How A First-Time Entrepreneur Launched Going.com And Sold It To AOL — with Roy Rodenstein
Roy Rodenstein was looking online for a place to go on a date. When he couldn’t find a site that showed fun places to go, he decided to launch his own event site, which became Going.com.
This is the story of how this first time entrepreneur quit a well-paying job to go into business for himself. You’ll hear how he bootstrapped his idea, found investors for it and while he sold. You’ll also hear a very frank conversation about how the proceeds from the sale would have compared to a salary, had he kept working.
Roy Rodenstein is the co-founder of Going, a user-generated site about local events and happenings acquired by AOL in 2009, and an active startup advisor and mentor. Previously, he was an early employee at iPhrase, a natural language search company acquired by IBM, and a human-computer interaction researcher at MIT, Xerox PARC and AT&T.
Andrew Warner: Three messages before we get started. I have a brand new sponsor, Scott Walker, the entrepreneur’s lawyer. Frankly, I’m not even sure why he’s paying to sponsor Mixergy, since Scott Walker is a pretty well-known lawyer in the start up community.
You probably already know him from his Ask the Attorney posts on VentureBeat or from Venture Hacks or from Quick Sprout. Scott is the guy you turn to when you’re raising money from VCs or selling your business. But if you’re launching, he’ll also help you get your company structured properly. So check out WalkerCorporateLaw.com.
PicClick is a company launched by my buddy, Ryan Sit. He is the guy who Craigslist banned when he created a visual way to search that site. But Ryan is a fighter man, so he launched a new site, PicClick, which is a visual way to search eBay, Etsy and other sites. PicClick is less than two years old, and already it’s profitable. Way to go,...
Continue reading the transcript...