It was an experiment that turned into a business

After letting Teen Genesis fizzle out while we were in college, Chris and I reconvened to talk through some of the new possibilities that were emerging on the web. It wasn’t the best time personally (Nicole and I had just become first time parents), but it seemed like it was a good opportunity. After chatting about the idea with my uncle Jeff, he had said he would invest in it. With that boost of extra confidence, Chris and I decided to make a go of it.

Judge-O-Rama was a user-generated way for people to judge other people’s conflicts and vote for their contests in head-to-head style matchups. Even though the idea may seem silly, we were able to amass quite a loyal initial group of users. It was fun!

I learned a lot about business and partner formation in this exercise, even though it only ended up being just the three of us until our later acquisition. That acquisition didn’t come through Judge-O-Rama, though. After only a few months, we had come up with our next idea, blippr. And so, while we could have kept Judge-O-Rama going, we found some better and more exciting traction with our next idea.

As such, Judge-O-Rama turned out to be the only real “blip” in my startup experience, serving primarily as a spark to something much bigger.