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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Lessons Learned: .CLUB CEO Colin Campbell (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: You don’t sell directly. You sell through other domain name sellers like GoDaddy?

Colin Campbell: That is correct. We’ve gone to all the GoDaddy’s around the world. The largest company in China is Alibaba. They’re the ones with the largest distribution for domain names and websites. We sell through Alibaba in China as well. We find the largest distributors and work directly with them, and they promote the names through their clients. Since we’re .club, we did a launch party. We did it with 50 Cent. Are you familiar with 50 Cent and his In Da Club song?

Sramana Mitra: No, I’m not. >>>

The Story of a $9M Lifestyle Business: Kean Graham, CEO of MonetizeMore (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: It makes a big difference. At this point, were you still a solopreneur or were other people in the picture?

Kean Graham: There were other people in the picture. I hired my parents part-time. I outsourced certain operations to other people. We were looking into certain partnerships at that time. I was getting a little bit of help. It was in the early stages of that growth.

Sramana Mitra: How long did you continue with these two clients now?

Kean Graham: After two and a half years, that’s when things started to happen. Right before I was planning a trip to Easter Europe, we were able to sign a website called The Sims Resource, which is the largest website in the world released to The Sims video game. That was a really big client for us. There was a lot of opportunity to increase their revenue. By the time I was working on them, I was already in Russia. I was there for a month. >>>

Building a Billion Dollar Unicorn: Outbrain CEO Yaron Galai (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Yaron came with a clear notion of how he wanted to recommend content and monetize those recommendations. It took, however, many years before the market caught up with his vision. It has now. The company is going gangbusters.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Yaron Galai: I was raised in Israel. That’s where I grew up most of my childhood and spent my first 30 years. I served in the Israeli Navy for 7 years and then started startups.

Sramana Mitra: What year does that bring us up to? You said you worked in the Navy and then started working on startups, or was some of that interweaved while you were still at the Navy? >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Lessons Learned: .CLUB CEO Colin Campbell (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: How much money did it take to get this rolling?

Colin Campbell: We’ve raised $11.6 million to date. Initially, I put some of my own funds into it.

Sramana Mitra: So you did not fund it yourself? You did take financing?

Colin Campbell: I didn’t take any financing. The way it worked is each applicant had to lay down a $185,000 application fee and put their stake into the ground. You had to declare the name. If there were multiple companies applying for that domain extension, then it would go to an auction. There were multiple companies applying for the .club extension including one that had raised over $100 million dollars.

We went into an auction scenario and we were successful at winning that. Prior to winning the auction, I didn’t have enough funding myself to compete in this auction. I needed to raise money. I had to be careful. I didn’t want to let everybody know how much I was raising because I didn’t want to push the auction price much higher. I didn’t want it to get overvalued. >>>

The Story of a $9M Lifestyle Business: Kean Graham, CEO of MonetizeMore (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. The reason why I’m curious about what you’re describing is that I have done quite a lot of travel. I continue to work while I’m traveling. At one time, I was calling my colleague in New Jersey. I said, “Guess where I’m calling you from? I’m calling you from a cave in Turkey.”

Kean Graham: Was that in Cappadocia?

Sramana Mitra: Exactly.

Kean Graham: It’s beautiful there. Did you stay in one of those cave hotels?

Sramana Mitra: Yes. After the Europe trip, you came back to Victoria? >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Lessons Learned: .CLUB CEO Colin Campbell (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You stayed with the company for three years and that brings us to 2011, yes?

Colin Campbell: Yes. Just an interesting note about the three years is that I was working as a corporate executive in a corporate environment. It was very difficult. There was a lot of politics. I reported directly to the CEO. I had weekly meetings with the CEO. It was a very interesting time because I learned that big corporations are fearful of taking risks and being innovative.

Those who take the risk and innovate seem to get knocked out of the company. I didn’t have anything to lose. I’m an entrepreneur. Even today, Hostopia is one of their crown jewels. It was a very tough environment to be in. The day my three-year term came up, I sent a note to the CEO, “I’ve done >>>

The Story of a $9M Lifestyle Business: Kean Graham, CEO of MonetizeMore (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You started doing this in 2008 you said?

Kean Graham: 2010.

Sramana Mitra: In 2010, you basically worked with your prior employer and figured out how to increase their revenue. When did you add team members to this process?

Kean Graham: About the third year. For the first three years, I was outsourcing. I hired my parents part-time to do some of the reporting, but it was pretty small scale.

Sramana Mitra: Did you meet your objective of traveling during those three years and working from wherever you wanted? >>>

A Serial Entrepreneur’s Lessons Learned: .CLUB CEO Colin Campbell (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: That company was also bootstrapped?

Colin Campbell: Yes, bootstrapped. Talking about bootstrapping, I actually used some of my student loans and credit cards to start the first company. There was no funding when I started. In any case, we sold the company. My other company, Internet Direct, went public and we sold that company. It was a $180 million transaction. The partners owned 40% of the company.

It was a dial-up Internet company and we applied to the government in Canada to get a license for wireless Internet across the country. It was actually granted to us for free unlike in the United States where they auction it off. It went to over a billion dollar market cap.

Sramana Mitra: What year are we talking? >>>