“You wouldn’t buy a bag of chips or a toothbrush made by Tide, would you?” Matt Mickiewicz said after I inquired why all of his companies have separate brand identities and are separate entities unlike Google or Apple. He further explained that each company was a strategic move in another direction with new investors.
Matt, co-founder of the online marketplace, participated in a fireside chat at Flippa’s first Masterclass on November 22nd in San Francisco. Located in the tech industry’s epicenter in the SOMA district, Flippa’s Masterclass was an all-day event filled to the brim with entrepreneurs looking to learn more about flipping domains, web-based businesses and networking. What I believed would have been a routine workshop turned out to be a multi-faceted instructional event where Flippa’s staff delivered presentations and explored topics with the audience that were beneficial beyond their own platform.
Presentations included SEO tactics, strategies for buying and selling domains and websites on their platform, and the due diligence process of transactions. One of the best cautionary notes from their due diligence presentation was to never trust a screenshot for proof of information. Within seconds, the speaker demonstrated how easy it was to edit and create a PayPal balance showing $1,000,000 without leaving Chrome. By far one of the most useful pieces of information I learned was the success of sellers on their platform that launched their auction with a low starting price to invoke a crowd-like bidding mentality. This coupled with ending the auction at peak times in the middle of the week from 3-6pm usually yield the best outcome.
Tickets for the Masterclass ranged from $99-$499 depending on when attendees purchased them. After the event, Flippa presented each attendee with over $300 in discounts and credits to several websites including Matt’s own 99designs and Flippa, almost paying for the ticket itself.
The fireside chat with Matt seemed to be the liveliest portion of the event where he spoke about his beginnings as an entrepreneur. Referencing how he’s able to manage and delegate so much across his several companies, Matt proclaimed if you spend 60 hours a week personally maintaining your own business, you might want to work for someone else’s.
When an audience member asked Matt for any ideas regarding future companies, he replied with the advice of following his model of capitalizing on current broken platforms by perfecting marketplaces that will crowd-source talent to solve a problem. On a final note, he counseled future entrepreneurs that the lifestyle is not for the faint of heart, but whatever career path you choose there is always one thing a person can count on, “we can either pay income tax or capital gains.”