Jason shares his experience as a Capitalist for 10 years. See his blog post below.
On the 4th August 2004 I incorporated my first company in the UK. eFunctions Ltd. It was an event management platform aimed at supporting the student societies and organisations of Manchester to connect with bars, clubs, print companies and other suppliers they needed to create their annual parties. I got excited. Actually, Mad excited. I spent wasted my summer strategising, product developing / creating an expensive platform with all kinds of bells and whistles I thought were important to my thousands of potential customers. I wrote a 50 page business plan. Raised money from my summer job at Directline Insurance and used my student loan to start what I considered to be the most amazing thing ever. It failed right out of the gate. I didn’t stand a chance.
I invested blew almost £5,000 over that fateful summer, as an ordinarily working class, poor student approaching his third and final year in a Chemistry degree I had no business doing anything like that. I suffered for the year following. I had to work more than I wanted to (in my youthful gusto I quit my steady earning telesales job of almost 4 years to – go it alone – smh) I hustled on the side, running student club nights in a vain attempt to recover my total losses and find food to eat. I was never able to pay the rent on time which annoyed / bemused the hell out of Bastian who was then entering our first year as a room mate. In my final year of university, when I should have been knuckling down trying to attain the 1st class degree I was destined for, I was instead trying to figure out how to get out of the morass I had gotten myself into. Needless to say, in the end I failed on all accounts, I missed my 1st class degree. 67.3%, when 70% was automatic 1st class. I should have walked it. But I got distracted and came up short. In my first and second years I was always comfortably over the 70% range. In my second year I actually got a 78%. But hey. I lost because of this thing called capitalism. Bastian and Zainfur helped me cover my rent that year. 2004. I was a bum then. In 2005 I began my 5 year odyssey of poverty as I turned capitalist full time. I believed I was going onto untold riches, Mayfair apartments, Bentley’s and expensive watches. What actually happened was something fully opposite. What actually happened was my most epic failure: Brash Magazine
When people ask me about when I started or how I started I always think back to those summer days of 2004, when I was only 23 years old with the world as my oyster. That was 10 years ago. But I am 33 now. A husband and a father and have essentially been startup / business building for the last 10 years. That’s a long ass time. It’s rather exciting, as I take iROKOtv into the future, what I think the next 10 years holds for me. I am a veteran. I feel I have earned my stripes, been in the literal trenches, been battle-hardened in enough dire situations to earn anything I have attained today. I never thought I could be in the position I am in now yet at the same time I definitely dreamed and have worked my ass off to get here. It’s fun looking back. But where possible I need to stay focused on the future, because that’s the only way I can get to $100M in net worth by 2020. When I hit the big FOUR ZERO, I need to try and not become too cynical in my older days. Because that benefits no one.
