How a Sole-Income Earning, Non-Tech, Thirty-Something (With Kids) Started His Company

In the summer of 2011, I had an idea I could not get out of my head. Something I thought about every waking hour of the day. The thought of what it could become put me to sleep with a smile on my face every night. I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than making this idea happen. I know that if you’re reading this, you can probably relate.

At the time, I was working full-time — because I had to. I had/have a wife that stays home with our three kids. That means that I’m the sole income provider and, almost more importantly, my family is relying on me to have health insurance.

That meant I was stuck at my job until I could figure out a way to either: 1. Turn a profit, 2. Raise money, or 3. Convince my wife it was worth the risk without 1 or 2.

Here are were the challenges (not excuses) in each of those scenarios:

  1. Turn a profit: This takes a product. That’s fine if you have the skills to build a product, or have the money to hire someone to help you. The problem was that I didn’t have either. On top of that, it wasn’t a product that was going to turn a profit quickly.
  2. Raise money: Well, again, that takes a product. Then, that product needs traction and dare I say, a team. Then, you need to pitch those investors — a lot of investors. That takes time, most likely time during the day. Again, I had a job to maintain.
  3. Convince the wife: Let’s be honest. I don’t care what anyone says, this is a bad decision even without asking my wife. Yes, entrepreneurs need to take risks, it’s a part of their DNA. But, there is careless risk and calculated risk. When your family is at stake, that’s careless, IMHO.

So, what did I do?

Well, as someone in my mid-thirties, my biological clock was ticking, so to speak. There was no way in hell I was going to let this one pass by.

I stopped fucking thinking about it and figured it out.

Here were the steps I took:

  1. Figured out which of my friends knew how to build things.
  2. Bugged the shit out of those friends until they were convinced of the idea and willing to help.
  3. Promised those friends that they would only have to do the minimal amount of work until I could establish some traction.
  4. Built a WordPress site. Signup page and How it Works page — that’s it.
  5. Hit up every piece of press I could possibly get. Started with less known publishers and continued to upgrade by leveraging the previous write-up.
  6. Looked for any and every possible partnership to increase our distribution.
  7. Took phones calls over lunch and after work in my car (praying to God that they wouldn’t ask me if I was working on this full time).

The results of those efforts were nothing but spectacular. Inside of three months, while still working full-time, we were able to attract nearly 20k sign-ups. Not only that, but we had been featured in everything from Thrillist to USA Today. And, we were finally having discussions with investors. This, mind you, was all before we even had a single line of code — not one.

A few months later, I was able to finally quit my job and move right into a salary (and insurance) with the company I had only previously dreamed about starting.

I’m sharing this story because there are plenty of people who are non-technical, have families to support, are maybe longer in the tooth and are stuck in a job.

Don’t give up on your dream. Don’t wait. Don’t let the challenges stop you.

Just starting doing.


  • Thanks for the post, exactly what I needed to hear. Just go at at as much as you can but be consistent and persistent.

    • It wasn’t all that scientific of an approach. But here are a few things I did (in no particular order) that seemed to work:

      1. Signed up and responded to HARO (Help a Reporter Out) requests. If you’re not familiar, this is basically a service where journalists post requests looking for sources. Great tool.

      2. I started with small, local publications. Used the hometown angle to generate interest.

      3. Leveraged the local coverage, to approach bigger (National) outlets. I stated that we were making some progress locally, but nobody has covered us from a national level. They’d have the exclusive. When we received coverage from a lesser known national outlet, I used that to approach the larger sites.

      4. I targeted journalists that had written stories that I could leverage into a discussion about my company. I always started by referencing their previous article, usually complementing their piece and closed with the why it would make sense to cover my company. Used Rapportive to find their email addresses if they weren’t readily available.

      5. I kept my emails very short.

      6. I relentlessly followed up until they said either “yes” or “no”. Use your own discretion on the frequency of your follow ups.

      7. Whoever I reached out to, I offered it to them exclusively. I used this when following up to get a response as well. I basically said, “this is yours, and yours only, if you want it. If not, please let me know so I can reach out to someone else.”

      8. Tried to find journalists at each publication that had the least amount of comments. This, to me, indicated that they weren’t as popular. Thus, they probably weren’t getting as many pitches.

      9. Leveraged every milestone (partnerships, announcements, etc.) into a PR opportunity. Some worked, some didn’t.

      10. I made sure that my press contacts knew that I was ready and willing to speak on the industry any time. This happened a few times, biggest being NPR, simply because I made it easy for them to access a quick source.

      Many articles came as a result of other press. I was starting to get contacted, just because we were being written about elsewhere.

      Overall, I’d say that regardless of your approach, you need to have an interesting story. Think long and hard about this before doing any outreach.

      Hope that was helpful.

  • And that, fellow developers, is the true value of a non-technical co-founder.

    Follow through to sales like that and you will have a very rapidly growing company.

  • How were you able to get signups and full press coverage only with an idea and “not a single line of code”??

    What did your friends do / produce / write in lieu of the product that was so convincing for users / the press?

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