I started my first “real” company in October 2002 when I was 25 years old. From the idea at the beginning of October, I spent nights and weekends programming an e-commerce website complete with products, cart, checkout, payment processing, and drop-ship notifications to a supplier. If you recall, Amazon was just a blip on the radar, and there were no integrated e-commerce platforms.
Not quite a month later, the website processed its first order. I remember jumping up from watching TV as the printer spit out a backup order receipt in the other room. A humidifier had been sold! That was a sleepless, amazing time. About eight months later, I left my full-time job and joined my business partner in the new venture.
Eight years later, we were working with the some of the largest HVAC distributors in the world, fulfilling out of seven distribution centers, including our own warehouses and a distribution company, and we had a network of 30,000 contractors. We had systems that our billion-dollar suppliers didn’t have. I, with my amazing team of developers, architected and built the entire system from the ground up and was having a blast doing it.
The business was going well, but psychologically, it was time for a change. I sold my interest and spent some time in “retirement,” re-calculating what would come next. I looked back on what would have made my early days as an entrepreneur easier and what I wanted to do going forward. I wanted to continue to create for myself and others.
Thinker was born out of my experience. Integrated strategy, technology & marketing services that can work seamlessly with one another, helping to start, run, and grow small and midmarket businesses. Today, with some people I’ve worked with for over a decade, we connect aspiring entrepreneurs, small businesses and midmarketing executives with education, opportunity and implementation services across a variety of disciplines.
Thinker is a strategic advisor. Thinker is a marketing company, a technology company, a connector to public and private resources to accelerate businesses or get them unstuck. Thinker is built out of the types of disciplines that helped me and my team successfully start, scale and exit several businesses. Thinker is what I wished would have existed when I started my e-commerce company years before – a thriving ecosystem of innovators to learn from. I would have made fewer errors, grown faster, been happier, sexier, dressed better, weighed less … you get the point.
If you’re starting, stuck, moving fast or sense it’s time for serious change, we can help you in ways few other organizations can.
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Jason