Gadgetory

what's up everyone John rhett indifferent TechnoBuffalo here this past March was the five year anniversary of TechnoBuffalo and throughout the past five years I've shared a little bits of the story that went into how Tecna Buffalo came to be but I've never told the entire story what happened it's beginning went up at the end and how we got to where we are now and how we're gonna get to where I hope we're gonna be so you've ever been interested in starting you on a web site or starting a business any wonder your the pitfalls and sort of what happened you can learn the actual people that helped us grow and got to where we are sit back relax grab some popcorn we might have to cut this video into two parts because I got a lot of story to tell it's gonna get started the beginning of this story I was in marketing long before TechnoBuffalo ever started I love technology I love just gadgets I used to go walk around Best Buy to relax myself after a long day I just always had a passion for technology I remember being at work this software development company running their marketing department I remember sitting there reading and gadget and CNET and Gizmodo I'm just having them just constantly reading I probably spent more time reading those than I did anything else and this was probably around 2007 2008 I just loved technology so this is how the YouTube channel started I'll sort of give this story very briefly I wanted to get a Mac up using a giant about 15 inch HP computer at the time I never used a Mac I didn't know how to use a Mac and I figured you know what it'll teach me how to use a computer if I force myself to make videos on it I tried to find videos on YouTube on how to use the computer there weren't any so it's a good excuse this time YouTube was just cat videos and guys getting kicked in the balls so you know it's pretty easy to get recognized and notified on there so I did that and it grew and got sort of more successful a couple thousand people started to watch the videos and I couldn't believe that people actually cared what I had to say it was just incredible I respond to every comment and I was really really happy about it but again back 2008 YouTube not people knew about it it was sort of a fringe kind of thing I was a little bit embarrassed I didn't even tell my girlfriend who became my fiancee my wife at the time you know for a while that I was that was doing it and then the YouTube Partner Program came around that's where partners and creators are able to share in the revenue from the videos and this is something that we all take for granted now but didn't exist back then so I remember finding the gentleman's name who started the partner program I had about 8,000 subscribers at the time and I wrote him about a two pages letter for I thought I should be accepted and I surprised I got a personal letter back I was accepted into the partner program so the job I was at this marking Department and it's a reason for the story I hated it it was a good company good people but I hated the job to the point where I hope I get in like a minor car accident so we have to go in like not nothing where anybody got hurt but like maybe hit a stop sign so a partner program started I was able to make money from YouTube videos which is absolutely incredible I mean I couldn't even believe that was a thing and I still have a hard time believing that I can make a living from talking about technology but sort of long story short very soon how is that almost in compared with a job I hated and making videos for a living so it became a very clear choice that I was going to do and this now was about 2008 2009 sort of really the height of a downturn of the economy I remember telling my future wife and my future mother-in-law those leaving my job and a really bad economy to make videos for a living and my wife he's so supportive said I'll never forget I believe anything you can do it try it and I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for her saying that and believing in me so you know that was kind of kind of cool so I left my job and I wrote a business plan to protect my Buffalo I was reading all these tech websites there wasn't any emphasis on video at all and I figured you know what I've got a you know decent-sized following on video I've always kind of liked the idea working for myself I always had a bit of a problem with authority company is that I worked for in the past so that's a whole other story so I wrote a business plan where venture was gonna become TechnoBuffalo so the plan that I wrote had three parts Seconal Buffalo some of you that were around originally you might recognize this the first was a social network built in two TechnoBuffalo it was called Buffalo net where people could talk about gadgets and what they liked second part was sub blogs you could sign up for your own sub site TechnoBuffalo comm slash whatever user name was and you've got sort of a WordPress format at site you could put in your adsense code and you can actually you know make money from that that having to worry about hosting your own site and the third part was the regular sort of blog role that we have right now so I hired a developer from the software development company that was working with hey I raised initially I raised the $40,000 it was bootstrap from friends and family I think I remember I initially sold I think it was 1% of the company for $5,000 I think was what I ended up doing and then I started TechnoBuffalo with Brandon minimun from formerly from pocket now and we each put in five thousand of our own money and we serve radiused the other 13 that was all the money that we had so we hired a developer from the company I was working for I could see him I could talk to him I know anything about starting a website I knew nothing about coding I knew very very very little about any of this at all so we started sort of working to put together this website while this is all going on I went back to school to get my MBA to sort of learn how to best run a company I did that at night which is also a side story where I ended up meeting our managing editor right Roy that refuses mine my friend and classmate so working on this website developer is is coding it he put it on a Windows machine I don't know what that meant and we were getting ready to launch we were going to launch in September of 2009 and we had burned through about $30,000 of our 40s we didn't have much money left at all I wasn't taking a salary I was using the money I was making from the videos to live on and I think Ben Brandon wasn't taking any sort of salary there either and I remember hyping up TechnoBuffalo I used every outlet I had social media video just to be like check this site out it's a voice of the consumer you can create your own website we've got a social network built in like check it out we did a little bit of a closed beta we had 100 users in there and everything was super smooth and then launch day came September of 2009 and we Unleashed TechnoBuffalo to the world and the site crashed epically within about 35 seconds and it wasn't because we had so much traffic coming to it it was just the code was so awful and so bad the server was setup so horribly that the site completely crashed and I was devastated I had no backup plan I mean it was I left my job I was without a net and I was mortified and I was scared I just be able to sleep hey when I was in college I would sleep through my 2:00 p.m. class I could sleep like a champ it was during this time I developed a really bad insomnia I couldn't sleep at night I was I urged ten years during this time we had no money left either you know we had ten thousand dollars so we invested every last cent we had to try and redo the site essentially recode it from essentially scratch and it was frightening and you know I had lost so much in the way of reputation the site had lost so much to waive reputation cuz I talked about and then it wasn't there and it wasn't until that middle of December 2009 so three months later that we finally got the site up and launched and live for more than you know a minute it was really really bad three months and the video is talking about TechnoBuffalo launching and TechnoBuffalo not working or still up on the youtube channel you can go back and check them out they are still there and you can see the worry in in my eyes I remember thinking to myself like what am i doing why am I doing this it would been so much easier just to work my job I was at and collect a paycheck I kept getting promoted at it and it was fine you know was a stable job what am I thinking trying to make a living making videos and trying to start a website from scratch and those thoughts and doubts you know creeped in a lot and they crept in a lot through the early years and sometimes you know they still creep in so TechnoBuffalo launched brandon was running pocket now at the time he realized he couldn't split his time between pocket and TechnoBuffalo and sort of give both the attention he thought they deserved so he left and I sort of took over a hundred percent of TechnoBuffalo and we had barely enough money from ads to hire one writer and that one writer was Sean Audie whose name you might recognize who's now our editor-in-chief I remember when Brandon left I talked to Sean I'm like we don't have Ned in chief now Brandon was like we can't hire anybody else I mean do you want the job Sean had a pretty impressive resume at the time and still obviously does and it's that little that that thing sort of started what became a really great friendship with Sean and Sean has been incredible under in chief and still is to to this day so we had all those other parts of TechnoBuffalo the social network side and the sub blogs and it was killing us development wise it was absolutely just we're spending so much time and so much money to try and keep him aboard it wasn't doing anything for us so right they're really tough decision to totally ax him like just axe him completely and the currency just become a blog like like we are now it was a really tough decision to make you know but we did and the site itself was probably making on a good month are we good month maybe we had a hundred thousand page views if even that and we were probably making five hundred dollars a month so and I still wasn't taking any salary Brandon wasn't we used every cent we were making it essentially pay Sean you know that number went up certainly Sean had other job he's working at the time and we were just sort of trying to get by and it was really really scary and I remember looking at her bank account one day this is sort of right after Brandon allowed to me like I don't know if any to keep the lights on you know I can still make videos but I don't know if the site's going to last and it was really really frightening for me and for my girlfriend again who became my wife ID I was having such soso food with regret and I didn't know what was going to happen what's up everyone thank you for watching that video if you want to see more the latest and greatest tech news you can subscribe to our main TechnoBuffalo channel by clicking the button right down below in my pants region or click on the buttons to your right to see more videos