So much has been said over the past few years about: The rise of the ebook, the death of traditional publishing, the emergence of self publishing and If your moving away from physical books into the Kindle and ibooks world then you will probably love Readmill.

I invited the founder, Henrik Berggren on YHP to learn more about the company.

Can you give us some background information about yourself, were you the entrepreneurial type growing up?

I was born in the south of Sweden in 1980, my parents moved around quite a lot so I ended up living in all bigger cities in Sweden. I don’t know if I was entrepreneurial but I was loud As the middle child of three I always had to scream for attention. But I remember selling an old family tv set to a friend from school, my dad was so happy about both getting rid of the old thing and getting money so he gave me half.

Tell me how the idea for Readmill came about?

It was born out of frustration for Kindle and iBooks which both provides pretty crappy experiences, especially when it comes to social. So we went to San Francisco where we met Caterina Fake, founder of flickr. She showed us this book which made us realize how important and cool highlights are.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hinkeb/5232293964/

What is Readmill? Tell me how it works?

Readmill is a simple, social reading platform. We currently support a range of apps where you can share what you read and highlights you make. We also help you finding your next book to read through your friends.

Tell us about the first few months of running the business? What would you say was the hardest part of starting the business?

Wow, a lot of things. I think the hardest part is knowing what to focus on. The todo lists are endless and you have to make the right decisions.

How have you been able to fund the business?

We raised a small seed round last year from two London based VC firms.

How has the business evolved comparing to the your first year of running it, the business model? Strategy?

Strategy wise everything changed. From only recommendations and integrations to becoming the iTunes for reading.

What is your business model?

Premium subscriptions for publishers offering extra features.

Are you profitable?

No

How many users do you have? Paying customers?

We have quite a few users now and we’re growing fast.

What makes you different from other competing platforms out there?

We care a lot about design and focus on helping other readers become social.

What could you say has been some of the key things you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?

Good question, it’s probably that building a team is extremely fun!

What has been your most memorable moment so far on your entrepreneurial journey?

When me & David were raising money we did a really bad pitch to a group of investors. It was kind of a done deal but we really fucked it up and ended up lying on the floor in the apartment we had borrowed, crying.

What trends, startups, technology are you personally looking forward to in 2012?

I’m mostly looking fwd to the continued rise of ebooks. And hopefully we’ll see more tablets on the market.

What are your other plans for Readmill in 2012?

We’re still working hard on making Readmill available for everyone. This year we’re launching iPhone support, better recommendations and much more.

What pieces of advices could you give to aspiring entrepreneurs out there looking to start their business?

Don’t look, start

I recently had the opportunity of speaking to two amazing entrepreneurs that have been making a lot of progress in their business over the past 12 months. Since the last time i spoke to them (Dirujan Sabesan). You can certainly say that hard work and persistence does pay off.

Dirujan Sabesan and Sam Thornton are the co-founders of creative nerds -A UK based design & development firm that specialises in beautiful, creative and exclusive designs.

Hope their story inspires you, enjoy the interview.

Hi Guys, how are you doing today?

We’re good thank you

So before we go any further, can you guys just quickly give us some background information about yourself so that the YHP readers can get to know you better, especially you Sam?

Dirujan Sabesan – London based, 18 Year old founding director of CreativeNerds. You could say I’m the face of the company in terms of the visual artwork you see as I have the role of lead designer. I’m in full time education at Sixth Form studying A2 Graphic Communication, Music Technology & Media Studies.

Sam Thornton – I’m 20 and also a founding director of the company in question. I am the ‘geek behind the curtains’ so to speak as I also hold the position of head developer. I currently work full time in Liverpool for another design agency.

A lot has changed since I last spoke to you Diri, first of all, you were 16 and now you’re 18 right?!

Yup, we’ve come a long way since you interviewed myself a few years back. You’ll notice the new website which we launched in the summer of 2010. We have added a few more exclusive names onto our client list and also our actual presence as a design agency has developed. Since then we’ve also officially registered the company as –CreativeNerds (UK) LTD, making sure we’re taking the right steps forward.

Bring us up to date with some of your recent developments; a lot has happened since the last time i spoke to you?

Well we’ve managed to add some more companies to our client list such as – Sony Music Entertainment & The Jonathan Lipman International Group. Our largest project since speaking to you back in 2009 has been the SB.TV project which is always developing.

We created the identity for the company and went on to build the website which is now just over a year old and achieving over 45K hits a month. Artists such as Flo Rida, Drake & Devlin have all featured on there.

How is it like working with each other? A lot of people try to keep away from working with friends; Hope Sam doesn’t try to pull some “I’m older do this” card on you?

Dirujan Sabesan – No way. His shackles lock him onto his desk so I maintain control… Only joking. The best thing about us is that we are such a small team. Seems that being spread about England helps us because we simply work over emails, phone calls and video conferences. We’re not here to live of each other and have a democracy. Instead we put our passion for our talents together and create work that will always keep generating a healthy income .

Sam Thornton – We see it as an ‘equal opportunities’ environment, everyone has input and everyone gains the benefits of such a well-developed company in a very difficult industry. That’s not to say that we don’t disagree with what the other person says but we know each other than well, we pull through and settle on a compromise

Dirujan Sabesan -Teamwork is always key, if things were not working out then the company would have dissolved ages ago.

Do you guys have an office or you just work remotely from home or how does it work?

Dirujan Sabesan – We don’t have a core studio as such, we work virtually from home. Our communication to each other is over the phone, through constant e-mails, texts, and video calls. Right now we both work on CN part time, we both have our own individual lives and put as much time as we can into the company.

How did you guys know each other and why did you decide to start a business together?

Dirujan Sabesan – The World Wide Web put us together. Social networks such as Twitter and Behance allow you to find new and undiscovered talent. CN was simply created because we knew we had a passion for being creative individuals. At that time I was roughly 16 and only right that I wanted to make some extra money. Paper rounds weren’t really my thing.

Sam Thornton – We both realised each other’s talents and just set out doing a few designs as a hobby – I always saw web design as nothing more than this and never actually realised the potential in the market. 2 years down the line and we have a great client list, we are well known and becoming what I would describe as ‘successful’

The last i spoke to you Diri, you said you guys focused a lot of advertising but it know it seems “word of mouth” and referrals has now taken over for you guys?

Dirujan Sabesan – Seriously, I gave up on advertising. All I did was to leave textual links on any online projects we created, such as websites. Our support has risen and it seems that more and more people are getting to know about us. People like Neil Ransome, Jonathan Lipman, Jamal Edwards, Derek Amedume, Anthony Layiwola, SQ Magazine, Adeel Niaz , Ed Griffiths and the L4M camp always push our names out to anyone and everyone. I appreciate people like them who don’t simply want to use us for a service and then run away after.

Sam Thornton – It goes to show that if you do offer a great service and the end product is the quality that you advertise then you will be rewarded. We have now turned to relying on social media and the word of mouth of our current clients to spread the word.

What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?

Dirujan Sabesan – Self Motivation. Self Confidence. Time Management. You have to be motivated to carry out work for clients, work to maximise your potential. You must have the confidence in yourself to sell your product and push your business. And as Anthony from Base N Rebulz told me, time management will always keep you on track! Find the right assets and try not to indulge in any liabalities.

What have been some of your failures, and what have you learned from them?

Dirujan Sabesan – If someone ever says that there has never been a failure within his or her business or career then that’s a lie. You will always make some mistakes in life, and these will make you a better minded because you know how to tackle the problem next time round.

Sam Thornton – I wouldn’t say we’ve had any catastrophic problem, I would say that on a day to day basis we are always learning new things, not just about the market but also about our clients and how to approach issues. I suppose our biggest failure is not capitalizing on things earlier…

How many hours do you guys work on average in a day?

Dirujan Sabesan – Depends really on how much work I’ve got to do. More or less I would have about 5 hours a day? I get home around 4pm and I don’t really sit there working non-stop, Facebook & Twitter seem to get the better of me on some days. Oh and half an hour has to be set aside for Eastenders.

Sam Thornton – When aren’t I working…In all honesty I only really have about 2 hours to myself all day as I work full time so I get-up, go to work, come home from work have an hours break, do CreativeNerds work then have an hours break before bed…

How do you define success?

Dirujan Sabesan – “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” –Henry David Thoreau– So the more hard work I put in, and every time I look at the time and realize that I’ve got to wake up in 4 hours, I guess im getting somewhere close to success.

Sam Thornton – Success for me is being able to look at what I have been able to build and see people talking about it, obviously there’s a financial side of things but i’m more of the rewards from the things people saw type-a-guy.

What do you like the most about being an entrepreneur?

Sam Thornton – The fancy title I guess…In all honesty I guess it’s the recognition you get and the fact that when you meet someone new and slightly slip in the fact you own a business they seem very taken back…

Dirujan Sabesan – The fact I can work whenever I like, set my own work rate and meet new people. Im doing a job that I enjoy, so it seems more of a hobby more than anything

Do you have a favourite project that you’ve worked on at creative nerds?

Sam Thornton – On a personal scale my favourite project would have had to be the Look4me Entertainment website, it taught me a lot of new things and helped develop my skills further, not to mention we launched the site with 1 minute to go before our deadline…exciting times

Dirujan Sabesan – Don’t really have a favourite project, every project is new and exciting. As Sam says you learn from working on new things.

What do you like best about the Internet?

Sam Thornton – I guess how diverse it is and the fact that new opportunities are always cropping up, just to think without the internet, CreativeNerds (UK) Ltd wouldn’t have been formed and people wouldn’t be reading this interview.

What softwares do you guys use for your design and development work?

Sam Thornton – It’s well known that most people won’t divulge such information but we are always out to help others as we wouldn’t be where WE are today without the help we received. Some of the software we use are:

- Adobe Creative Suite: Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Flash…
- Too many web browsers to mention

None of our software is bespoke, we just have our own way of using them

Let’s go back a bit, who was your first client? How did you guys have so many big name clients, how did it start? How did you get your first big name client?

Dirujan Sabesan – I am not too sure who our first client was. I started of doing free work for my friends, way before the days of CreativeNerds, and these began as MySpace layouts, I get a lot of people on twitter telling me ‘oh I remember you from when you used to do layouts’ – This was back in early 2008. That’s more or less where I started. You’ve got to start somewhere.

In terms of the big name client, I think messaging TinchyStryders managers back in 2008 got me going. Back in the days of MySpace I simply sent Jack & Archie from Takeover Entertainment a message on there and offered to do some free work for StrydersMyspace. I left my logo on the artwork and soon things started to pick up. They helped me to meet the peeps at Universal and then the next big hit was N-Dubz.

Are you looking to diverse into other industry in the future under the creative nerds umbrella?

Dirujan Sabesan – We are not too sure yet, as businessmen, – we are both investing into little things which we feel are assets to us. In a few years hopefully some of the things that we are working on will bring some good returns. Only time can tell. The company has really been doing well for the past two years. However give it another two and see where we are then.

What sacrifices would you both say you’ve had to make to get to where you are now?

Sam Thornton – I would say the biggest sacrifice I have had to make is spending time with friends/family, however they all know why Im not out most weekends with them having a bit of personal time. At the end of the day if you aren’t willing to put some things on the line then the other things aren’t going to grow.

Dirujan Sabesan – I wouldn’t say this is a sacrifice but I didn’t go down the route of looking for a job like my friends, instead I headed down the self-employed route. That was the big risk, but it sees that it’s paying off now and I have something I am proud to put down on my CV. Thank you for putting us in the TOP 15 YOUNG ENTREPRENURS list too!

What’s the toughest feedback you’ve ever received from a customer and how did you learn from it?

Sam Thornton – I wouldn’t say we’ve ever received ‘tough’ feedback, and any feedback we do get we manage to turn it into a positive anyway, as some feedback is better than none right?

How have sales grown in the last few years?

Sam Thornton – To be honest we have hit a balance, obviously the capacity of work has gone up and so have rates especially with the quality we supply to our clients. Last year was a very good year for us and we hope to better that this year

Is the business profitable?

Sam Thornton – One simple word…Yes, one big reason for this is the fact that our initial cost-base is so low, at the end of the day there are no real costs we have to pay out for other than our servers and general business costs.

Dirujan Sabesan – Everything we make is 100% profit in most cases. Because we are working for ourselves. We are not buying something to sell and make profit off.In the circumstances when we are using freelancers we will take commission from the work, which is simple enough and keeps a steady money flow. When we work on a larger scale in a few years, we will hopefully have the right funding and set up to carry on working efficiently.

What are the most crucial things you have done to grow your business?

Sam Thornton – Continued to expand on what we know and continually reviewing our aims and goals.

Dirujan Sabesan – Making the right partnerships with the right businesses. You’ll see in a few months what new opportunities we have taken and how those will become great assets to the company. We’re not allowed to say anything at this moment in time.

Have you guys thought about creating and selling website templates?

Sam Thornton – This was something we had initially explored, however there are too many sites out there doing it and we enjoyed taking on individual projects and creating bespoke designs, it gives us that sense of satisfaction that we built it to specification and the client wants to use it.

What plans do you have now to expand your business further?

Sam Thornton – Well, next month is business plan review time… However our achievable goals right now are to push out our name further and look towards other industries as we have been focusing heavily on the music industry. On a personal level I may setup a small branch in Liverpool and push small site designs through CreativeNerds..Who knows

What three pieces of advice would you give to college students who want to become entrepreneurs?

This interview may give you some sort of motivation to start your own business. Make sure that the service you wish to offer is something unique. People start a company because someone else they see has been doing the same. However you need to have something that’s exclusive, something that the others don’t offer. You have to have the right assets to make yourselves the best and if you need funding, apply for some. There are many companies that will help fund for young entreprenuers such as The Princes Trust, The Big Lotto Fund and Shell-Wire (http://www.shell-livewire.org/).

Thanks for your time guys.

If you want to connect with them, contact them on the links below, Real nice and humble guys.

http://www.facebook.com/creativenerdsuk
http://www.twitter.com/creativenerdsuk – Dirujan Sabesan
http:/www.twitter.com/creativenerdsam – Sam Thornton

Check out their designs – http://www.flickr.com/photos/itouchfx

Contact detail - dirujan@creativenerds.org / sam@creativenerds.org

Akshay Kothari, a 2nd year graduate student in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and Ankit Gupta, a 2nd year graduate Student in Computer Science at Stanford University have created an application, called Pulse, a visually attractive RSS-based news aggregator.

The two Stanford grads signed up for the Launch Pad class at the University’s Institute of Design (aka d.school), and decided to jump into the start-up world, they decided that making the digital news app might just do it and it all happened in 5 weeks, not a bad way to get a start-up off the ground right?

On sale for $3.99, the app is aimed to please both hardcore RSS reader users and people who are willing to pay top dollars for single publication apps.

Kothari and Gupta are looking to expand Pulse to other platforms ‘very soon’, starting with the iphone.

I was very impressed with the work going on at onepage that I decided to have a chat with the two founders of the company, Joel Gascoigne and Oo Nwoye.

For those of you that still don’t have a clue what Onepage is, or does…let me put it this way, it is an online business card, instead of you spending money printing out thousands of business cards, you can simply just send the person your one page, that has all and more of the details that will appear on a printed business card, Yup that’s it..Simple, yet efficient!

I do really like the idea, Let me know your thoughts and enjoy the interview.

Hey Guys, How are you doing today? Welcome to YHP

Oo: I am doing great! how are you?

Joel: Hi Joseph, I’m fantastic thank you!

I’m Great you know, just glad to finally get to do this interview with you guys

Can you kindly give us some background information about yourselves?

Oo: My name is Oo Nwoye, I am Nigerian. I studied electrical engineering in Nigeria and my Masters was in eBusiness management at Warwick University. I hope to inspire a new cadre of Nigerian Internet Entrepreneurs.

Joel: I’m Joel Gascoigne, I’ve been playing with computers for as long as I can remember and I’ve been building websites since I was 12. I’m a recent graduate of Master of Engineering in Computing Systems from the University of Warwick. Coming to the end of my degree I made the decision to create my own startup rather than follow convention of further education or employment.

So what do you guys do?

Oo: I am an Internet entrepreneur. I am a co founder OnePage, an application the allows people the organise and share their contact details. I take care of the Marketing Business and Administrative issues. Once in a while I write code. I am assuming html is code.

Joel: I’m co-founder of OnePage and a web developer and entrepreneur. I deliver the product and handle all technical aspects. I also enjoy dabbling in the business and marketing side of things, and I love to find ways to meet other like-minded people whether that’s attending or running events.

Explain to me like a web newbie just getting started in social media, what is one page about and how it works?

OnePage is like your business card, but online. you can access this card with your mobile phone. When you meet someone, instead of handing over a printed business card, you send the person your OnePage. That way, you save the person you are giving your contact card , having to type out your details when he/she gets home. In addition, you avoid wasting paper which is an ecological sensible thing to do.

What would you say makes onepage different other similar websites?

Our emphasis is on getting people to communicate through the cards. For instance, you can be emailled directly from your card. In addition to that your onepage can be embedded in your blog. OnePage is so many things to a lot of people.

Why decide to start a business?

Oo: To have the freedom to control my destiny. I love being in charge and that is only possible if you run your own business and answer to only yourself.

Joel: I aim to be financially and locationally independent, so that I can be anywhere and do whatever I’d like. I also aspire to be an angel investor and mentor who has been through the full process with all its ups and downs, and truly “gets” Internet business.

How and why did you guys get together to start a company?

Oo: I had always known I would start an Internet company and I wanted to launch it in UK. So when I got admitted to Warwick University, I created a Facebook group Warwick Internet Entrepreneurs. After about about 2 months the group had swelled to a grand total of 2 people. Myself and a certain Joel Gascoigne. We met up, and became friends. The rest they say is history.

How was it like starting a business whilst still at university? How did you manage your time?

Oo: We did not start as a business in Uni.We nurtured the idea while at school but it was after we graduated we turned it into a business. While in undergraduate school in Nigeria, I did some little business on the side.

Joel: Throughout my time at University I ensured I was always doing something more than just the required studies, which included freelance commercial web development, working on my own startup ideas and playing around with the technology out there. Starting the business was a natural extension of this, and it is a matter of prioritising things. In reality, my University life was a period of being very busy and sleeping very little, and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

What are the benefits of starting a business at university?

Oo: There are several advantages to starting a business in Uni.
First, you have the goodwill of everybody. Staff, professors students etc. You can ask for help from anyone and be sure to get it for free! Afterall, you are only a student.

Secondly, you have a lot of university resources to use for free. The library, computers, meeting rooms and so forth.

Thirdly, you are not under financial pressure to pay your rent and earn money like it would be if you are out of school. Your finances are already taken care of because you would have made the living expenses if you were not doing any business. Therefore you practically have 0 cost in starting right fro school.

Joel: I would encourage anyone at University to take full advantage of the perfect situation they find themselves in if they think about it for a moment.
Your living costs are covered, and you have periods of time with no study to do. Combine this with the immediate market of early adopters for technology-based startup ideas, and you really are missing out if you don’t at least give something a go whilst you’re there.

So how is it going so far at onepage, I know you guys just recently completely opened up onepage? And also moving to another location for your business?

Oo: We moved to Birmingham because we had to be in the same place to work on OnePage. Luckily, we heard of the BSEEN program in Birmingham and applied for it. We them moved there shortly after getting it.

Joel: After graduating, me and Oo were in different locations working remotely on OnePage for a number of months. We needed to be in the same location to take the business to the next level, and we also wanted to be somewhere big enough that there would be things going on. Birmingham was the obvious choice since it was between Sheffield and Coventry where we were, and we also have proximity to London.

Why move to another city, Do you think location is key for every start-up?

Oo: Yes. According to Derik Sivers (Do read his blog) “being in the middle of things increases your chances for opportunities”. It was important to be around the right people and to be in the right environment and for us bigger cities than Coventry are ideal. We wanted a place with good proximity to london without the accompanying costs. birmingham was that for us.

Joel: Location is important, but it is no excuse. Whilst there was pretty much no startup community in Sheffield, that meant I started my own events and created that community. In many ways having to do that was even better than if the community had already existed. Online communities really help with this too, and I encourage people to take their online communities offline too if possible.

What are the key ingredients that make a successful start-up?

Oo: I do not have the sapiential authority to say what makes a successful start up as i have not created one yet. But from my experience and studies, I would say ambition, determination and patience are important for success.

Joel: Get something out fast, change it lots and be open to change the idea (ensure the aim is a successful business, not succeeding with a particular idea). Also, I would say that persistence is the single most important thing. It will be nice to answer this question when we are a “successful startup”

What gives you that extra energy to give moving forward, especially when things gets cloudy?

Oo: My ambition to be a successful internet entrepreneur. For the journey I am on, I must follow this path. I have seen the destination, so it is so exciting

Joel: I always go back to why I am doing this, which is financial independence and being a mentor who “gets it”. When I remember that, I know that the times “when things get cloudy” are actually the most important steps to overcome and look back on, since those will be the steps where others will need help the most.

Is the company self-funded or did you get outside funding?

Oo: We are self funded.

Are you guys looking to get any outside funding?

Money from the right pocket is always welcome. More important than money for us is mentorship from those that have walked the walk we are walking.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learnt so far since starting the company?

Oo: It always takes longer than you think. Secondly, it is an emotional rollercoaster. One day you feel on the top of the world, the other day, you feel defeated.

Joel: That nothing happens overnight, that is just how the books and press make it look afterwards. The important thing to do is make every day count.

How have you been going about advertising and marketing the services?

For now, we have been using social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, etc.). Once we launch the mobile version of our app, we will step up the ante and try getting main stream press.

What has been the biggest surprise for guys on this start-up journey?

Oo: Not many surprises though. Since I have read so many statup stories, I have been quite prepared for all I have been experiencing

Joel: How much great information and people are out there. It really is one of the best times to choose to do a startup.

What has been your most memorable moment so far?

The day we launched OnePage last year. We had a countdown and had a live feed of us. After the initial rush, we went out and got a beer . I will always look back on that day:)

Which do you think is most important: the right market, the right product, or the right team?

Oo: The right team. The product and market are so unpredictable. With the right team, you can weather any storm.

Joel: I’d also say the right team. You can pivot to a different market, and a different product, but to pivot to a different team is much more difficult. Find the right team, consisting of people who complement your skill sets and will be there to put that confidence and energy back into you when you’re feeling the pressure.

What’s more for you guys at onepage?

Oo: To get ubiquitous. It will be tough but very achievable.

Finally before we go, what advice would you like to give future entrepreneurs that are looking to start their own business?

Oo: Just go for it. take the leap. most importantly, choose who you hangout with carefully. Make sure you surround yourself with people with a similar mind set with you.

Joel: Learn as you go along, don’t let anything hold you back. Avoid the thoughts such as “I don’t have enough experience” or “I don’t have enough money”. That perfect time will never come, and if you even have the slightest desire to do your own thing, then you now have to give it a go. Just do it.

Good Luck Guys and thanks for your time

Thank you for talking to us. We would love for people to connect with us by any means they wish. They can find all our contact information at http://myonepage.com/oo and http://myonepage.com/joel

Quizlet is an online memorization tool that was originally created by then 15 years old Andrew Sutherland.

The tool was created by Andrew in his sophomore year of high school when his French teacher gave him a list of 111 french-to-english animal vocabulary to learn, after finding it hard to approach, he decided to create a systematic way to learning a vocabulary, after he built the prototype, showed his friends who used it which resulted in everyone doing well on their test, he only had one thing in mind, taking it beyond a prototype, and then Quizlet was born in October 2005.

In November 2009, Dave Margulius who worked with Sutherland as an investor and advisor for Quizlet since 2007, was named CEO of Quizlet. Sutherland would remain the President of Quizlet and CTO. In addition to hiring CEO Dave Margulius, Sutherland also announced the opening of Quizlet’s office in San Francisco which would hold his small team of employees which work on Quizlet every day.

In January 2010, Quizlet announced that they had hired their first full-time developer and product manager, Phil Freo. Andrew Sutherland, the creator of Quizlet said “I’m very excited about this because Phil is a talented developer and can really help step up the pace of innovation at Quizlet.”

In February 2010, Quizlet launched “Quizlet Plus”, which gives the user the ability to upload and add their own images to their flash cards to study. This option also gives the user to create unlimited groups and have no ads. But there is a cost to this at a price of $10.

In March 2010, Quizlet launched a new design of the set page. The goal of the new design was to make the set page more intuitive and more visually appealing. The major change that the site made to the set page was to get rid of the Familiarize mode and build it right into the set page itself. After the new design was launched an update was made to add a button that will shuffle the flashcards that are built into the set page.

Hey Guys, Today i had the opportunity of interviewing GitHub’s Co-founder Chris wanstrath.
Hope you enjoy him opening to us about how everything started.

Hello Chris, How are you doing today?

Fantastic.

Can you please give us some background information about yourself?

I grew up in Cincinnati, live in San Francisco, and started GitHub with PJ Hyett and Tom Preston-Werner. I attended the University of Cincinnati for about a year as an English major before dropping out to work full time as a programmer.

Before GitHub I worked at CNET Networks on GameSpot, TV.com, MP3.com, Chow, and Chowhound then started a consulting company with PJ Hyett.

I’ve always loved the web so working on websites was sort of inevitable. When I was younger I wanted to make computer games, but that’s hard so I gave up.

Tell us about your start-up GitHub? What inspired you to start them and what do you do there?

GitHub is a better way for businesses and open source projects to develop software. We started it because working on proprietary and open source code was a hassle. The actual coding part was overshadowed by all the maintenance and administrative tasks – merging patches, communicating with other developers, etc. There had to be an easier way.

GitHub fixes those problems, and is constantly evolving to fix more.

I’m the CEO which means I write a lot of emails, work with our partners, and do a fair bit of speaking at conferences. Sometimes I even write code.

How did you raise capital for your business?

We didn’t. GitHub was bootstrapped by the founders. Consulting gigs, credit card debt, and working nights and weekends were how we started it. Eventually it was making enough money to pay our salaries and begin hiring employees.

Do you have a favourite business tool or resource online?

I don’t know how we’d run our business without Campfire. Group chat is essential, especially with the hours we keep – everyone is on different schedules, sometimes even in different countries. Campfire keeps us all on the same page and makes it easy to catch up on what you missed.

Having a shared calendar is pretty essential too. We use Google Calendar.

How many hours do you work a day on average?

Anywhere from 6 to 12, depending on what I’m working on. Usually it’s somewhere in the middle. I try to keep it around 7. I find the less hours the work, the better I do. But sometimes you just can’t tear yourself away.

What qualities have you developed as a result of running your business?

I’m always trying to be more terse. I’m busy and you’re busy so let’s just get to the point. Especially email – the shorter the better.

It’s easy to write two paragraphs. It’s hard to write two sentences explaining the same thing.

In your opinion, what is the most important quality an entrepreneur should have?

Knowing when to quit. Not every business is going to work, not every idea is worth sticking with.

I read you play the guitar; I’ve recently picked that up myself? Acoustic, Bass, Electric? When did you start playing?

I’ve been playing off and on since I was 12, starting on acoustic. I played bass for a while too, even took lessons, but now I pretty much only play electric guitar. Mostly metal. Megadeth, Between the Buried and Me, Protest the Hero, August Burns Red, bands like that.

Can you explain to the readers what makes GitHub different from other open source development out there?

On GitHub you never have to ask permission. Fork someone else’s project and push your commits without them knowing. See what other people are doing with your code and pull in the worthy changes. With git, it all feels natural and obvious.

What challenges did you face during the early days at GitHub and how were you able to solve this?

Building the actual business was difficult. Proper forms, insurance, payroll, finding an accountant and lawyer – it’s easy to screw that stuff up, and we did.

You also end up waiting on other people a lot. Things beyond your control can be quite frustrating, especially when you’re trying to move fast. Creating GitHub itself was cake.

Do you have any personal experience that has changed your life?

Bootstrapping GitHub with our own money means we are very cautious about what we spend our money on. Not having any money really makes you appreciate its value.

How do you define success?

For me it’s a moving target, but I think to be successful you just need to set and hit goals.

What advices would like to give to young entrepreneurs starting their business?

Make goals. React quickly. It’s much easier to respond to the unexpected than to plan for it.

What should we be expecting from you and GitHub in the future?

Better ways of working with other people – whether it’s simpler permissions, more robust code review, or integration with other source code tools, we want to make collaboration a dream.

Thanks for your time Chris, hope to hear from you soon.
Don’t forget to follow chris on twitter:@defunkt

Amie Street is an indie online music store and social network service created in 2006 by Brown University seniors Elliott Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch, in Providence, Rhode Island.

They have since graduated and moved the company to Long Island City in Queens, New York.
Their vision for Amie Street is to become “the most fun way to discover and buy music online”, keep music social, and support the artists

Founded in early 2006, Amie Street opened to the public with a pre-alpha version on July 4, 2006

They began negotiations for the round in January 2007. Notable angel investors include Robin Richards, former president of MP3.com and David Hirsch, director of Google’s B2B vertical markets group

Amie Street uses an algorithm to determine song prices based on demand. The price for a track starts at zero when a song is uploaded onto the site. It then rises according to the increased demand and purchase of the song. The maximum price any song will rise to is 98¢

Artists can upload their music directly to the site in MP3 format at whatever quality bit rate they choose, but when a record label or music distributor requires Amie Street to encode the music, they strive to achieve an average bit rate of 256 kbit/s using a variable bitrate.

As users buy songs, the artist is credited quarterly. Artists keep 70% of the proceeds after US$5 in sales for each song
SIMPLE!

Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith are two exciting entrepreneurs, founder of Box.net, a cloud storage and document sharing company that allows file-sharing through third-party Web-based services and applications, allowing users to share, store, and access any type of digital file from anywhere at any time.

The Business which was started initially as a college business project by the two friends.

After going to separate colleges, Dylan soon joined his high school friend as they ran the business for two semesters effectively before deciding to leave school to focus on their business full-time.

Co-founder Aaron Levie says after receiving a call from billion entrepreneur Mark Cuban during his sophomore year, “we started realizing we stumbled upon something big.”

Box received angel capital from Mark Cuban in 2005, then raised a Series A round of $1.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2006.

Aaron Levie is the CEO and co-founder of Box.net, also behind Box’s product and platform strategy, which is focused on incorporating the best of traditional content management with the most effective elements of social business software.

Dylan Smith is Chief Financial Officer and co-founder of Box.net, where he leads finance, legal and operations management. He has been instrumental in Box. Net’s growth and development.
In a report by Techcrunch, Box.net recently raised $15 Million to Take On Microsoft SharePoint In The Cloud.

Two of America’s “Winning Young Entrepreneurs” by BusinessWeek

Recognized as the #2 Fastest Growing Private Company in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

Placed in Gartner’s “Visionary” quadrant for Managed File Transfer solutions

Fast Company says recent platform initiatives “have given us a glimpse of what might be ahead…”
Winner of the “Emerging Technology in Cloud Computing” award by the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal

Matt Mullenweg is a young entrepreneur and the founder of popular open-source blogging software WordPress which he started whilst still in high school.

Mullenweg’s WordPress has become the No. 2 blogging platform behind Google’s Blogger, signing up 10,000 new bloggers daily.

WordPress is “open-source” software, which means that anyone can access and contribute to the program code, Which is a major issue as it is opened to security threats.

Matt who wanted to become a jazz saxophonist, after studying performing and visual arts in high school, but ended up spending most of his time coding and also loves photography.

He started by launching Ping-O-Matic with fellow wordpress developer Dougal Campbell in april 2004, Ping-O-Matic which currently handles over 1 million pings a day.

He quit the University of Houston after two years when tech news site CNet offered him a job in San Francisco and said he could continue dabbling with WordPress on the side. He left CNet when WordPress got too demanding.

Mullenweg released WordPress 1.5 “Strayhorn in February 2005, which had over 900,000 downloads, he left CNET in October 2005 to focus on wordpress

He founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com and Akismet in In late 2005

Mullenweg acquired the Gravatar service reportedly and also turned down an offer of US$200 million for
automatic in a deal woth US$200 Million.

In March 2007 he was named #16 of the 50 Most Important People on the Web by PC World, reportedly the youngest on the list.

Mullenweg being named to the Top 30 Entrepreneurs Under 30 by Inc. Magazine and one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web by BusinessWeek, again the youngest on BusinessWeek’s list.

Automattic began with $1.1 million in funding from several venture-capital firms. After an unsolicited bid for the company came in for $150 million — Mullenweg won’t say from whom — it received a second $29.5 million round of financing. Investors in the company include VC firms Polaris, True and Radar, and the New York Times Co.

I Learnt about this company sometimes last year and been meaning to write about them on the blog, as someone that is always looking at the travel/holiday industry, Creativity, I really loved their idea!

Airbnb is an online marketplace allowing anyone from private residents to commercial properties to rent out their extra space.

Let me put it this way, the website gives people the chance to make some money by renting out extra space in their homes to people that are travelling to their countries and do not want to stay at a hotel.

Although i was very sceptic about the idea if people would be comfortable having strangers come to your house, for security reasons also.

I guess it really gives you a better experience staying with a local resident, rather than staying in a hotel that doesn’t offer much more than accommodation/experiences in the hotel.

I also like the way in which the website is designed, very easy to navigate.

Listings include vacation rentals, private rooms, entire apartments, bed and breakfasts, boutique hotels, castles, treehouses, and many other traditional and non-traditional accommodations.

Travellers contact hosts directly through the web site, which includes user profiles and friend recommendations. Dates are confirmed through on-site messaging, and the traveller books directly online using their credit card or PayPal account.

Hosts receive a reservation request which they can accept or decline. Both parties then receive an itinerary on accepted reservations, and are set to go.

It also has backing from investor Paul Graham of Y Combinator and Michael Seibel, CEO and co-founder of www.justin.tv

NOT BAD RIGHT, What do you guys think?