Blogger.com: How a farm boy turned an almost sure-to-fail business into multiple millions

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Hey rebel solopreneurs 🦸‍♂️🦸‍♀️

That voice in your head saying "My idea is too simple - if it was valuable, someone smarter would have built it already"?

What if that self-doubt is the only thing standing between you and your breakthrough?

Meet Evan Williams - a Nebraska farm kid who almost abandoned his "too simple" blogging tool because surely someone smarter would have built it first.

That simple idea became Blogger and sold to Google for $30+ million.

But his journey to that exit started with him thinking his idea was embarrassingly basic...

🧘‍♂️ Just a farm kid

Picture this: while future tech founders were networking at Stanford parties, Evan Williams was doing farm chores in Nebraska.

Yeah, not exactly your typical Silicon Valley origin story.

He went to college but dropped out because deep down, he knew he wanted to build something.

Problem was, he had zero clue how to actually do it.

Sound familiar?

That feeling when you want to create something amazing but have no idea if you're "qualified enough"?

Here's what's crazy though - growing up in the middle of nowhere actually gave him something most tech founders never develop.

Pure grit.

When you don't have connections to lean on, you learn to figure things out yourself.

And that scrappy mindset?

It becomes your secret weapon.

This farm kid mentality was about to become his edge...

🧩 The outsider looking in

Fast forward to California, 1998.

Tech boom in full swing.

But here's the thing - he felt like a complete outsider.

Everyone else seemed to know the secret handshake.

They spoke "startup language" and had connections everywhere.

Meanwhile, Evan's thinking, "What am I even doing here?"

You know that feeling when you're in a room full of "experts" and you're convinced everyone can tell you don't belong?

"We were just from a different place and not hooked into that at all," he admits.

He took a job at O'Reilly to learn web development, then bounced around as a contractor.

But the whole time, that voice in his head kept whispering, "Who are you kidding?

You're just a farm kid."

Watching this massive tech boom happen around you while feeling like you're stuck on the sidelines?

That was Evan's daily reality.

But sometimes your biggest insecurity becomes your greatest advantage...

🎪 Wait, that actually works?

January 1999 hits.

Evan's tired of feeling like an outsider, so he decides to start something of his own.

Their big idea?

A web-based project management tool.

Think Basecamp before Basecamp existed.

Pretty ambitious for two people who barely knew what they were doing, right?

To stay organized internally, Evan whips up this super simple script.

You type a thought, hit enter, and boom - it shows up on their company website instantly.

Nothing fancy.

Just a quick way for the team to share random stuff with each other.

But then something wild happened...

Evan started using it and thought, "Holy crap, this is actually... fun?"

He could have an idea, type it in, and see it live on his website in seconds.

For the first time ever, publishing online felt effortless.

"It completely transformed my experience," he says.

This wasn't some breakthrough technology.

He just connected a few existing pieces in a way that solved his own daily frustration.

But would he be brave enough to bet on something so "simple"?

🕵️‍♀️ Building with duct tape and dreams

While venture-backed startups were raising millions, Evan and Meg were... well, broke.

They couldn't get funding because they didn't know the right people.

Didn't speak "investor."

Didn't have fancy resumes.

Every meeting they managed to get felt like they were speaking different languages.

VCs would nod politely and say they'd "be in touch."

Translation: thanks, but no thanks.

So what'd they do?

They got scrappy.

"HP basically funded Pyra for the first year, unbeknownst to them," Evan laughs.

By day: building websites for HP to pay the bills.

By night: working on their little blogging tool and dreaming about making it bigger.

No fancy office.

No expensive equipment.

Just two people who registered Blogger.com in March 1999 and started building with whatever they had.

They hired their first employee, Paul, in May with money from contracting work.

Three people total, bootstrapping their way forward while everyone else was burning through millions.

Pretty funny when you think about it, right?

While others were trying to impress investors, they were actually building something people wanted.

But their biggest challenge was still coming...

⛳️ Two paths, one choice

Here's where things get messy.

Evan's staring at two products: Pyra (complex, "serious" business tool) and Blogger (dead simple, but people are actually using it).

And he's paralyzed.

"My total weakness was not focusing on things," he admits.

The guy had started 30 projects in the past year and finished exactly zero.

The fear was real.

What if he abandoned the "professional" product for this simple blogging thing and failed again?

What would people think?

Meanwhile, Meg's on vacation when Evan and Paul spend a week building and launching Blogger in August 1999.

They figured it'd take a couple days max.

Wrong.

A full week of coding, testing, and debugging later, they had something working.

She comes back and she's furious.

"We launched a whole product, and she's the cofounder of the company," Evan says.

But here's the crazy part - users started flocking to it.

Tech geeks began pointing to Blogger everywhere.

The market was basically screaming, "This is what we want!"

But Evan's brain kept saying, "But it's too simple.

It can't be real."

The moment of truth was approaching...

🌈 The terrifying pivot

By late 1999, Evan had to make the scariest decision of his life.

Forget the complex collaboration tool.

Forget the "impressive" business application.

Bet everything on this simple blogging platform.

Talk about imposter syndrome kicking in.

"Who am I to say this little tool is the future?"

But then he had this realization: "This is going to impact the Web because it is a native form for this medium."

While everyone else was building complicated solutions, Evan saw something profound in simplicity.

Blogger wasn't technically impressive, but it solved a basic human need - the desire to express yourself online.

They raised $500,000 from O'Reilly right before the dot-com crash.

"A half a million dollars was a ton of money for us," he says.

Plot twist: the crash that killed funded startups barely touched them.

Why?

They were already used to operating lean.

When you're not burning through investor cash, market crashes become way less scary.

But their real test was just beginning...

🎁 From rock bottom to $30 million

Then everything fell apart.

Dot-com crash hit hard.

Money ran out.

Employees got laid off.

His co-founder left.

His girlfriend broke up with him the same night.

"It was just the craziest bad time," Evan remembers.

For months, it was just him.

Alone.

Teaching himself Linux and Java to keep the servers running.

Former employees sued him.

Friends bad-mouthed him around town.

Can you imagine?

Everyone thinking you're a failure while you're working 18-hour days just to keep your dream alive?

Most people would've quit.

But Evan did something genius - he asked Blogger users to help fund better servers.

"Hey, we know Blogger is slow.

We need hardware.

We don't have money.

Help us out?"

They raised $17,000 from people who believed in what he was building.

Slowly, he built Blogger Pro and started charging $12/year to remove ads.

People actually paid.

By 2003, when Google came calling with their $30+ million offer, Blogger had become the dominant blogging platform.

The farm kid with no connections had built something Google couldn't ignore.

🥂 Your turn to light it up!

Evan's biggest "weakness" - having an idea so simple he thought it was worthless - became his greatest strength.

That simplicity let him solve what complicated solutions couldn't: making publishing effortless for everyone.

Your timing is perfect - just like Evan discovered that simple ideas executed well beat complex solutions every time, you're about to realize your "too simple" idea might be exactly what the world needs.

I'm pretty sure you're gonna catch everyone off guard.

Let the good times roll for you! 🍨

Yours making your crazy dreams real with almost zero risk vijay peduru 🦸‍♂️