Charlie Crystle audio story - investing time in someone else's dream

This story is from Charlie Crystle, who founded Chilisoft, a web infrastructure provider which in 1999 was sold to Cobalt Networks for $70 million. He and two partners later started Mission Research, which offers low-cost business software to support nonprofits.

His new venture is Jawaya.com, a social search site. You can sign up for the private beta of Jawaya here.

Charlie discusses working crazy hours for someone else, and how that experience prompted him to first go into business for himself.

Charlie Crystle - investing in someone else's dream (1:56)

Transcript:

It started out as Intuitive Computer Solutions. I started it right after I left the music industry. I was so frustrated with my record company and decided I wasn't going to record for them any more. And I got hired by a little computer company, a little computer store, and ended up not getting paid by them, and learning a lot about building computers, sort of on the fly. I was trained, half-trained, in a day or so. And then I had to deal with... The guy left! He left the store, for months.

I was trying to serve customers, didn't know what I was doing. So I studied. All the time. Like all night. Bought "Upgrading and Repairing PCs," a bunch of other books. Really learned how computers work from the ground up. And, you know, I made this mistake of putting a huge investment into someone else's dream. You learn a lot through that, in some ways, but within a couple of months I said, this blows, and I'm not getting paid. So I'm going to start my own thing.