I am a 25 year old technology enthusiast/entrepreneur. Currently I run a mobile app shop called TapFury. I’ve been doing this web stuff since I was 16 years old and have had a great time. Some of my more popular websites are: prankdial.com, imgplace.com, and coverphotoz.com. I am always working on new ideas and ventures. This blog is a resting place for my everyday thoughts (ones that are too big for twitter). So enjoy. If you like what you read, comment! I love getting feedback from readers. Also don’t hesitate to contact me.

The Story:

I’ve been interested in the internet for quite some time. Ever since the AOL days, I’ve been exploring websites and fiddling around, uncovering what the Internet could offer me. Around 2001, I had become motivated by the Google story – two young entrepreneurs challenging the giants and succeeding. So I started to look at how I could make an impact on the web. My first venture was “Teen Hangout”, a website for social gathering where teenagers could share news, gossip, and more. The site was mostly just a communication medium for me and some friends but it gave me my first valuable lessons in internet marketing. To my astonishment, Teen Hangout actually made a couple of dollars. My early success inspired me to do more. I came in contact with Peter, the then owner of AIMFilez.com at the time and agreed to provide him with web designs in exchange for web hosting. During this time I saw a real potential in the “instant messaging” market and using my birthday money, purchased my own web hosting and developed AIMDude.com – a resource for everything instant-messaging related. The site was wildly successful receiving thousands of unique a day. At the time, Googles new contextual advertising service, Google AdSense had just premiered allowing me to instantly monetize on AIMDude.com’s traffic. Within two months of the site’s opening, I received my first check from Google. I was ecstatic – here I was sitting behind my computer making real money. Around this time, I met Kyle, who owned AIMForums.com – a bulletin board about.. you guessed it, AOL Instant Messenger. His site had recently been acquired for a few thousand dollars. I was amazed that anyone, especially so young (Kyle was 17 at the time, same as me) could make so much money from the Internet. I too started looking for buyers and sold AIMDude.com in the summer of 2004 for a little bit more than AIMForums.com. Kyle and I decided to do a joint venture, a website targeted towards the highly coveted tween demographic dubbed DollSpot.com. DollSpot.com was a collection of girl-oriented AIM icons. Using various link-trading and SEO techniques, DollSpot became a huge success. Kyle and I decided to create a development company which we could list our websites under – WizTeen. Our next website, IconFun.com allowed users to customize their icons using a dynamic web program. IconFun also became a huge success. We were able to generate instant popularity with sites because we had an established network to cross-link from. Throughout 2004 and 2005, we developed numerous websites working with developers from around the world. As I started college, WizTeen went on the back burner. When I finally got out, I had a degree but no idea what I was going to do next. I was unsure if I wanted to work for a company. The only offers I received were in Boston but I knew I had to be in New York. So one week during the Summer of 2010, I sat down and redid a site that I abandoned some years earlier – PrankDial. PrankDial like my past sites became an instant hit. With PrankDial as a base, I was able to monopolize on the growth of mobile platforms, and started a mobile app  shop called TapFury. Right now, I’m just working on building great ideas for iPhone and Android with my awesome team in NYC.