http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/2011/04/18/founder-of-floxx-com-rich-martell-impresses-with-50-million-hits-in-one-month/ http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/2011/04/18/founder-of-floxx-com-rich-martell-impresses-with-50-million-hits-in-one-month/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:30:54 +0000 Rishi Chowdhury http://yourhiddenpotential.co.uk/?p=11010 If you like this post, why not stay updated to our contents as soon as they are published. Subscribe to our RSS Feeds, Facebook Fanpage and Twitter.

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Rich Martell founded Floxx.com, previously known as FitFinder, a location based anonymous micro blogging social network, in April 2010. The site is based on the concept of anonymously posting both a location and description of an attractive person whom one has spotted; this post is then immediately placed on the FitFeed, where it can be viewed by anyone.

The idea came about after Martell and his rugby friends would text each other when they spotted an attractive girl in the library. They took this idea and expended on it so the whole world could see.

Rich has been compared to Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook who created Facemash (rated students hotness against each other) one drunken night gaining huge traction overnight, tons of views, which then put him in hot water with his uni after crashing the servers. Rich created the FitFinder site overnight and by 9am the next morning the library at UCL (University College London) was full of students using the site. That day saw over 2,000 hits which overwhelmed the uni servers.

As word spread, Rich had requests from other universities around the UK to be added to the site, so their students could use FitFinder. One month later and the site had 50 million hits and was in 50 universities!

This caused the university to harshly fine Rich £300 for “bringing the college into disrepute.” They also demanded that the site be taken down or they would withhold his degree. After spending 3 years working towards the degree he decided to take it down and get his degree, with plans to re-launch the site after he graduated in the summer.

The young entrepreneur felt that he had just scratched the surface with FitFinder. He is entrepreneurial by nature as he comes from a family of entrepreneurs in both his parents. The story of FitFinder made a lot of noise and gained a fair amount of press. One article was read by Doug Richard, a former Dragons’ Den panelist. He was impressed by the demand that the product had shown in it’s short life time. This is when things got serious.

Doug introduced Rich to big time, US investor, Kevin Hall. Together Doug and Kevin became founding angels for Floxx.com which was launched in January 2011. The site was renamed to appeal to a more global audience as the word ‘fit’ is mainly a British term and has different connotations in the US for example.

It has been often compared to Facebook because of the way it was conceived, but it seems more of a Twitter mixed with Match.com.

Rich gives 3 tips to other aspiring entrepreneurs:

1.) Get smart advisors on board early
2.) Be passionate about your business idea and make it happen
3.) Don’t take no for an answer. Never give up!

–
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Do you need a degree to be an entrepreneur or is it something your born with? Or is it a bit of both? Some of the most famous entrepreneurs to date started their companies while at university. It’s not essential you wait till you get your degree and you will probably learn more by doing.

So who has built a successful company from their dorm room? Well I’m sure Mark Zuckerberg will be first to  spring to most people’s minds these days. But there have been many, so read on to see 10 great dorm room success stories.

1.) Mark Zuckerberg

Lets start with the obvious. In 2004 Zuckerberg created Facebook from his dorm room in Harvard. Facebook started of as just a Harvard ‘thing’ but as it rapidly grew Mark decided to drop out of Harvard and move to Palo Alto, home of silicon valley.

Facebook has gone on to become a regular part of our daily lives. Currently the site has over 600million users and is valued at around $50billion.

2010 even saw the release of the film ‘The Social Network’ based on Mark Zuckerberg and the creation of Facebook.

2.) Bill Gates

Bill Gates the founder of the most well known computer software company Microsoft. Gates, synonymous with the tag of richest man in the world, created Microsoft in 1975 at the age of 20. Earlier that year gates and school friend Paul Allen saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and were inspired to start their own software company.

At the end of 1975 Gates took a leave of absence from Harvard, to work on Microsoft full time, never returning as a student.

At the close of 2010 fiscal year, Microsoft had $62.48 billion in net revenues and $18.76 billion in net income for the 12-month period

3.) Michael Dell

Michael Dell was a pre-med student at the University of Texas when he started Dell. In 1984 with $1000 and an idea he founded Dell. Starting at the university he attended he worked upgrading computers in the labs before applying for a vendor license so he could win bids on contracts for the State of Texas. He would go on to win these bids by not having the overheads of a store.

By the age of 27, Dell was the youngest CEO to have his company listed in the Fortune 500 corporations. Soon after in 1996 Dell started selling over the internet and not long after that were raking in over $1million in sales every day. In 2010 Michael Dell’s net worth was an estimated $14billion.

4.) Jerry Yang and David Filo – Yahoo!

Yahoo founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994 was the worlds biggest web directory/search engine before Google came along. The site, started by two electrical engineering graduate students at Stanford University grew rapidly during the Dot Com bubble, but struggled after the bubble burst.

Yahoo diversified it’s offering becoming a web portal and and his recognised as a leading online brand.

5.) Larry Page and Sergey Brin – Google

Sergey Brin graduated with an undergraduate degree in computer science from University of Maryland. After graduation, he moved to Stanford to acquire a Ph.D in computer science. There he eventually became friends with Larry Page, initially they didn’t particularly like each other.

They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin’s data mining system to build a superior search engine. The program became so popular at Stanford that they decided to suspend their Ph.D studies to start up Google in a rented garage. In fact Sergey is still officially on leave!

6.) Shawn Fanning – Napster

Shawn Fanning founded Napster with his business partner Sean Parker in May 1999. Prior to it’s launch Shawn spent 4 months coding Napster, an online programme that made it easy to share and download music. Before it was shut down in 2001, it gained huge notoriety after becoming the target of many music industry backed lawsuits due to the P2P (peer-to-peer) nature of. Napster was the first massively popular free file sharing programme and has returned today as a legal paid service.

Shawn was studying at Boston’s Northeastern University at the time and was just getting into programming in his spare time. Within two years Napster had 80 million registered users.

7.) Matt Mullenweg – WordPress

Mullenweg was a 19 year old freshman at the University of Houston when he developed WordPress, back in 2002.

WordPress, has become the blogging service that most serious bloggers turn to. In fact this site has alot to thank Matt for as well. WordPress is currently used by 13% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites and has been downloaded almost 13 million times.

WordPress is continuously growing at a fast pace with Open source software being a large part of WordPress’ success.

8.) Paul Orfalea – Kinko’s

Paul started Kinko’s in 1970 while studying at the University of Southern California where he graduated from a year later. He started up his company from a 100 square foot space, on the University campus. His idea for Kinko’s, a photocopy chain, came after encountering a copy machine in the university library.

The company name came from a nickname he got while he was younger. He was called Kinko due to his curly red hair.

In 2000 the company was bought by FedEx for $2.4billion and it’s name became FedEx Office.

9.) Fred Smith – Fedex

FedEx it self, although not created while Fred Smith was a student, came from an idea he had while at Yale. In fact while an undergrad at Yale Fred wrote the FedEx concept in a term paper. The concept became reality in 1971 making a profit 4 years later and expected to see profits of $1.6billion in 2011.

Fred joked that this all came from what was probably a ‘C grade’ paper.

10.) Todd Krizelman and Stephan Paternot – TheGlobe.com

What was one of the fist social networks well before Myspace and Facebook, Todd Krizelman and Stephan Paternot founded the internet startup in 1994. Although it has since ceased operations as of 2008, TheGlobe posted the largest first day gain of any IPO when it went public on November 13, 1998.

The founders were undegrads at Cornell when they came across a primitive chatroom on the uversity networks. After TheGlobe.com issued its IPO the founders, 24 at the time, were thought to be worth about $100million each. This was the peak for the pair and after that it was all down hill.

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When people think about entrepreneurship, it often the possible lifestyles that people think about. The freedom of working your own hours, control of your business, the money being able to retire at 30 etc… Often the other parts of a career as an entrepreneur can be forgotten. So here is a brief breakdown of the good, bad and ugly sides of entrepreneurship.

The Good

The best part about being an entrepreneur for many people is the lifestyle it brings. The chance to be your own boss, making the decisions and seeing something that you built grow, is highly attractive.

Another great benefit is you can impact on the world, a lot of entrepreneurs find that the most motivating factor rather than money. Just look how Mark Zuckerberg has changed the world with Facebook. What about Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin?

Obviously with success comes money, a lot of money. Most of the richest people in the world started their own companies. Even if your company isn’t as big as those you still have a good chance of making more money than if you work for someone else.

Another reason why people choose to be an entrepreneur is the excitement it brings. The varying daily challenges that keep you on your toes. You will probably feel more fulfilled than the usual 9-5 job, since your responsibilities are down to you. You will be constantly learning every day which is what we are all about, learning and moving forward.

Also we excel when we are passionate about something and when you have your own business it will feel like your little baby which you can nurture and grow.

The Bad

So sometimes starting your own business works and you become successful and rich, but more often than not this isn’t the case. With about 80% of new businesses failing within the first year there is quite a high failure rate. This is normally due to lack of capital and/or bad management.

The lack of capital is the bad part to entrepreneurship. Not having the security that comes with a regular income is often what puts many people off. At the early stages of starting a business the lack of revenue coming in can represent a problem if you have many bills to pay or family to support. It is easier when you are younger and have fewer commitments but you might have to rough it for a while.

If you’re not careful you can also find yourself in a lot of debt and if your venture then goes belly up, you can find yourself in serious financial troubles. It is paramount to stay within your means and look at the long term future of the business rather than the short.

Watch out for those just looking for a piece of the pie. If your company does start to gain momentum you may start getting people looking to join purely in the hope of a pay off. These are not always the most helpful of people. When looking to hire people it can be difficult to spot these types.

Sometimes working as an entrepreneur you can get carried away only thinking about the potential future success which can sometimes be detrimental. If you enjoy the journey of building a successful start up rather than just the outcome you will be a better leader.

The Ugly

So the ugly side of entrepreneurship. Money can be the factor that leads to the ugly side. Every venture needs capital to be raised, whether it comes from savings, support from family and friends, bank loans or investors.

If you do borrow money from family and friends, it can cause problems when it comes to paying them back. If your start up becomes very successful then those who lent you money may try to claim more than you expect. Dealing with that situation, should you come across it, can be difficult and can ruin relationships.

Looking for investment from investors is a very desperate situation a lot of the time, since there is a lot of competition and this can lead to young entrepreneurs falling into traps. There are many bad investors out there looking to take advantage of inexperienced start up founders, by conning them out of equity with false promises.

Sometimes the lust for control can also become overpowering, leading to distrust and paranoia. Not trusting employees as you feel they may be taking advantage of you is harmful to the business and is something you need to watch out for. Make sure you get the right employees in the first place; it’s worth the extra effort.

Small businesses tend to be a high risk of being victimised by fraudulent activities. This is why entrepreneurs need to have a high regard for the protection of their data. If not, all the hard work you’ve put in could be wasted if you go out of business because of fraud.

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Is it just me or is everybody excited to see the movie – The social network. I guess i am probably very excited because i read the Ben Mezrich’s The accidental billionaires.

For those of you that don’t know..

The Social network is a film directed by David fincher about facebook Written by Aaron Sorkin, based on the book – The Accidental Billionaire by Ben Mezrich.

The film focuses on the turbulent early years of Facebook

The Social Network stars Jesse Eisenberg as the CEO and founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and has other cool cast such as Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Brenda Song, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara and Armie Hammer.

The movie was not filmed in Harvard as they were unable to get a permit for the filming.

The movie comes out on Oct 1st 2010

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Mark Zuckerberg

Dropped out of Harvard University to Pursue Facebook, Now a Billionaire..Good choice or not?

Ashley Qualls

17 years old high school dropout. Made more than $1 million. Earns as much as $70K a month Starting whateverlife.com

Ben Kaufman

The 23 years old entrepreneur missed much of his senior year in high school while getting his first manufacturing line running in China, has a startup called Kluster, dropped out of college to pursue a career in world domination, a process he began by creating funky iPod cases?
Currently Running Quirky www.quirky.com

David Karp

David Karp is a high school dropout who founded Tumblr.

Dustin Moskovitz

One of facebook’s co-founder, Dustin attended Harvard University as an Economics major for two years before moving to Palo Alto, California to work fulltime at Facebook.

Pete Cashmore

Pete is the CEO and founder of Mashable.com. He founded Mashable in a small Scottish town in 2005 at age 19.

Matt Mullenweg

He dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco from Houston, TX

Kristopher Tate

At age 16, Kristopher launched a photo sharing page, Zooomr. He finished high school five years early, notoriously known for driving his parents’ car from San Diego to Cupertino at the age of 16 to launch photo-sharing site Zooomr.

Aaron Levie

He dropped out of college and moved to Palo Alto, Calif., to run Box.net, his online file sharing start-up with his friend and co-founder.

Blake Ross

Co-creator of Mozilla Firefox browser, A Stanford dropout

Adam Hildreth

He left school at age of 16 to face Dubit limited full time.

Derek Johnson

Derek dropped of the University of Houston Entrepreneurial program, Derek has raised half a million dollars in investments for the company from private investors and the Bellingham Angel Group.

Fraser Doherty

Doherty left school at the age of 16 to work on his jams full time.

Mr. Doherty borrowed $10,000 from a bank to cover general expenses and more factory time to produce three flavors: Blueberry & Black Currant, Rhubarb & Ginger and Cranberry & Raspberry.

Patrick Collison

Software wizard. Dropped out of MIT during his freshman year to help two friends develop and eventually sell Auctomatic for millions of dollars.

Kieran O’neill

After running HolyLemon and PSU while at school, He decided to leave the university to work full-time on Playfire full-time

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Jesse Eisenberg Says ‘The Social Network’ Isn’t Just About Facebook
The actor, who will play Mark Zuckerberg, explains the drama of the Web site’s inception.

Last week, we learned that Jesse Eisenberg had been cast to play Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Facebook, in the upcoming film “The Social Network.” Already the actor is facing a frequent question: How do you make a compelling story about a social-networking site?

“People have asked me, is it, like, a three-hour movie just on the Web site?” he said at a recent interview to promote his latest flick, “Zombieland.” “No, no, no, it’s a very methodical retelling of this interesting story.”

The story, based on Ben Mezrich’s recently released book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” is about Harvard students Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin and their quest for social acceptance at their school. Saverin chose to try to get into one of the elite Final Clubs. Zuckerberg hacked into Harvard’s computer system and created a database that rated every female student on campus. Though he was almost kicked out of school, it was from this that the framework for Facebook was born.

“The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart,” reads the summary of “Accidental Billionaires” summary on Mezrich’s site.

Read More

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Twitter.

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According to reports from Reuters, Rupert Murdoch and News Corp, are in no hurry to let go of Myspace. The group bought the networking site for $580 million in 2005. However it has since then faced strong competition from other networking alternatives such as Facebook and of course twitter which is speedily becoming more popular. The News Corp chief executive has however warned against investing in twitter.

“Be careful of investing here,” he said of Twitter. it seems the site has yet to show serious ways in which it could bring profits for investors.

When speaking on Facebook he stated “Facebook is like a directory, How they make money is another matter.” The opinions of many investors may differ though, as Speculation at the 27th Sun Valley conference were still running rampant over which company might want to buy Twitter.

The service, which lets people post to Web what they are thinking or doing in 140 characters or less, is growing in popularity. While Myspace in recent months has had to cut jobs in both the United States and abroad, it is deemed that figures reaching around 30 per cent of the Myspace international staff have been laid off. Murdoch’s confidence however could prove enough to sustain the venture.

Reported by Michael Adeyemi

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Facebook will be allowing its members to set and adjust their privacy settings for any piece of content they post on the site.

The changes follow the recent announcement of new settings for publishing content that allow you to choose to post items that everyone, not just your friends, can see. Many see both moves in part as Facebook’s attempt to blunt the rapid rise of microblogging service Twitter.

Read more on businessweek

Check on facebook’s Blog for more info

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Twitter.

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TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington asks the questions:
YouTube CEO Chad Hurley and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talk about where they see their companies in the next five years, watch out mark’s response, i must say really impressive…i couldnt have said it better, actually i could, but that’s not the point right?? thumbs up mark!!!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXcWXiHgTZQ&feature=related]

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