Companies

I love starting companies. I love coming up with an idea. I love formulating a business model. And, I love turning that model into a profit generating company. In my maturing process I invested a lot into a formal education but a great deal of the knowledge I have gained in my life has been through starting and running my own companies.

IT Root Solutions
Trash And Trinkets
Shockwire
Online Gambling Authority

IT Root Solutions

IT Root Solutions is a company started by Nick Kafenzakis, Cyril Tiwari and myself that does contract software and web development work. I really enjoy working on really big, really complex projects with the possibility for explosive growth but this is not one of them. This company has a very simple and straight forward business model.

Trash And Trinkets

The third start-up I've co-founded, Trash And Trinkets designs and develops expert systems for promotional product companies. Work on this project also included the development of a website Content Management System.

Lessons Learned

Logo

Web Site

Shockwire

Shockwire developed a stereo FM transmitter that could be connected to a computer so that users could play MP3s on every stereo in their house from their computers. We sold a good number of units but shifted our focus from the company when US Robotics released a similar product.

Business Plan
Lessons Learned

Logo

AudioCaster 2000

Web Site

Website Feature: Move mouse over arrows

Online Gambling Authority

The purpose of the Online Gambling Authority was to take some of the risk out of gambling online. There are thousands of online gambling sites, many of which are illegitimate. Modeled on organizations such as Consumer Reports, we developed autonomous software that investigated gambling sites to verify their claims were legitimate and post the findings on a website.

We had an article written about us Sat, Jan 26, 2002 in the National Post and at its peak, the web site received 8,000 visitors a day. We sold the software developed once we discovered industry factors that we did not originally anticipate. The Online Gambling Authority's software is very similar to COAST Software's software.

Instead of just shutting down the Online Gambling Authority web site, we could have turned it into an advertising site which would have generated $800 US per day. We decided against this strategy because the original intention of the site was to discourage gambling by showing how many disreputable gambling sites there were. Promoting a gambling site would have been an even greater failure. Instead, we had the domain redirect to the Internet Gaming Commission.

Business Plan
Lessons Learned
National Post - Sat, Jan 26, 2002 - Tom Blackwell

Seal

Web Site

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© Copyright 2006, Robin William Chahal