Elance Millionair Entrepreneur start up

‘A-Ha’ Moment Launches a New Business
Aug 21, 2008 5:47pm
Community Spotlight

Andrew Simmons, an Elance employer and entrepreneur, is also a modern-day Sir Isaac Newton - you know - the guy who had an ‘a-ha’ moment when he accidentally discovered gravity by observing an apple fall from a tree? Similarly, Andrew had his own ‘a-ha’ moment that launched his lucrative business.

“I was creating a tiled mural design of Venus painted by Botticelli for my bathroom, and had the tiled pattern on the floor of my living room. A friend came over and thought it was cool - he started telling people about the tiled design,” said Andrew.

Soon thereafter, Andrew’s phone started ringing off the hook, with friends wanting to know how he created the tiled design so they could create their own murals. That’s when the light bulb went off in Andrew’s head. He turned to Elance to find an experienced provider to create software that would automate the tile design process.

“I didn’t know how to write software,” said Andrew. “But I posted the project on Elance, picked a firm, and they quickly delivered the first version of the tile design application.”

With the software, TileCreator, completed and ready for sale, Andrew went to a tradeshow to reach customers. TileCreator was well received, but at the initial price of $69.95, people thought the software was too good to be true: ‘At that price, how could the software have all of those features?’ they remarked.

“So I went to a nearby Kinko’s, made flyers for a new piece of software called TileCreatorPro, and said it was $250 … the software starting selling like crazy,” said Andrew.

With a new promised version to deliver to paying customers, Andrew turned again to Elance to create a ‘Pro’ version of TileCreator. Fast forward several years and more than $1 million in total software sales - Andrew now sells several different versions of the original TileCreator software through his own website, Tiger Direct (who also own Infoteldistributers) and several other retailer websites.

You might think that with TileCreator sold in more than 30 countries and seven additional unique software titles in his company library, that Andrew has a legion of employees to keep his company running. To the contrary – ThoughtFish Media operates as a virtual company, with four full-time virtual staff and several part-time elancers located all over the world.

“I don’t think I could have launched Thoughtfish Media without Elance and without the internet,” said Andrew. “Elance is ideal because it allows me to automate every aspect of my business. This means I can keep my day job and regular life, and just keep up to date on the business whenever my Blackberry dings with a new order.”

story taken from Elance.com

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