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

Hey rebel solopreneurs

Ever feel like you're stuck in that endless loop of building digital products but can't seem to get traction?

You're working your tail off, creating courses, templates, and workshops, but something's missing.

The worst part? While others seem to be crushing it with their digital products, you're wondering if you'll ever break through.

Well, buckle up!

I've got a story that'll show you how one guy turned a simple side project into a $30M exit - even after his entire team quit, his co-founder left, and everyone thought he was crazy.

This is Evan Williams' story, and it's packed with golden nuggets for creators like you.

Ready to discover how a farm boy from Nebraska built one of the internet's most influential platforms? Let's roll!

1: 🌾 The beginning: when a farm boy dreamed bigger than the cornfields

Picture this: Nebraska, early 1990s.

While other kids were planning their college majors, young Evan Williams was helping his dad on their farm in Clarks, Nebraska, itching to create his own business.

He wasn't interested in following the usual path - get good grades, finish college, land a safe job.

Nope, this farm kid was scheming up ways to build something of his own.

Here's the thing that set Evan apart - he looked at college, looked at farm life, and thought, "Nah, there's got to be more out there."

While everyone around him was playing it safe, he made a decision that probably made his guidance counselor's head spin: he dropped out of college.

(Sound familiar? Just like when you decided to skip the "safe" route of selling your time and instead chose to build digital products. Sometimes the scariest decisions lead to the best outcomes!)

Think about that for a minute.

Leaving the security of farm life, saying no to college, moving to expensive California with no safety net - and all because he couldn't shake this crazy idea that he could do more.

2: 🎯 First steps: stumbling into the tech world

Landing in California, Evan didn't exactly hit the ground running.

His first real tech job? Working at O'Reilly (yep, the folks who make those programming books with animals on the cover).

It was 1998, right in the middle of the tech boom, and Evan was soaking up everything he could about web development.

But here's what's cool - even though he'd sworn never to work for anyone else, he was smart enough to know he wasn't ready to start his own thing yet.

So he worked as a contractor for companies like Intel and HP, building his skills and his bank account.

After about a year and a half of contract work, Evan felt that burning urge to build something getting stronger.

The tech boom was in full swing, and he thought, "It's now or never!"

3: 🚀 The first try: when the side project steals the show

In January 1999, Evan started Pyra Labs.

The goal? Build a fancy project management tool.

He had this friend, Meg Hourihan, who got super excited about the idea and joined as co-founder.

She'd been a management consultant and brought some serious business smarts to the table.

Here's where it gets interesting.

They didn't have investor connections or fancy offices.

Instead, they kept their day jobs at HP, secretly using that money to fund their startup.

(Hey, HP technically funded Pyra's first year without knowing it! 😄)

They hired their first employee, Paul Bausch, in May 1999.

And this is where the magic started happening - but not in the way they expected.

See, Evan and Paul were tech enthusiasts who ran their own websites.

Back then (1999), updating a website was a pain - you had to manually edit files and upload them every single time you wanted to post something new.

So they each created their own quick solutions - little programs that made it easier to post their thoughts online.

But the real magic happened with their internal tool called "Stuff."

It started as just a place where the team could share articles, competitor updates, and random useful information with each other.

Think of it like a private bulletin board.

Then Paul had this brilliant idea.

He tweaked "Stuff" so that whenever they marked certain posts as "public," those posts would automatically show up on their company's public website.

No copying and pasting.

No manual uploading.

Just click a button and boom - your thoughts are live on the internet.

Evan saw this and had a lightbulb moment: "If this makes our lives so much easier, wouldn't other people want something like this too?"

As he put it, "the idea that I could have a thought and type it in a form and it being visible on my website in a matter of seconds completely transformed my experience."

4: 🎡 The pivot nobody wanted: when simple beats complicated

In March 1999, Evan registered Blogger.com.

He could picture exactly how useful this tool could be - but there was a problem.

Actually, several problems:

• They were only three people

• They were already building a big collaboration tool

• They had no extra money

• Evan had a history of starting projects (30 of them!) and finishing none

His team thought their main product, Pyra, was the real deal.

Blogger? Too simple. Too trivial. Why waste time on it?

(Remind you of something? Like when you worry your digital product idea is "too basic" compared to the fancy courses and complex tools others are selling?)

But the idea wouldn't leave Evan alone.

So in August 1999, while co-founder Meg was on vacation (oops!), Evan and Paul built and launched Blogger in just one week.

When Meg returned, she was... let's say less than thrilled.

But Evan smooth-talked his way out of trouble, claiming it was just a tiny side project that would help market their real product.

5: 💫 The unexpected hit: when the world discovers blogging

At first, Blogger was pretty techy.

You needed to know what FTP was and have your own website.

It wasn't meant for everyone - just web geeks like them.

But then something funny happened.

The tech community started buzzing.

Peter Merholz, a well-known tech figure who actually coined the term "blog," pointed people to Blogger.

Suddenly, all these internet thinkers and creators were using it.

This created an unexpected problem - their simple side project was stealing the spotlight from their "real" product!

The team was torn.

On one side, they had Blogger, which people were actually using and buzzing about.

On the other, they had their complex collaboration tool that they'd spent months building.

By early 2000, they decided to try raising money.

Thanks to Evan's previous work at O'Reilly (remember his first tech job?), they managed to get them interested.

The funding round came together: $500,000 from O'Reilly, Advance.net, Meg's parents, and even John Borthwick from AOL.

"A half a million dollars was a ton of money for us at that time," Evan recalls.

But here's the twist - they still weren't sure if they could make money from Blogger.

This was during the dot-com boom when companies were chasing "eyeballs" and raising huge amounts of money.

But Evan wanted something different: "We wanted to create cool stuff, and we wanted to have a sustainable business," he explained.

The funding gave them room to breathe, but the big question remained: focus on the popular-but-free Blogger, or stick with their original business plan?

6: 💥 The crisis: when everything falls apart

Then 2001 hit, and oh boy, did it hit hard:

• The dot-com bubble burst

• Money ran out

• Everyone got laid off

• The co-founder left

• His girlfriend dumped him

• Former employees sued him

• Friends turned against him

Evan went from running a growing startup to sitting alone in an empty office.

Former friends were spreading rumors that he'd kicked everyone out to take over the company.

The tech press was having a field day - The Industry Standard magazine mockingly called him "The Idealist" for not selling when he had the chance.

But here's where Evan showed what he was made of.

Instead of giving up, he:

• Moved the servers to his house

• Taught himself Linux to keep things running

• Started a "Server Fund Drive" (basically asking users for donations)

• Found a free desk at another company's office

• Kept building new features

In January 2001, Evan tried something that would make most business experts scratch their heads - he just... told the truth.

He posted a message on Blogger's website that went something like:

"Hey, we know Blogger is really slow. It's because we need more hardware. We don't have the money to buy it. So if you give us money, we'll buy more servers and make Blogger faster."

No fancy marketing.

No complicated pitch.

Just honest words from a guy trying to keep his service alive.

And you know what? It worked like magic.

They set up a PayPal account and suggested $10 or $20 donations.

The response blew their minds:

• Thousands of users chipped in small amounts

• About 100 people donated larger sums

• Several folks gave $100 each

• CMP (publishers of Web Techniques magazine) went all in and bought them an entire server worth $4,000

When all was said and done, they'd raised $17,000 - more than four times what they needed for servers!

Why did it work so well? Evan thinks it was because they'd built genuine goodwill with their users by being "very personable and just honest."

They told users straight up: "We can't buy hardware, but we have plans and we're not going to go away. We just need to get past this hump."

(Sounds familiar? Sometimes being straight-up honest with your audience works better than any polished marketing campaign!)

7: 🌅 The comeback: when simple ideas start making money

By late 2001, Evan was working solo, debugging server issues from his mom's house on Christmas Day (talk about pure stubbornness!).

But he had this crazy simple idea - what if people paid $12 a year to remove ads from their blogs?

Everyone said it wouldn't work.

Nobody pays for stuff on the web, right? Wrong! People actually paid!

(Just like when people tell you nobody will pay for your templates or guides. Ha! If you solve a real problem, people will happily pay.)

He hired a programmer named Jason Shellen, and together they launched Blogger Pro.

They even scored a licensing deal in Brazil.

Money started trickling in, and suddenly, the company everyone thought was dead was showing signs of life.

As Evan put it, "I don't know how close I came to quitting. I was always hallucinogenically optimistic. That's the only reason I kept going. Not because I thought I could take this suckiness for a long time, but that it's going to be a better tomorrow."

8: 🎯 The google deal: when patience pays off big time

By 2003, blogging was everywhere.

Evan had refused to give up what he believed in about democratizing publishing, even when others pushed him to focus on corporate customers.

Then Google called.

At first, Evan thought they just wanted to talk about partnership ideas.

But five minutes into the meeting, Google dropped the bomb: "Why don't you just come here and do all that stuff?"

Even then, Evan didn't jump at the offer.

He actually had a $1 million investment offer on the table.

Plus, he'd always been a bit of a rebel - he says he never liked following rules, even making up alternative solutions to math problems in school.

But after four months of thinking it through, he decided Google was the right move.

As Evan wisely noted, "If you have some plan and it doesn't go that way, roll with it. There's no way to know if it's good or bad until later, if ever."

The result? A $30 million acquisition that proved everyone wrong.

🎉 The happy ending

That simple tool that everyone thought was "too trivial" to matter? It became one of the most influential platforms on the internet, hosting hundreds of millions of blogs.

Google's massive resources helped Blogger grow beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

And Evan? Well, he didn't stop there.

He went on to co-found a little company you might have heard of - Twitter! Talk about a farm boy making it big!

The best part? Those former employees who were upset? Time healed those wounds, and they eventually made peace.

Sometimes the hardest chapters lead to the best endings.

🌟 Your turn!

Look at that digital product idea you've been sitting on.

Maybe it seems too simple.

Maybe people have told you it'll never work.

Maybe you're worried it's not "sophisticated" enough.

Your "too simple" idea might be exactly what people need.

Looking back at Blogger's success, Evan reflected, "I think I was also surprised by the success of something so simple. That's a mantra for many people in the technology world—simplicity."

He added, "One of the things that kills great things so often is compromise—letting people talk you out of what your gut is telling you. If you feel really strongly, there might be something to that, and if you see something that other people don't see, it could be because it's that powerful and different. If everyone agrees, it's probably because you're not doing anything original."

Your digital product could be the next big thing.

You've got the tools, you've got the ingenuity, and now you've got proof that sometimes, simple wins.

Keep zoooming! 🚀🍹

Yours "anti-stress-enjoy-life-and-biz" vijay peduru