About Me
Who is this guy with yet another Internet business blog? Well you might try Brian Despain's Linkedin profile. I with William Drury, (and later Mark Marriott) founded a company called Brave New Worlds in 1996. It was relatively early in the days of the web but ecommerce was already two years old with the launch of Hot Hot Hot - a hot sauce store in 1994. Presence Information Design was closing. Presence was one of the very first big web design shops on the West Coast and they had difficulty managing growth. William Drury and I approached many of Presence's former customers. I had just finished the ecommerce site CDPlus while working for Penny Lane Records. So William Drury and I took the plunge, founded Brave New Worlds. Four years and a lot of growth later we sold the company to VA Linux Systems.
Starting software company from two guys in an apartment to 12 person operation has taught me quite a lot about the process of starting and running a company. Running a company at the beginning of the Internet ecommerce was a great experience.
Selling the company was a great learning experience as well, as it has enabled me to spend the last few years experimenting. In that regard I try different things, I see what works and what doesn't. I started a blog in 2000 on open source software that I sold to a Canadian media company. I started Thalasar to continue my experiments.