How Online Millionaires Start Their Businesses
Believe it or not, IP intelligence technology provider Digital Envoy Inc. was spawned from two serious sweet-tooths. Sanjay Parekh, 31, started buying candy from Costco and reselling it to his telecom co-workers when he struck up a friendship with Rob Friedman, 38, general counsel at the company and an Atomic Fireball enthusiast. Soon, their friendship moved beyond candy cravings, and they were bouncing around business ideas.
Parekh made an interesting discovery when visiting the FedEx and Ikea websites in 1999: both prompted him to enter what country he was in. “So I architected a solution to that problem using IP addresses.” Friedman agreed that the technology–which provides general information about an online user, such as the city, local demographics and type of internet connection being used, based only on the IP address–would help businesses. They launched Digital Envoy Inc. in 1999.
Digital Envoy now works with many major ad networks and sites, and estimates last year sales at less than $10 million.
Photo by angryhaggis.
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