Web Design Wealth Transformation

James Altucher shares how he built and sold a successful web design company during the early internet days of the mid-1990s.

"I was working at HBO making their website when other companies didn't even know what the internet was. This was in 1995. Companies like American Express would call Arthur Andersen, their accounting firm, and say 'Can you make us a website?' Arthur Andersen would say 'Sure, we're gonna charge you a million dollars.' Arthur Andersen would then call another software consulting company who would charge them a million. The software company would call me because nobody knew how to make websites in 1994 or 1995.

They'd pay me and my brother-in-law $250,000 to make American Express.com. My salary at HBO at the time was $40,000 a year. We made HBO.com, then websites for Warner Brothers, Sony, Disney, BMG, all the record labels - every gangster rap record label: Bad Boy, Loud Records, Jive, Death Row, Interscope. We did the movies for The Matrix and many others.

I sold the company to a company that was rolling up web agencies. Some company that made vacuum cleaners decided to get into the internet business in 1998 and acquired us. Their stock went from 3 to 48, and I cashed out at the peak with about $15 million cash. I was smart - I knew the web design development business was going away because they were teaching how to make websites in junior high school classes. I sold the business and cashed out as fast as I could."