From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: When did you start United Web?

Tomas Gorny: In 2008. Over the years, United Web became an investment vehicle for our and other businesses. What I’m really focused on and really passionate about is the business that we do now – Nextiva. Nextiva technically started its development on the product in 2006. In 2006, we looked at the telecommunication business. >>>

From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You had web hosting, email, domains, and you had a suite of widgets that people need to build and host a web business. You were doing it all for a flat price at $7.95 a month.

Tomas Gorny: That’s correct. The magic was really in the last statement. The control panel and the widgets really opened the market for us. That’s the same thing that opened the market for Windows. >>>

From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You had $6,000 in the bank and you used your American Express credit line and started a web hosting company. How did that work? Can you talk a bit more about the early journey of that company?

Tomas Gorny: I bought two servers. I was very technically oriented, so I installed them and had a technical guy help me a little bit. I had a vision. Let me take you back a little to explain it. When I first visited the United States, it was just for two months. I didn’t speak any English. It was the 4^th of July and I saw from my hotel room this ‘two for one’ shoes. From a European mentality, that’s actually very awkward. I am now used to that, having been here in America. >>>

From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 4)

Tomas Gorny: We never went bankrupt. We paid off all the creditors. We filed what is called ABC – assignment for the benefit of creditors. After we filed that, we dissolved the company. In 2001, I was left with no money and was in pretty much the same situation when I came to America.

Sramana Mitra: But you still had the house and the car?

Tomas Gorny: Yes, the car was just getting me from A to B really. There wasn’t much value in that anymore. I had to pay mortgage for the house. >>>

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sebastian Stadil, CEO of Scalr (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: The truth is we have seen a lot of these people coming out and building companies. I think that trend is going to accelerate.

Sebastian Stadil: That is my story as well. Before founding Scalr, I worked at a company where I was manually managing infrastructure for them. The experience that I got from that allowed me to have the inside expertise of managing infrastructure.

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From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 3)

Tomas Gorny: As a result, while I was building my tech business in the web hosting industry, I was doing whatever it takes – valet car parking, carpet cleaning – to survive. For two years, I lived on $3 a day in terms of food allowance. I even remember days when I didn’t have any money. I never pitied myself though. I was living in a place where I wanted to live. When I woke up, it was always sunny. I was building something. Eventually, the business started kicking in a little bit more. Two years later, we sold the business for a substantial amount. I had just turned 22 and became a multi-millionaire with the sale of the business. I also own stocks in the company that bought our business.

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Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Sebastian Stadil, CEO of Scalr (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Let me just comment on it before you go on. I think the framework that you’re setting is interesting because we have seen this in action especially over the last decade where there were a lot of functions that were getting outsourced to the various outsourcing providers and that are still being outsourced, but to SaaS vendors. That’s the evolution that I think synthesizes what you’ve said so far. It’s also interesting that it ties in to your own story. You took a function that is a do-it-yourself function where people were trying to cobble together internally and built a solution to it. >>>

From $3 a Day to Successful Entrepreneur: Tomas Gorny, CEO of Nextiva (Part 2)

Tomas Gorny: When I was living in Germany, I was 17 years old and had learned the language. I decided that the PC industry is growing, so I started a PC distribution company. We were buying different PC components from vendors, assembling them to computers, and then selling them to businesses and individuals. What I started noticing was that people were discriminating against me because of my Eastern European accent. On top of it, I was very young. It would have been unheard of for somebody of 16 years of age to go into business. You had to be 28 to 30 to be credible and to be considered legitimate. I wasn’t just young but I was perceived as this stupid and young Polish guy. But what I also noticed was, because of that, people were significantly looser with their words around me. >>>