What ideas did you try before your current business?
Hey guys,
Inspired by Baremetrics' Josh Pigford @Shpigford post, I wanted to make a post where we all share which ideas we tried before.
I have always been interested in entrepreneurship and since maybe I was 14 years old I started experimenting stuff. Here are the ideas I can remember:
-
2002-2004 - Buying and selling Pokemon games on Ebay - That's the first dollar (or euro) I made. Back then I would receive a "weekly salary" of 5 euros by my parents to do the chores and I wanted to make more money to buy random stuff. I asked my father to lend me some money (75 euros I think back then) in order to buy Gameboy games that I would resell online. I told him we would share the profits 50/50 and I asked a few weeks after to buy his 75 euros share back (of course he did not have the heart to tell me his share had increased in value :P)
-
2006 - BlogDeRob - I started a blog which would feature "crash test" and review videos (such as the iPod I think). It made about $150 to $200 in AdSense revenue per month.
-
2007 - Tagzeo - Inspired by the Million Dollar Homepage but instead people would buy a tag. Did not make any revenue but had lots of traffic.
-
2008 - Akastream - a Shoutcast / Teamspeak server hosting company. It made about $250-500 per month for a year.
-
2010-2012 - Did not do any projects as I focused on studying and uni life / did not have any particular ideas.
-
2012-2016 - StudentFlatMaastricht. Started a real estate company called StudentFlatMaastricht that grew to 250k / year in revenue. At first I just had a one page website and a list of landlords that I cold called in my student city and would publish on Facebook which rooms would be free. The first year grew to 60k turnover, then 120k, then 200k, then 250k.
-
2016-2017 - Took a year off to travel to Africa and took a job at a ridesharing company. Was completely lost as regard to what to do next and even applied to corporate jobs. Then decided to travel to Asia.
-
2018 - now - Manypixels. My first larger business (50 designers working at our offices and 500k/year in revenue)
What is your story?
When i was 12 years old, i read my first business book "rich dad poor dad" from robert kiyosaki which my father bought,and it's changed my perspective.
2011 - 2014 - Open ice cream business with my girlfriend:) I was about 18 Years old,and that is valuable experienced. I learn to sell,manage business,and that makes my relationship even stronger. But i was realize, Ice cream business is not my passion,then i close the business. I close business which make good revenue :) Stupid me..
2014-2016 - Digital Signage business. It's just small LED TV in high traffic area such as Mall and Retail store. I sell ad space to local business. Because lack of advertiser, i closed my second business.
2016 - Start learn programing
2016-2017 I build a lot web app projects learning and making money. Party venue booking app,Car rental booking,Venue directory,Job board, Classified sites, Blog, and a lot more.
2017-Now- Today i getting good passive income from investing my money to my uncle company and doing some freelancing work,create web app/software for local company. In the night i build my side project,profitabilly.com (launch soon) saas for managing project cashflow.
Sorry for my bad english :)
Sounds impressive and you have done a lot of offline businesses which I think is really cool too :)
Thanks🙏
Nice story Robin! What happened with StudentFlatMaastricht? Sounds like it was a pretty good and fast growing business. :)
Thanks Matt! The law basically changed and we were not able to charge fees as high as before.
Fun idea! Here's mine:
1994-1996: Aged 6, I performed magic shows in my garden and charged other kids to attend. Made £5 or so, which just about covered my production costs for this video ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DP6vZVWCUBo
2006-2014: Ran a prank email/SMS platform (fogmo.com; no longer online), where senders could impersonate other people. It got featured in the Wired magazine and I was making around £2,000 a month, but after seeing some nasty messages go through the platform, my conscience got the better of me and I shut it down.
2014-present: Running a 6 figure email marketing platform (EmailOctopus.com), aimed at startups and small businesses. Featured in IndieHackers podcast #42.
Hi Robin - Thanks for sharing, it was really interesting to read about your entrepreneurial journey!
Question - it looks like you started Manypixels in 2018 and already have $500K/year in revenue! How have you been able to grow so fast?
My personal timeline looks like this -
2011 - 2014 - Ran a community blog focused on the crowdfunding industry. This was pre HN and we focused way too much on video interviews vs building a community. Shut down after not making much revenue.
2014 - 2015 - Attended a programming bootcamp and worked for a startup in Kenya.
2016 - 2018 - Focused on career, exploring side hustle business opportunities.
Really great reading your experiences, guys!
Here's what I did previously:
2015 - 2016 tried to startup an AI business called kortex.ai that would predict sales for corporations with lots of historical data. After 1 year of building and trying to sell, failed to find further funding.
2018 - started https://archbee.io - an architecture diagrams platform that will be soon pivot to technical documentation software (including diagrams) that makes about $500 MRR. Currently learning how to market, sell :)
I tried a lot of business but I do regret not spending a lot of time on it. For example, I did it a few weeks and moved onto another project. But examples of previous projects are a poll social network, subscription-based game asset store, test projects in exchange for money.
Sounds like a nice adventure. In which country are those designers located?
They are located in Indonesia.
I started developing a lot of mobile apps in 2013.
In 2014 I've got 5 Million downloads focusing on Italian Market.
In 2015 I started my first SaaS for driving schools in the Italian Market.
At the end of 2015 we started what today is Customerly.io
Congrats!