitely lenient.
- tomkarlo 14y agoI don't think that's the issue here. He wasn't an employee. The question would be more, how would CA treat non-company work produced using a work computer.
- iamgilesbowkett 14y agoI think you're absolutely right. I'm sorry to say it, but I also believe that all the comments to the contrary are just people who haven't bothered to learn anything about the subject.
- nicholassmith 14y agoGot to say the response from AOL was pure class. They could have been really annoyed at the kid for sponging off their employee services, but no, 'we just didn't expect it to work so well'. Nicely done from AOL there. Sure, the kid contravened plenty of rules and laws, but the level of focus to do 18ish hour days and maintain a lifestyle like that to achieve the goals? You don't get that everyday. And lets be honest, he's not the first guy in the Valley to treat the rules with a loose interpretation.
- joelhaasnoot 14y agoBending the truth gets you far - I spoke to a trainfan once who told everyone he was a train/locomotive driver/engineer and used that to travel all throughout Europe in traincabs
- jarek 14y agoAlso, it sounds a lot better than "lying."
- zandorg 14y agoSee film 'Secret of My Success' with Michael J. Fox for similiar plot. Great film.
- EREFUNDO 14y agoI think "don't die" refer mostly to his ambition and startup....epic!
- libraryatnight 14y agoVery cool story :) I understand the ethics arguments, but I can't find the heart to support them. I admire Eric's resourcefulness and outright balls ;)
- a3d6g2f7 14y agoMaybe he should have brought the security guard on as a co-founder?
- a3d6g2f7 14y agoSimons' supervisor commented that he was a model employee for AOL's Palo Alto Office. "Eric was always on time, never late for work."
- readme 14y ago"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. "
- jroseattle 14y agoThis kid's drive and ambition is impressive, but using that as an excuse to ignore honesty? Sounds like he should be working on wall street, instead. Kudos to David Tempkin for his response -- spot on. He recognized the situation for what it was, and responded most appropriately. But here's the thing -- suppose he was instead sponging off a smaller, non-corporate, recently-funded, bootstrapped operation. Would everyone be calling him a go-getter? I'm guessing not, as the "theft" conversation would likely take a different tone.
- neilkelty 14y agoWhere did he work during the day as to not be noticed by hundreds of employees?
- DigitalSea 14y agoI'm sure once AOL eventually goes out of business, they can crash on his couch and use his shower. Fair enough he was using their facilities to work on his own projects and try and raise capital, but I admire his audacity. This is probably one of the most impressive things I've heard and read about in a long time.
- myspoonnotyours 14y agoSimilar to that Duke U. student who lived in a van on campus. Of course he was paying for tuition. Also reminds me of Half Baked and the guy on the couch.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rubynerd 14y agoDiscarding the primary point of this article (squatting at AOL), today is my last day of college (16-18 age bracket in the UK), and you can tell that every single lesson is the same as it was five years ago, bar electronics because it's a new exam board and the teacher is only just finding his feet. Computing, we still use VB6 for coursework, Chemistry, everything is photocopied with ye olde dates on Props to him for attempting to introduce variety into lesson plans, thankfully, today is the last day of copying out photocopy masters from a whiteboard onto paper
- 46Bit 14y agoOff-topic, but you should think about going to http://youngrewiredstate.org http://youngrewiredstate.org this summer. It's a week-long open data hack that ends with 1-2 days of camping at Bletchley Park. I've been to it two years running now and it's done wonders.
- lollancf37 14y agoHis motivation and will to make his project exist is out of the ordinary and I respect that. However his behaviour is just shameful. I guess the end, justify the means ... Still I don't like it, one bit.
- charlieok 14y agoSo today I found myself reading Robert Burns' poem, “To a Mouse” (the origin of the famous phrase, “The best laid plans of mice and men”). I think it's almost possible to read this poem in the voice of AOL talking to Eric Simons. http://www.worldburnsclub.com/poems/translations/554.htm http://www.worldburnsclub.com/poems/translations/554.htm
- inspiredworlds 14y agolove this guys hustle