Hey, that's what I thought too, but you do need someone to sell customers and investors on the concept. Also it sounds like he had a huge product and project management role as well.
He's working smarter not harder. Finding a market and then delivering what they want, which is old news in business. He's just being tech savvy about doing it online. Most entrepreneurs build something they want. He's building a products that he has empirical proof someone else wants.
More of a "business hack" than a technology hack. He utilized tech to manipulate an existing market to his benefit (getting top designers to participate) and then used it to help promote his own product.
He grew a company from 4 million in sales to 60 million and has a NY Times Bestselling book. How is that not "wildly successful"? Because he literally isn't Mark Zuckerberg? I can only hope to get to that point so early in life.
He may not have the legendarily technical chops of a Fabrice Bellard or the leadership prowess of Peter Drucker, but he _surely_ knows how to sell things pretty well. I'd say he's the online equivalent of Joe Ades the Gentleman Peeler[1], which is absolutely nothing to sneeze at.
This guy: A.) makes stuff, B.) The stuff works and is useful to other people c.) Challenged himself to drill into the "crass" business side to make himself far more profitable.
Who is this guy? Aside from someone who says he started and failed many businesses from a smorgasbord of ideas. I went to his about page, but gave up after scrolling past the 30th selfie.
Without "potentially," I'd be describing him as a great non-technical cofounder, which would only be true if he were a cofounder. I am sure that he is an actually, not potentially, great person. :-)
He's been prolific in starting and backing a huge number of original ideas and companies—I'd say the market is giving him all the feedback he needs that he's doing something right.
He's more on the side of genius, but less on the side of practical. I think he'd do really well if he tried a startup with someone who could help push him in the direction of building things with more practical use.
It's rarely luck alone, off course, someone has to have the guts to play, to risk losing something, and often must put in the work too. But out of everyone who does, luck can often make the winners.
That said, in his case, there's a few repeat accomplishments. More than once he thought of a product, built it, and seem to have gotten traction with consumers.
This is different from say Jeff Bezos, and how he famously said he doesn't think he could make it again, because he was kind of at the right time, right place. And he wouldn't know what in the current time and place would be the next Amazon.
But in OPs case, he seem to be able to replicate these small-ish but still successful products. So at the very least he's got a knack for good ideas, identifying products that don't have a good offering, and building them quickly to a point that people will pay for them. That takes some talent, and hard work to accomplish.
Some data from his cv:
- He has 7 patents (some of those owned by Mitsubishi)
- He got over $ 600k on license fees and sales revenue from institutions.
- His small business Little Great Ideas Inc. got $250 k in gross sales.
Sounds similar to startup'ing to me...
I would think that somebody who came up with that many new products could get something to market.
On the other hand, he could be one of those stereotypical tech geniuses who completely suck at business.
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