About Brian Armstrong
Welcome! I put this blog together to journal my experiences in business and life. You might find it useful if you’re a tech entrepreneur, have thought about starting a business, are interested in living abroad, or just want to keep up with what I’m doing.
What stuff have you done?
- 2002-2004 – did some internships at IBM and several startups
- 2004 – co-founded UniversityTutor.com (at the time, a local tutoring company in Houston, TX)
- 2005 – graduated from Rice University in Houston, TX (economics and computer science undergrad, computer science grad school)
- 2005 – started a consulting job at Deloitte & Touche, quit 3 months later to work for myself full time, scared my parents to death
- 2006 – started a variety of other businesses which utterly failed
- 2007 – started this blog
- 2007 – published a book on how to start a business called Breaking Free (the eBook is free)
- 2008 – got interested in real estate investing and bought some rental property in Houston
- 2008 – changed the UniversityTutor.com business model and expanded all over the U.S. world (article series here)
- 2009 – moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina to try living there for a year
- 2009 – started BuyersVote.com – a collaborative website for online product reviews (article series here)
- 2009 – started FeedmailPro.com – a blog newsletter tool that kicks Aweber’s butt (now shutdown, article series here)
- 2010 – was contracted to build Seoaholic.com (now rebranded and improved as InboxSeo.com) – a web app to help you track your search engine rankings and build more incoming links
- 2010 – moved to San Francisco, CA to join CarWoo.com, a Y-Combinator startup that helps people buy cars online.
- 2011 – launched thebookr.com as a contract job for Joyce Hu.
- 2011 – joined Airbnb as Technical Project Manager
What websites/companies have you worked on?
Here are a bunch of sites I’ve worked on (all created with Ruby on Rails).
Airbnb.com
A marketplace for unique spaces – book accommodations around the world by the night.
CarWoo.com
Better car buying online – get dealers to haggle over you!
UniversityTutor.com
Find and contact the perfect tutor for free!
TheBookr.com
Direct booking for the fashion industry.
MyBestPic.org
Find your best photo (this was an experiment I did in inherent virality to learn more about Facebook integration).
BuyersVote.com
Online product reviews you can trust.
FeedmailPro.com (now shutdown)
RSS-to-Email made easy.
Seoaholic.com (now rebranded as InboxSeo.com)
SEO keyword rankings delivered right to your inbox.
What are some of the best posts on Breaking Free?
I have a list of the most popular posts in the sidebar at the top right of this page, but if you want to check out some of the older posts that I think are good here are a few:
- How To Create A Business Website In 4 Hours
- 46 Ways To Start A Business With Little Or No Money
- Interview With A Self-Made Millionaire – Steve Davis
- Interview With A Self-Made Millionaire – Howard Rambin
- Interview With A Self-Made Millionaire – Kevin Morgan
- How To Understand And Create Financial Statements For Your Business
- How To Go From Business Idea To Launch In One Month
- How To Choose A Killer Domain Name For Your Business Website
- 10 Ways To Come Up With A Million Dollar Business Idea
Where are you now?
How can I get future updates from this blog?
Please stay in touch by subscribing to my free:
RSS News Feed or Email Newsletter
(You can unsubscribe at any time and of course I’ll never send you spam, I hate it as much as you do!)
By creating this website hopefully I’ll meet some other cool entrepreneurs and inspire some people along the way.
Keep breaking free!
Brian Armstrong
