From eBay Seller to Software Entrepreneur: Seller Labs CEO Paul Johnson (Part 1)

Paul started as an eBay seller and then developed software to help other sellers sell online. 

A classic case study of an entrepreneur solving problems he faced himself and building a business based on deep domain knowledge.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Paul Johnson: I was born in Georgia. My parents divorced when I was four years old. My mother didn’t graduate high school and my father went to college a little bit. Both my parents have been incarcerated at one point or another in their lives.

My father and my stepfather both went to jail for a little while. I was loved and cherished, but we weren’t necessarily groomed for entrepreneurship or even success. To my dad’s credit, he did do a good job of teaching me that I would never be successful punching somebody else’s time card.

Sramana Mitra: What did you do for studies?

Paul Johnson: I graduated high school. I was pretty much a bum musician for a couple of years. I just played around. When I was 21, I decided to go to school. I went to a small community college. Now it’s North Georgia University. Back then, it was Gainesville College. I went there for two years.

I started studying business and then switched to computer science. I married at 23. I took a bit of time off from school. We had a kid. I started my first business back then selling guitars on the internet. We moved across the country and came back to Georgia and went back to school for about a couple of semesters.

I was accepted at University of Georgia but by then, my businesses were starting to grow. I had two kids already and I just didn’t have the time or mental bandwidth to finish college. I dropped out.

I never really became a great programmer, but I learned enough to communicate with other developers. Business in college gave me a little bit of foundation but a lot of that was self-taught on the internet.

Sramana Mitra: When did you leave college?

Paul Johnson: When I was 24. That was 2009.

Sramana Mitra: You were coming out of college right through the financial crisis. 

Paul Johnson: Yes. I started my business in 2008. That was when I came out of college as well. I also got married in 2008.

Sramana Mitra: What was that first business that you started?

Paul Johnson: It was in e-commerce. I was up late one night and I couldn’t sleep. I saw a special on CNN of people making a lot of money selling all kinds of stuff on eBay. I thought I could do that. I bought a book and read it cover to cover in a day. I decided I wanted to sell guitar stuff.

I was working at a guitar music shop teaching guitar. I went to them and said, “Let me take your business online.” They didn’t want to do it. I just googled guitar wholesale suppliers. I started off with a thousand dollars. It was a credit card. I maxed my card out.

I found this supplier in Nashville. They get all of the overstock and blemished guitars from a lot of the major guitar manufacturers. I started buying from them. My dad put in a little bit of money into it as well but nothing big.

We basically grew that to where it was replacing income. We were making a few hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue. It allowed me to be a full-time entrepreneur and be able to focus on entrepreneurship. More than that, it opened my eyes up to selling products online.

That’s the biggest thing for a lot of people. Everyone starts off, and they want to create big businesses. If you just start small and do something pretty simple, the chances of success are pretty high. I started making money within a few days of getting my first inventory. It was pretty easy to get going. 

This segment is part 1 in the series : From eBay Seller to Software Entrepreneur: Seller Labs CEO Paul Johnson
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