kidmercury

Wanted to do a recap of my entrepreneurial journey. You know, the business plan that saves the world.

First, I'll start by linking to the video recap I did for my trading site, which is basically my full-time gig at this point. Everybody has to put out a holiday video, which I think is an interesting cultural development, and reflects a bit of the cultural change that social media creates/will create.


2. While the my trading site is my full-time gig, the long-term goal is to create a whole bunch of niche, learning, blogging-based community web sites, and connect them all. Ning is my favorite analogy of a very similar concept -- basically what I am working on is a version of Ning that is more distributed (i.e. open sourced instead of SaaS).

3. I've been working on this since 2005. Actually, it could go back to 2003, as that is when I was working on building a learning commuity for FXCM, my employer at the time. That community worked really well, so then I thought, "hey, why don't I make a business out of this." So that's what I did. I thought in a few months time I'd be buying bottles of dom at the club with my harem of girlfriends. LOL, well, no, I didn't really expect that. But I certainly did not expect the journey to be as long, arduous, and turbulent as it has been.

4. The biggest mistake I made was in underestimating the costs of labor required, and overestimating the ability of APIs and open source software to reduce startup costs. However, this issue is being addressed, and I'm closing in on finding the sweet spot I need to make this happen on a scalable and profitable level. I still think, though, that that is where it is at -- open source and API leveraging is going to yield the next wave of economic efficiencies that will drive the web forward.

5. My co-founder also quit for good in 2009, which was a major blow; it's really hard to get a business going with just one full-time person. So, that was a setback. The good news, and what really made me feel like I "made it", is that in spite of such turbulence, the business survived. Bills paid, mouthes fed. And gold bought!

6. Now I think we're on the right track. There are also multiple prospective buyers, and while I'm open to a partial or whole sale, I also feel confident in its ability to succeed by following its own growth trajectory independent of acquisition. That's a huge relief.

Though I should note that my co-founder's shares are on the market, so any interested parties should certainly contact me.

I don't really celebrate holidays. Or rather, as an uncle of mine is fond of saying, every day is a holiday. So I'll probably go out to a Thai restaurant near my apartment. It's actually not that great, but I love Thai food, and this place is good enough. And I rented The Hangover, LOL, I saw that movie already, but it is hilarious, definitely need to watch it multiple times. Anyway, I'll probably be blogging more over the next couple days too.