My first adventure began at an early age. In Junior High I taught myself HTML 4 and CSS so I could build a gaming website, the website was ultimately a flop but I found that many website designers lacked the knowledge to turn a Photoshop template into a HTML page and thus I found my first entrepreneurial opportunity. Before long I had clients waiting for me to code there designs.
I loved translating PSDs into raw HTML and CSS but before long I taught myself the basics of Photoshop and several popular CMS’s so I could start building websites from scratch. I developed many websites and sold most of them but few remain in the webosphere today. One the best that I helped design and run EternalGaming.com. During the time I was on board at EternalGaming I helped turn it around and within a year it became one of the top 100 gaming websites (as ranked by Alexa) unfortunately after I left for college the site lost much of it’s steam.
During the time I was helping EternalGaming (Fall 2006 – Fall 2007) I built and managed Wii’re Gamers.com. A Nintendo Wii website that was at the time in the top 25 Wii related websites (as ranked by Alexa). It was a fun, exciting period where I managed an editorial staff of 4-5 while maintaining the backend of a popular website and innovating upon it to stay ahead of competitors. We had the first flash arcade website tailored for the Nintendo Wii, as well as the first to deliver news directly to your Wii via it’s built in email address. Eventually my resources (primarily time) grew too thin and I lost interest in the Nintendo Wii. I left the website in the hands of the Eternal Gaming Network and my last great website adventure came to a bitter sweet end.
That’s not to say I stopped building websites or having great ideas for web content, my other creations just haven’t been such a runaway success. For example in ~2008 I began a website titled My V Resume.com. It was built off WordPress MU, a multi user/multi blog website structure. The goal was to allow everyone to make a personal website to easily host their portfolio, resume, and other content about themselves. The idea was to essentially give people an extension to their physical paper resumes, similar to this website actually. Sadly, between work, School, and ASM (Association of Systems Management) I didn’t have enough time to work out the bugs before I was able to launch it. I also briefly ran a website hosting company to give the student organizations at UT a local affordable entity to host their webpages at. With the combination of student organizations refusing to pay and server issues the business collapsed.
Recently, in 2019 I was in the drop shipping business. I built a website to sell gym and fitness equipment. Just as this was getting off the ground 2020 happened and any small-frys were run out of luck when the lock-downs occurred.
So entrepreneurship is a hit and miss game, it has always been this way and always will but the ride is always exciting.