Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Yaro,

Just a short note to let you know that I enjoy reading your blog. I too have a business degree (marketing & management) and had a few businesses over the years. Im also from Vancouver, Canada but now call Brisbane home. Visited Toronto and Vancouver just last year for several months. I certainly can relate to some of your entries and I enjoy the business banter.

Getting a new company off the ground soon.

Love your work!

Regards, Dion Kramer.

Sure Yaro.

1. My first idea was fairly simple. At 17 I was strapped for cash so I came up with an idea to arrange social functions for my friends and their friends. I would hire a boat that would go up and down Brisbane River on a Saturday evening. I would arrange a DJ and the catering. Then I would sell tickets to people to attend the function. I started with $10 a head. My first function made me $1200 profit. I repeated this throughout university. Each time it would get more elaborate. The functions would have better djs and several monitors showing the music clips. There were smoke machines on the dancefloor. The quality of food got better. I began bringing on bands and doing CD launches. There were after party venues for the party goers to attend. Of course I negotiated free entry, cheap drinks and private function areas. The ticket prices also increased. The ticket price at my last function was $20 a head.

2. I read my first book about finance and money at 11yo. At 18 I bought my first stock (NewsLimited). I had been waiting eagerly for that birthday. Throughout university I traded on the stockmarket. My friends and family caught wind of my foray and began offering me their hard earned dollars to invest. Kramer Fund Management was born. This was great. I could diversify the portfolio more so and take a percentage of the gains from my family and friends. They enjoyed it because they were making money without working and because I would send them emails updating them on the market and informing them of reasons for my decisions to buy or sell. Made money and lost money. But I learned alot of valuable lessons. In the end it made my friends and family some money and gave them insight into investing on the stockmarket. It also afforded me a nice car and a fairly comfortable living for a university student.

3. After university I got a job. I always wanted my own company, to be master of my own destiny, though I did want to have that experience of working for a large organisation. Did it for several years and then travelled around the world for most part of a year. I returned to Brisbane and quickly got a team together and raised capital from some investors. We went to Sydney to begin. I essentially began a trading platform that was a cross between the Trading Post and eBay. I came up with an alogorithm that rewarded good advertising. For example, if someone was selling their car and had included several photos, a landline, mobile plus details of carrier etc they would achieve a better ranking on the list of items. I also worked off a tipping system. The alogorithm would consider the amount the person paid to list the advert. Of course the more you paid, the better the ranking you received. Though this was not the sole determinant. In the first month we had over 5000 adverts. I then established a web design and programming arm. And finally, I was involved in a deal with a financial institution to begin lending money through the site. We would get a cut of the application/establishment fees. At this stage we had some internal problems. My partner found a new girlfriend (Yoko Ono). So, I decided to sell my share of the company. Anyway, I had some other ideas I wanted to explore.

Now back in Brisbane!

Dion.