Ariel Camus, a product builder, 500 startups alumni and the CEO and Founder of TouristEye, acquired by Lonely Planet in 2013. Today, Ariel is building a new education system called HackerPath that utilizes collaboration between peers and bots.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Founders at Work
- What CEO do you follow? –
- Favorite online tool? — Google Apps
- Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
- If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “Relax, you’re doing well. Have more fun”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:12 – Nathan introduces Ariel to the show
- 01:35 – TouristEye is Ariel’s first company and exited it in 2013
- 01:45 – TouristEye is a travel guide for mobile devices with all information offline
-
- 02:03 – Revenue is from referral fees and premium features in application
- 02:24 – Raised funding for TouristEye
- 02:55 – Acquisition price of Lonely Planet
- 03:18 – Why did you sell TouristEye?
- 04:50 – Ariel was 26 when he sold TouristEye
- 05:00 – Ariel joined Lonely Planet after selling TouristEye
- 06:00 – Ariel is starting a new project related to teaching
-
- 06:30 – Building a new platform online
- 06:46 – The project is called HackerPath
- 07:04 – Still in the process of building the database
- 07:18 – Goal is to make it open to everyone
- 07:37 – Recruiters are charging companies a 20% fee
- 07:53 – Currently pre-revenue
- 08:20 – No retainers for TouristEye
- 09:00 – “Do something you really love. Don’t waste time and just do it”
- 09:24 – Ariel and his friends talk about ideas and how to make to make it happen
- 10:00 – What salary would be giving up should you decide to quit completely?
-
- 10:35 – “I can start a new business and pay developers to help me”
- 11:04 – Most of the money that were spent so far was for an experiment that was launched last week called Coderoulette
-
- 11:25 – Did it to validate the interest
- 11:33 – Did well on the launched
- 11:45 – Used existing technologies
- 12:00 – Put in $ 10-15,000 for the project
- 12:19 – Connect with Ariel through Twitter
- 13:30 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Do something you really love. Don’t waste time and just do it.
- Selling a business is a crucial choice – make sure you won’t regret it.
- Relax and have more fun.
Resources Mentioned:
- Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal developers.
- Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
- Freshbooks – The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
- Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
- Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.
- Assistant.to – The site Nathan uses to book meetings with one email.
- @arielcamus - Ariel’s Twitter handle
- Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives