Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: What was the monetization model on that one? Were they monetizing well?

Blaine Vess: I don’t think they were monetizing as best as they could, but both of them were making money out of Google AdSense. Flash Card Exchange had a lifetime membership for $20 a month. If you paid, you would not see any advertising and you also got a bit of storage space if you wanted to upload images or audio to flash cards. When we bought it, we removed the premium membership because we’ve been focused on growth and getting people to love the site and the brand. Right now, we only make money on advertising. We’re eventually going to launch a premium membership where you can have the advertising removed if you pay, mainly because a lot of people have requested that feature.

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: But it did not pan out that way?

Blaine Vess: It did not pan out, but we learned a lot in the process – mainly about a lot of the things that we were doing wrong like not having employees. We had very high margins. We were making a lot of money and not really spending that money on growing the business. We didn’t have an office. It was a highly educational process for us. In 2011, after going through that process, we decided that we wanted to give it a try. That summer, we hired our first employee who was our office manager at that time. We hired some programmers and an in-house SEO person. We got an office. The process has continued since then.

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I want to know precisely what happened in 2008. What are the significant things that you did in 2008 and how did those play out? This $1.1 million, was there a concentration of colleges you were getting this from?

Blaine Vess: In 2008, we launched in international markets and started the acquisition of our competitors. That year, we ended up doing about $2.8 million in revenue. We get visitors from all over the world so it wasn’t coming from a specific college.

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Was Chris working full time or did he take up another job?

Blaine Vess: Chris was working full time on this business. He was also doing the contract programming with me.

Sramana Mitra: You guys were doing contract programming. You had a job and Chris was doing the business?

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was the motivation? If I am a student, why would I want to load up my course notes?

Blaine Vess: The main motivation is to get access to other people’s course notes or research. Say you’re writing a research paper on global warming and you have a writer’s block or you’re three pages in to a five-page research paper, you could get ideas from other people and see how they approach the topic.

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Student Entrepreneur to $10M+ Business: Blaine Vess, CEO of StudyMode (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

We’re seeing a wonderful trend of student entrepreneurs building substantial businesses without dropping out. Blaine Vess is yet another great role model. This story outlines Blaine’s entrepreneurial journey.

Sramana Mitra: Blaine, let’s start with introducing our audience to you. Where did you grow up? Where were you born? What kind of back story leads up to StudyMode?

Blaine Vess: I’m Blaine Vess, the CEO of StudyMode. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, which is where I co-founded StudyMode with my friend Chris Nelson. At that time, we were going to North Central College. From there, I ended up moving to Northern California and graduating from San Jose State University with a degree in Marketing. I originally focused on Computer Science and learned that I could program, but it wasn’t my specialty. So I switched over to Marketing and ended up moving to Los Angeles.

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Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: How much business are you doing in China? What percentage of your revenue comes from China right now?

Peter Mann: This year, we’re planning to do $10 million. I would say 40% would be in China this year. >>>

Building an American E-commerce Company that Now Sells into China: Peter Mann, CEO of Oransi (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Where is your contract manufacturer in the US?

Peter Mann: They’re in Connecticut.

Sramana Mitra: Are you selling the new product in the US only?

Peter Mann: We sell in the US, Canada, and China.

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