Learn From Proven Entrepreneurs

The quote in the headline is from the mission statement Brant Bukowsky had at his first hit company. He was a young guy who launched Show Me Tickets in his dorm room and built it to $22 million in annual sales. His confidence comes from having figured out his strength, online marketing. He used his [...]

I have a confession to make. I almost didn’t do this interview because I didn’t think there was real money to be made by a company as young as Fission Strategy which helps non-profits. But in the first 3 minutes of my pre-interview with Roz Lemieux, the company’s co-founder, I was so excited about the business [...]

It got so bad that a collections company actually showed up in Rand Fishkin’s office trying to collect its part of the half-million dollar debt that he somehow accumulated. He couldn’t face the agent and pretended that he wasn’t Rand Fishkin.

In this interview, you’ll see how to get out of that kind of hole by listening to how Rand did it. Today, Rand’s company, SEOMoz, is one of the most respected names in search engine optimization. Its revenue comes from subscription-based access to online software and educational products…

Learn how Sean Ellis achieved massively scalable growth at companies like Dropbox, Lookout, KISSMetrics, Grockit, LogMeIn, Xobni, Eventbrite, and others.

Have you ever had one of those “when I retire and have enough money, I’ll change the world” plans?

Salman “Sal” Khan did. And if you look at his resume which lists work at tech & finance firms, you can see that he was on his way to making that money. But he didn’t want to wait. So he…

One of the scariest what-ifs for an online company is “What if Google comes into our market and competes with us?”

Clicky, a real-time analytics company run by just 2 people, has been competing with Google since it launched. Noah Merritt, the company’s co-founder, says the company did over $500,000 in revenue last year, with a 60% margin. And the business continues to grow…

Clark Benson found a clever way to grow his dating site, eCRUSH. He had users send anonymous email to people they had crushes on. The recipients of those emails would enter the email addresses of the people they had crushes on. If two people match, eCRUSH helped them connect. The scheme generated hundreds of thousands [...]

This is the story of the woman who launched one of the first online dating sites, back when most people thought the whole concept of online dating was weird. Fran Maier launched Match.com, helped change that perception and built what became one of the most recognized online brands.

Then the company was taken away from her. It was …

Sandy Jen and her friends tried two previous ideas, but neither one felt right. Then they hit on a vision to make instant messaging services like AOL’s AIM accessible on a web page — instead of via a download. It felt so right that Sandy quit her job to pursue it full time. Her co-founder’s credit card bankrolled the idea and they were off.

In this interview you’ll hear…

I remember Katrina Garnett being a big source of conversation in the tech industry during the 90′s. As the founder of CrossWorlds Software, she somehow managed to keep getting the industry spotlight on herself and on her startup. When she wore a black dress in one her company’s ads it probably became the only time [...]

Unlike the other ideas they were kicking around, Rashmi Sinha knew SlideShare was going to be a hit. She knew it as soon as her cofounder (and husband) pitched it to her. At conferences they noticed there wasn’t an easy way for presenters to share their PowerPoint presentations online. So why not build a site that makes sharing presentations as easy as sharing photos and videos?

It was a simple idea with an obvious need. But…

“We just clicked,” is an answer that comes up repeatedly in my interviews when I ask people about why they do business together. It’s amazing how many business decisions are made on a feeling that people have about each other.

So I invited Ori Brafman, author of the new book “Click,” to…