Best of the ISP-Lists

Who We Are

Business owners on the ISP-Investor list share tales of how they got into the Internet Service Provider business. Who are you? Who are you? Fellow ISP operators would really like to know.

[July 12, 2001]

On the ISP-Investor list in June, JN inquired,

"Out of curiosity, how many of you are business professionals with previous success in a market besides the ISP business? Are most of you geeks with a business, or business people in a geek business?"

A number of respondents represented the 'businessmen in a geek business' mold:

[SM offered] "The ISP and CLEC are my seventh and eighth businesses. I am basically an entrepreneur in a technology field. Previous businesses included plastics manufacturing, furniture making, real estate brokerage, and wholesale auto parts. I've got a BA in Economics and an MBA in Finance."

[LD noted] "I enjoyed a twenty-year career in manufacturing, and built a global company with one global brand and several domestic category leading brands. I was a frequent author, educator, and trade show speaker in that industry. I started a small town ISP and hosting company a couple of years ago. Since I was not a techie, and since I changed career fields, I made several mistakes along the way too. I've got an Associate's degree in Marketing and Sales."

Others seemed to straddle the fence between the two extremes:

[KC explained] "I previously have owned or been an integral part of two other startup businesses, both of which were acquired by larger entities at nice profits. I was raised in the store of a small family business, which may have been the best training ground of all. I've got a BS in Physical Science, and a PhD in hitting the road and making it happen. I would consider myself a hybrid techo-business man with geeky tendencies who knows a little about a lot of things in business and technology."

[JL added] "I have had way too many careers. From retail to railroads to truck lines to home sales to builder to running my own businesses for twenty-plus years. Most recently, I spent sixteen years building up a very nice business putting together what was arguably the best computer telephony boxes in the world. Meantime, I had purchased a small ISP in a rural town, and it grew over the years without much attention on my part. I am a long-time technologist, ham radio operator, sometime inventor, salesman, writer, and I sweep the floors as required."

Still others saw themselves as sitting firmly on the 'geek' side of things:

[JH recalled] "I dropped out of high school in eleventh grade and joined the military. I have been in computers since they were servos and motors, then the first 4-bit and the whopping 8-bit processors of the 70s. Began building, servicing, and programming PCs in '84, and I've been there ever since. The ISP venture came about as an enhancement to the PC business: I never intended for it to be as big, but eventually it became so. We're all tech-heads here: not a business person in the crowd, and as a result, we have made plenty of mistakes. Still, I doubt a business-minded individual would have been comfortable with our venture: no capital, no backing, everything built out of pocket and by our own prayers and sweat-and now it's very profitable."

[JR added] "I've been in computers for thirty years, starting with punch cards. I worked on flight simulator visual systems for about eleven years. I opened a computer store back in my old home town back in 1988, then decided we needed to diversify and got into the Internet in 1997. But this is a husband and wife business: she's the one with the finance degree."

— End