A young entrepreneur from Idaho launched hew startup on the money earned from his bitcoin investment.
A young entrepreneur from Idaho, Erik Finman, gained over $100,000 after his $1,000 investment in bitcoin was made in 2012. The obtained sum enabled him to launch his own education startup Botangle.com that provides tutoring services on video chat. That’s quite good for an entrepreneur who’s just 15 years old.
As Mashable reports, Erik Finman got $1,000 as a present from his grandmother and then decided to invest the money in bitcoin. One year later, he sold his bitcoin for $100,000.
Finman sold his $100,000 when the price per bitcoin totaled $1,200.
Then Finman spent his earnings on the creation of the online tutoring service Botangle.com. According to its official site, the startup “allows students and tutors access to a diverse array of resources that just do not exist in a normal classroom setting”.
Launched in May, Botangle allows its users to study and learn any subject through a video chat. All the lessons are one-on-one, so users can plan their schedule themselves.
Finman’s staff consists of over 20 workers, including designers, programmers and animators. Employees receive their salary in bitcoin.
However, Finman noted that it was quite difficult to find employees. “Whenever I interview a potential candidate for a job, I always ask if being part of a team with a 15-year-old bothers them,” he said. “Sometimes that’s the end of the conversation right there, and other times people lie — and that shows later on. It’s pretty easy to tell when it happens, but the team I have now are super supportive, and they don’t treat me any differently than anyone else.”
As young entrepreneur told Mashable, he loves “sharing the wealth of bitcoin”. He said: “I have no doubt it will be huger [sic] than anyone can imagine right now. Bitcoin is like the Internet in the ’90s.”
Last month, at the question-and-answer session on subreddit, Finman told how he first knew about the digital currency. He wrote: “I owe a lot to my older brother. He told me about bitcoins and help[ed] me get set up with 0.2 bitcoins that he gave me. And my grandmother just out of the blue gave me a $1,000 check for Easter.”
“Some people can’t comprehend how a 15-year-old could do something like this,” Finman said. “What a lot of people don’t understand, young or old, is that you can create anything you want with no barrier to entry on the Internet.”
Although its almost impossible to repeat Finman’s success, entrepreneurs can learn a lot from those who entered the bitcoin industry through more conventional ways.
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