Betterfly
Betterfly connects millions of consumers with personal service providers, i.e. guitar teachers, life coaches, Spanish tutors, through the power of video chat. Our mission is to empower these professionals and provide them the opportunity to spend more time doing what they love and less time worrying about the pains of operating a small business.
In my role as CTO, I am responsible for everything product and engineering-related. I am passionate about our vision and love pushing the limits of technology.
Investors: Lightbank, Great Oaks Venture Capital
DealsGoRound
DealsGoRound was the world’s first secondary market for daily deals including Groupon, LivingSocial and Google Offers. Media coverage from Forbes to the Wall Street Journal and every local media outlet in between lead to rapid traction and more than $1.4MM in venture capital funding across multiple seed rounds. I was the sole founder responsible for every aspect of the business. While moonlighting, I developed and took the business from idea through delivery and after raising the first round of capital grew the company to a team of six full-time employees.
In August 2012, DealsGoRound expanded the service offering into gift card and coupons and briefly re-branded as MyCabbage.com. The evolution into a social savings wallet was short-lived as the company was acquired by Betterfly in December 2012.
Investors: Lightbank, Chicago Ventures, New World Ventures, Mike Domek, Brian Hand, Jamie Crouthamel
NeighborHuddle
NeighborHuddle was my first endeavor into Internet entrepreneurship. I paid a developer off Craigslist $500 to build a website for my condominium association. After a few rounds of revisions, I decided to FTP into the code and start learning PHP in order to turn the website into a portal which could be leveraged across multiple communities. The site operates using a monthly subscription model and despite a lack of attention over the years, the still still runs profitably today.
Aquarius Pressure Washing
Aquarius was my first corporation which I founded at the age of 23. I started the company out of pure motivation to understand business operations, customer relations and re-learn all the accounting which I despised in college. With one other employee, we watched many weekend sunrises as we pressure washed sidewalks, awnings and dumpsters across Chicago. It was hard work and absolutely disgusting, but it was incredibly satisfying. I signed and managed clients ranging from individual golf courses to corporate accounts with 20+ locations. I managed all of this while jet-setting across the country every week as a technology consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers and later IBM. After realizing my time couldn’t scale and I didn’t want more employees, I sold the business and focused my energy on something new; the Internet!