My first venture into becoming an entrepreneur [Part 1: Background]
Most of you probably already know, but for those who don't: I can be described as somewhat of a geek (when I think about it, the name of the blog probably gave it away), and a lot of people would almost certainly use it as one of the first words they come up whit to describe me. I truly love technology and in my teens I started to play around with computers, especially the hardware that powers all the programs etc.
While writing I noticed that this story was get kind of longer than planed in the begining and I decided to split the post into multiple ones. This first part is on how it all started, how I fell in love with computers and a short introduction to what I did with it. In the second, to be published, part I will describe on what happened to the venture and what I learned from it.
My geek history [only partly]
Getting to know stuff
I disassembled my first computer around 1995. I was eleven at the time and my father just had brought home a new computer... I decided to take the one that had gotten replaced apart and was amazed by the small and fragile parts I discovered within the big grey metal box. As mentioned before, I fell in love with computer hardware and it was during that moment computers became a passion for me. I started buying all the literature I could dealing with the topic, I started programming a little (QBASIC rocked! ;-) ) and as soon as I had access to the internet (it must have been around 1997 at my father’s workplace) I started to familiarize myself with HTML and created my first "Homepage" (I wouldn't dare to call it a website, I tried to find it again but wasn't successful, I can't even remember what it was abozt, but I'm sure it had lots of animated pictures like twhirling @-signs) and soon thereaftere there was a whole fleet of pages floating around, concerning various topics.
The year 2000 became a big year for my geek-self. In the year the millennium bug should have hit I bought my first computer. The first computer only I was using and which I didn't have to share.
Building stuff
Of course, to challenge myself and to the surprise (and slight disapproval) of my parents, I bought the parts separately and assembled them to a working computer. It turned out to be the first I had built on my own, and it also turned out to be a very noisy beast. Still a lot to learn. Since then I have built quite a few computers, I would guess that it is way over a hundred, maybe even two hundred. I built computers for friends and family, for my schools computer room etc. Besides my ever increasing passion I also started to sell my services as a web-"designer". I created websites for clubs, small businesses and even a website for my school, and looking back I have to be thankful to quite a lot of people who trusted me that I could do it. I had found a way to earn some money and have fun while doing so.
Finally, in 2003, I, the inevitable happened. I decided to unite my two technological passions and start an online magazine about computer hardware.
I called it hardwareXperts (yes one e, the second one came later). With hx I tried to create something (in comparison to the other activities described above where I was "just" offering my services to others) and was somewhat successful, I created a Website, wrote content and had a loyal base of around 50 to 100 regular readers... thought of that as being not to shabe and I also had created a valve for my own creativity and curiosity. Many think that this actually was my first venture, but I wouldn't call this a venture, the first version of hx was not much more than a student project. The entrepreneurial endevaour came about two years later.
Slideshow: First the original hx, then the redesigned version of the second incarnation and finally the second incarantion (I didn't have any screenshots of the carious states of the sites, so it is a screenshot of the waybackmachine and two pictures of the designs which then were implemented)
My first venture: hardwareexperts.ch
In 2004 I started my studies at the University St. Gallen, Business. Shortly after starting at the University I started being bored quite a bit and I started looking for something else to do besides my studies. I started to have various jobs and following a friends idea I started to help organizing some LAN parties. One evening at such a party a couple of friends and I discussed the state of websites that concerned themselves with hardware and we came to two conclusions:
- There was a need for information on computer hardware in Switzerland
- The sites existing at the time were just crap
We saw a need and we also were convinced we could do better than others did before us. And in my honest opinion, we did, at least for a while.
Under my lead a team of around six people started creating the things we thought would be necessary to be successful as a hardware-testing-website. We created a design, programmed a website based on a CMS, setup a bulletin board, found partners for hosting and products (we needed something to write about), established rules and guidelines on how to test different product categories, and finally we launched our website.
It had taken maybe three months to get there and the result was fascinating and very satisfying.
Even though our design wasn't the best, the website was the best computer hardware test site available in Switzerland by far. Our product was excellent (by the standards we wanted to achieve) but we hadn't thought far enough... We had thought there was a need for information in Switzerland, and there definitely was, but the market was tiny. Even though we had set out to create a site that was superior to other Swiss sites we found ourselves competing with international sites, our writting was superior to other sites in Switzerland but they weren't our competition anymore, we had to compete with sites that had much more resources and were much more experienced than us... So what to do? What happened?
