[cabinguy]

I started buying broken laptops on eBay, fixing them, and reselling them with my best friend. We started with $600 each on credit cards. That turned into a large refurbished computer sales business. So large that I started shopping for a vacation home (lake home).

Well, the process of buying a vacation home was frustrating. This was back in 2002 and most real estate brokerages did not have websites, and if they did, they were static and outdated. This led to a conversation with my business partner...and we ended up buying a really good domain related to my vacation home search and launched a website for realtors. We called it our side project.

When the used laptop market turned into the used VCR market, we shifted all of our eggs to our side project basket.

Today we own a real estate brokerage with 20 offices and are pretty much considered the leaders in the lake home sales market in the Midwest. We're on track to hit a $Billion in annual sales in the next couple of years (did about $300M last year). Neither of us were Realtors (I'm still not). It's been an interesting ride so far.

[mandeepj]

A naive question - if you are selling a lake home worth $5m then you are considering that amount as your sale? Let's say you are charging 1% as your fees then $50k is your revenue? Thx

[tiffanyh]

Given that OP was doing $0.45M just 7 years ago [1], doing $300M today would be some phenomenal amount of growth.

Maybe this is a “gross revenue” vs “net revenue” topic.

Especially given that the OP states in the same Link that he’d love a “$20m exit”.

A $20m exit on a $300m is a no brainer.

Either way. Being your own boss. Being profitable. And growing is awesome. Congrats.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2341124

[willart4food]

Knowing the way realtors' mind works (not GAAP) they measure the $5M as "sale".

[throwawaysweden]

Wow, that's a cool story!

You perhaps should be on Mixergy.com giving your story to a wider audience?

I've introduced quite a few people to the founder of the show over the years, and I'd be happy to do the same for you.

[cabinguy]

Thanks. I'd probably be up for it.

[throwawaysweden]

How do I reach you? Feel free to contact me at [e-mail]

Full disclosure: I'm interested in pitching you some AI / dev services, but I'm happy to do the intro regardless!

[mixmastamyk]

> When the used laptop market turned into the used VCR market…

Meaning, it died? How did you handle the payments in those days?

[cabinguy]

Yea, the margins went from out-of-this-world to terrible as the price of new laptops came down. We used paypal and a few other (way worse) credit card processors. We also accepted checks and money orders by mail.

Edit: Another interesting tidbit. We were such a large paypal customer at the time that we were invited into their IPO. Bear Stearns (I think) called us 5 times trying to get us to buy in...but it was right after the .com crash and we chickened out. We would have doubled our money that day ;(

[Cthulhu_]

It's a real shame tbf, the drop in laptop prices means a lot more stuff is just thrown out and turned to e-waste instead of repaired / refurbished and resold, with fixing electronics having reached such a low point that it's become a somewhat rebellious volunteer job now.

[wink]

I don't think it's a shame at all, I bought my first laptop in 2004 for iirc 2200 EUR, in my 2nd year of university. (OK, I wanted a nice laptop and not the cheapest piece of junk(.

It served me well for quite a few years, but I wasn't the starving student type, but actually working part-time as a programmer. I also wouldn't say this laptop was essential to finishing my studies, but (computer science) it was very, very handy.

[SamReidHughes]

Well, old laptops really suck, so it's not that bad.