As of this writing (late March, 2024) it has been 30 years since I started my first Internet Company. What became to be known as Eliance Corporation. A web-payments company.
My friend Du and I holed up in a small room for a few straight days with gobs of legal pads and plotted out our code by pasting it all over the walls. Du gathered it up and spent three weeks coding it while I set up the front-end and organized sales and customer service.
We were twelve people in Minot, North Dakota. The day we launched we did $93.50. We were crushed!
A short time later we were doing $1,000,000 a month and a year and a half later we had over 600 employees doing $1,000,000 per day!
It was a firehose of ideas and productivity.
Within three years, we created/piloted/merged/advanced telephony/IVR/IP, email customer service, co-surfing, device-based risk management, one-click purchasing, affiliate programs, universal shopping carts (think Amazon Marketplace – shop everywhere, check out once), the first virtual credit card, the Chuck-E-Cheese Online Birthday Reservation System, but the very first government agency online (ND State Game & Fish – hunting licenses), started an Internet Bank, Token Systems, and a slew of other things.
I even created a fake country “Barkinoa Faso” so I could keep track of who stole our checkout page IP (there was no Google). When Google came around my fake country always got more hits that the real one, Burkina Faso. First Data reported to us that we were 85% of their global ecommerce transactions. We ideated many new rules that would eventually find their way into changes in regulations in the US and abroad, web and later, mobile as well. You can get crazy shit done when you are giddy with dreams.
It wasn’t the money or notoriety that drove me. It was this dream that the Internet was going to change things and level the playing field for everybody. Even a nobody from nowhere could create something. And I felt I could be one of those nobodies!
I was so immersed that even breaking three vertebrae in my back while hosting customers on a trail ride didn’t slow me down. Instead of going to the hospital I interviewed a CFO candidate that night, in his driveway, from my car, because I could not walk. I spent the next week working on my knees as I was unable to sit. It was 8 days later when it took me an hour to get out of bed that I went to the hospital. For an hour. Just long enough to get an MRI, a lecture, and some pills. 22 hours a day, 500,000 air-miles a year. 5 years.
My mission was to work to drive value to people who create things and make things cheaper for people who consume things. That was my fuel.
When I look back on that dream I feel wholly unsuccessful. Instead of “My Cyber Agent” (Fail!) brokering your personal data, paying you and keeping a small commission, we have Facebook, taking your data in exchange for hosting photos and using it to aggregate its own wealth instead of sharing the value of your data with you!
Instead of “Glue” (Fail!) which eliminated Internet Ads using an anonymous self-data-mining algorithm (hosted by you on your computer, 20,000,000+ of them at its peak!) we have “Clouds” that effectively remove all of your privacy and represent enormous, certain, hacks. Also aggregating wealth rather than “democratizing” it.
I could go on. But I hope you get the point.
Recently, as a result of ChatGPT and Robotics, themes like “Democratization”, “Privacy”, “Freedom” and “Fairness” are floating in the air!
And as Astro Teller points out, Failure is just Compost. So I find myself re-invigorated again! Full of the same dreams and desires but with 30 years of experience and a giant pile of compost at my disposal.
Proving that if you keep your old Bermuda Shorts long enough, they will come back into style.
I’m on a mission to “find my people” and participate with the next generation of entrepreneurs to make this turn of the wheel closer to (at least what I consider) the ideal.
Opportunity for everyone, and a level playing field that rewards creators and benefits consumers. Benevolent platforms in the service of people, giving their constituents a voice. That is heard. And acted upon. Co-creative.