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Lessons Learned From Building and Selling a Startup
The unlikely startup and sellout
Greg and I stood up from the kitchen table and walked out the front door of my house in Roxborough, a rural suburb of Denver, Colorado.
Somewhat in disbelief, I asked Greg for some reassurance.
“Do you think this could really work?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think it might.”
It was mid-December in 2004, and I had an idea that would change everything for me and Greg (my business partner).
A few years earlier, in 2001, I built a web development platform called PromoteWare. It was like WordPress (before WordPress existed), only I never had the idea to make it open source and let other people use it.
Yeah, that was dumb. I know.
Greg was the sales and marketing guy. I used PromoteWare to quickly build and customize the websites he sold.
By December 2004, I had been building websites and back-end web-based business management solutions for over 6 years, and I was tired of it.
Get a client. Meet with the client. Make a list of unrealistic expectations. Build website. Make changes. Launch website. Start over with a new client.
