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Weekend projects that became million dollar products

Inspiration, Story, Tech Story / By

As they say, ideas come to many but there are few who go ahead and give them a try. Similarly most people never pay a heed to their hobbies. Hobbies always take back seat given the time and money constraints. But those who fulfill their hobbies, live a life full of energy and satisfaction.

Hobbies if executed with passion, can be rewarding too. Like Walt Disney whose hobby of doodling and sketching turned into a multi-billion dollar business or for that matter Bill Gates whose hobby of programming turned into what we know today is Microsoft.

Here we are talking about two side-projects that were created and executed over a weekend which later turned into million dollar businesses. Joe Gebbia, Brian Chesky & Noah Kagan, If you don’t know them and what did they do, read on. All these turned their side projects in great startups  worth millions of dollars.

AppSumo: Noah Kagan
AppSumo is a daily deals website that promotes great digital products (application software, eBooks) and online services (online training courses). Founded in 2010 by Noah Kagan, AppSumo today has more than 700,000 users and revenue in millions.

Noah Kagan once a top performer in Facebook held 20,000 shares (0.1% of the company) which would have made him millionaire. However, as the fate would have it, he was fired in less than a year. Noah always wanted to do something of his own. For the same reason he left Mint forfeiting his shares worth $1.7 million. Noah Kagan started a gaming company KichFlip (Gambit) which probably got shut down due to Facebook’s policies.  Gambit was created over a weekend by Noah and his friends which grew to $1,000,000 plus business by end of year.

During his stint with Gambit Noah realized that it’s pretty difficult to get customers and he decided to do something for apps to get customers. He realized that people were discussing different products on forums like Reddit and would love to get those for a discount. This led to creation of AppSumo. AppSumo the core product was built over a weekend by hiring freelancers from Pakistan for $50.  Noah

AppSumo started listing products for some commission which  would help startups that needed such platform to market their product. He struck his first deal for selling ‘imgur Pro’ and made his first dollar. He validated the idea with 200 sales and thereafter never looked back. Today, AppSumo lists tons of apps and online training courses.

Story of AppSumo and Noah Kagan is not ordinary. After forfeiting lucrative plush jobs and millions of dollars, starting a new business over a weekend and to take that to million dollars revenue is just amazing.

 Image courtesy: http://okdork.com/

Airbnb: Brian & Joe
Two designers unable to pay rent decided to rent out 3 air mattresses along with breakfast to earn some money, that’s how Airbnb was born. In the year 2007 Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn’t have enough money to pay rent. Seeing an upcoming design conference in San Francisco as an opportunity to make some quick bucks, they created a website, airbedandbreakfast.com.

After few days, they got their first three customers paying them $80 each. At this moment they realized the potential of this business and decided to take it forward. However, these two entrepreneurs instead of creating another renting website decided to do something different. They decided to enable local people list their rooms for travelers visiting the city for conferences, trade fairs or festivals.

Airbnb

In the initial years, they had no office and they mainly worked from the flat they had. A year later when their team grew to 15 people they set up their first office in San Francisco, California.

In 2008 it was election time in US and Barack Obama was going to address 80,000 people in  Denver at the Democratic National Convention. There was a shortage of hotel rooms in that area. They got a major boost from this room scarcity. They played smartly by offering special cereals in the name of Obama O’s and Cap’n McCain’s for $40 which generated more than $30,000 which paved the way for expansion.

They expanded rapidly from then on by including properties between market and CouchSurfing. In 2009 they raised an initial funding of $20,000 funding which led to another $600,000 from venture capitalists.

Several mergers and acquisitions of Accoleo, CrashPadder, Localmind paved the way for their international expansions. Airbnb now deals in properties ranging from hotels to islands to bungalows. Today Airbnb have their offices internationally from London to Delhi to Cuba to Singapore and many more.


Video credit: fundersandfounders

There are problems around us needed to be solved. There are solved problems which needed to be optimized. Don’t put that compelling idea which comes to your mind to hibernation. Go ahead and give it a shot. You never know you would end up creating something like Airbnb or AppSumo.

Who invented email? Shiva Ayyadurai or Ray Tomlinson

India, Story, Tech Story / By

A google search for “Who invented email” returns the name of an India-born scientist Shiva Ayyadurai who allegedly invented email at the age of fourteen.

Shiva

Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai was born in Mumbai (Bombay), India. He along with his family left to US at the age of 7. He studied computer programming at New York University and later joined MIT to get four undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in addition to PHD in biological engineering. Shiva as he is popularly known, also founded a company worth $200 million called Echo Mail.

According to various internet sources including Shiva’s own website, at the age of 14 he wrote a software program to automate the conventional paper-based interoffice communication system of University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). While computer to computer communication was already in use, Shiva claims that he was the first to introduce essential email features that we use today in the year 1978. He introduces the email terms like From, To, CC, BCC, Forward, Reply etc in his program.

In the absence of patent laws Shiva applied for copyright for the program called “Email” in 1982. V.A. Shiva still holds the copyright for the program and the term “Email”.

Copyright Email

He has been seeking public support for quite some time to strengthen his claim after there has been a controversy on who invented email. He has also published a book called “The Boy Who Invented Email & His 7 Secrets of Innovation” which talks more about his invention.

The controversy: Is Shiva Ayyadurai the man who invented email?

Critics say that in 1982 Shiva just copyrighted the term ’email’ and a program he wrote and that such digital communication between computers existed long before 1978.

In 2011 Time published an interview with Shiva titled “The man who invented Email” crediting him as the inventor of email. Major controversy started when posts related to email invention on The Washington Post and Huffington post were trolled with nasty comments and facts that refuted Shiva’s claim. The Washington Post updated the post and clarified that Dr. V. A. Shiva was not the inventor of email.

Many people credit Ray Tomlinson of Cambridge-based BBN Technologies as the first person who used @ symbol in 1971 to send messages between computer terminals. Later many others built upon Tomlinson’s work and devised their own methods to share information over the network. Shiva claims that those earlier systems and other ARPANET programs were merely a way of simply sending and receiving text messages. His Email program, on the other hand, was invented specifically to replicate paper based mail system used in office electronically and comprised of elements & features which a standard email system today have.

Noam Chomsky professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at MIT supports Shiva’s claim and was quoted by Wired as-

“Email, upper case, lower case, any case, is the electronic version of the interoffice, inter-organizational mail system, the email we all experience today — and email was invented in 1978 by a 14-year-old working in Newark, NJ. The facts are indisputable”

Chomsky’s argument is that Ayyadurai received a formal copyright registration on his email program in 1982, and that in 1977, David Crocker — who worked on the ARPAnet and has criticized Ayyadurai’s claims — wrote that “no attempt is being made to emulate a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system.”

“Given the term email was not used prior to 1978, and there was no intention to emulate ‘…a full-scale, inter-organizational mail system,” as late as December 1977, there is no controversy here, except the one created by industry insiders, who have a vested interest,”

Whether or not “Dr. E-Mail”, VA Shiva Ayyadurai invented the email, he is an authority on Email technology, e-marketing and biotechnology.

Right now Shiva is busy with his bio-tech startup CytoSolve. CytoSolve has developed the world’s first computational platform for scalable integration of molecular pathway models. You can read more about Shiva on his website, inventor of email, history of email, Wikipedia and make your own judgement. Shiva’s website is full of documents, web references and scanned newspaper clippings that talk about his side of story.


Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Interviewed on CBS TV

Image credit- http://www.inventorofemail.com/