This as-told-to communicative is based connected an question and reply pinch Sabba Keynejad, co-founder pinch Tim Mamedov of AI-powered video editing level Veed. The portion has been edited for magnitude and clarity.
In 2013, my flatmate astatine the time, Virgil, and I were obsessed pinch Breaking Bad. About mid-October, the play finale was coming, and we'd yet activity retired what happened to Jesse Pinkman and Walter White. We loved it. It was our favourite point to watch and do arsenic a level erstwhile I was astatine university.
I was sitting successful my chamber 1 Friday evening, and we were some astatine creation school, and Virgil had a state disguise for spray painting, and he comes into my room and he goes, "BREAKING BAD!" And I went, "Oh my god, we tin waste it!" He's like, "What?" and I was like, "We tin waste it! We tin waste it arsenic Halloween costumes!" And that's really it started. It was that simple.
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"This was not my first acquisition arsenic an entrepreneur."
This was not my first acquisition arsenic an entrepreneur. I antecedently had different business erstwhile I was 17, trading American-style reddish cups successful the UK, which amazingly was a very underlooked business, it turns out. After that, I went connected to brew pong kits. But trading the Halloween costumes was conscionable much of a spot of fun; it was for illustration a small broadside project.
Later that evening, astir 11 p.m., my flatmate and I group up a page connected eBay to waste this Halloween costume. We originated the materials: bluish gloves, DuPont chemical-grade suits and state masks. We didn't bid thing but made judge everything was disposable for next-day delivery. We put the Halloween costume listing up connected eBay pinch a five-day lead clip to springiness america capable clip to bid everything we needed. If we made a sale, we could package it up and nonstop it off.
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"We're like, 'Hang connected a minute, we're onto something.'"
We Photoshopped everything together, and by the morning, we had our first 2 sales, truthful we were like, "Cool." We sold it, and it was awesome. That day, we sewage different 4 orders, and we're like, "Hang connected a minute, we're onto something."
Funnily enough, we really sewage competition, and the measurement that we dealt pinch the title was by messaging them Breaking Bad quotes. They were joining on pinch the fun; it was each rather lighthearted. But pinch the competition, we besides thought, How tin we add much value here? So we made this clone meth, which was fundamentally conscionable sweetener and bluish nutrient coloring, and would trim it up and put it into a bag.
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We besides considered expanding to different platforms for illustration Etsy, but Etsy didn't want america to waste connected location because it wasn't decently customized, truthful it was conscionable a batch of trying to activity retired really to do each of this quickly.
The different situation was that we had hundreds of orders. So, our level became a banal room, and we sewage our flatmates to thief us. It was a batch of fun.
One week later, we'd turned complete $14,000 and made $3,500 each.
"I usage those skills to pass the business that I'm moving today."
It reached the constituent wherever the UK ran retired of chemical-grade hazmat suits, and that was really we had to extremity it. Because these DuPont suits are for due laboratory testing, there's only truthful overmuch request for them, and we evidently drove the demand up for illustration crazy.
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My flatmate Virgil is now a very successful commercialized movie head based retired of Madrid. I tally a exertion startup called Veed, which is an AI-powered video editing platform. The institution is backed by Sequoia Capital, which invested $35 cardinal past year. The company's astatine astir 200 group strong. We person astir 10 cardinal monthly users, and those users create astir 3 cardinal videos each azygous month.
It's rather cool that I learned astir entrepreneurship astatine creation schoolhouse and utilized those skills to pass the business I'm moving today.