Its a Small World After All

Posted by Alexander Tsatkin

March 3, 2008

It always amazes me when you realize how small this world really is. The other day I decided to catch up with one of my fraternity buddies who is going to grad school in San Francisco. We met up and decided to visit a bar in San Francisco. The bar was pretty cool, some delicious drinks with real fruit, and free cheese buffet. Within an hour I notice a familiar face of an old friend from grade school and camp. As always I decide not to make the first move, she looks like shes having to much fun with her friends anyway, and I would not want to disturb her. Good thing she is much more social than me and came up to me to say hi.

It was great catching up and seeing what drove her to move all the way across the country. When I was asked what I do, I was ready to give the 20 minute explanation about optimizing websites to rank on Search Engines and why it isn’t really SPAM. She interrupted me and said she knew all about it. Apparently a school mate Nathaniel Stevens had left Wharton School of Business to start Yodle .

I was amazed that this guy had started this successful business. Don’t get me wrong he was a bright guy, but successful entrepreneurs were like movie stars to me in that they weren’t real people. Here was a kid who went to my high school and who made it happen for himself. Just that fact alone inspired me to pursue my dream of starting my own business.

For the next 5 months I will be creating a website a week. I already hired a great copy writer to help with the project. The plan is to have about 20 websites when I am done. I will judge how each is performing and see if any of them can be turned into sustainable publishing businesses. I will sell the losers and reinvest in the winners.