Child Entrepreneur Kevin Sproles: CEO Of Volusion (Part 4)

SM: How has your relationship with your business partner evolved over the past five years? KS: It has been great. It is one of those things we have always heard you have to be cautious about. I hear that when there are two partners, statistics show that the business will have conflict. We have been

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Child Entrepreneur Kevin Sproles: CEO Of Volusion (Part 3)

SM: In 2003 you did $130,000. What was your next phase of business evolution? How did you grow? KS: From 2003 to 2004 I really learned how to build on the concepts of product and repeatable processes. I made a significant effort to leave custom work behind. That is what we are still doing today.

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Child Entrepreneur Kevin Sproles: CEO Of Volusion (Part 2)

SM: What year did you turn your Web design services company into an e-commerce engine? KS: The first version of Volusion came around 2001. I released a lot of the marketing around it in 2002. It was branded as Store 2002.

Child Entrepreneur Kevin Sproles: CEO Of Volusion (Part 1)

Kevin Sproles is the founder and CEO of Volusion, an online e-commerce solution for the SMB market. He began his career by coding and designing in high school. Most of his clients had a common need, a shopping cart system, so he developed the first version of Volusion before graduating. Today Volusion has over 150

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Learning From Failures: IMVU Founder Will Harvey (Part 7)

SM: Who was your intended customer base for the 3-D characters when you set the $300 sales goal? WH: It was our parents. We figured they could not turn us down. It was not a great form of validation, but it was a good form of invalidation. We found out just how hard it was

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Learning From Failures: IMVU Founder Will Harvey (Part 6)

SM: What did you do after There.com? WH: After I left There.com I started IMVU. I was determined to not make the same mistakes again.

Learning From Failures: IMVU Founder Will Harvey (Part 5)

SM: Who were your investors at There.com? WH: The first couple of rounds were angel rounds. The first official investors were Black Diamond Capital Partners, which is a small private institutional fund. Sutter Hill Venture Partners was the first major VC.

Learning From Failures: IMVU Founder Will Harvey (Part 4)

SM: What happened after you realized the second round of financing was not going to be available for Sandcastle? WH: I then made a decision to have the company acquired instead of pressing forward. At that point it was viable. Fortunately, I made that decision before we ran out of money. We still had enough

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