00:00 I dropped everything I had.
00:02 I had already ran a couple of businesses
00:04 as a teenager in Germany.
00:07 I was just about to graduate two months out of college
00:12 and I essentially dropped out of college,
00:15 packed my bags, moved to the United States in '96,
00:19 and by '98, went up selling the business
00:23 and I made my very first million and significantly more.
00:27 (upbeat music)
00:29 I was doing whatever I had to take
00:37 to survive on three bucks a day,
00:39 but I never felt pity for myself.
00:41 I was living in the country and even in the city
00:44 that I love.
00:45 I didn't speak one word of English.
00:47 So essentially I learned on the job.
00:49 (upbeat music)
00:55 I bought a modest house where I put a down payment
00:59 of less than $100,000.
01:00 I bought myself the very first car in LA for $40,000
01:05 and the rest I invested along with people that I trusted.
01:08 Unfortunately, that was part of my mistake.
01:12 Also Softbank came around and invested
01:14 in one of our businesses.
01:16 This was all 1998, '99.
01:18 Two years later, the bubble burst.
01:20 Some of the people that I trusted,
01:22 I have made a mistake on.
01:26 All of that money was essentially gone.
01:29 (upbeat music)
01:31 Then I started the website hosting company
01:38 on an American Express.
01:40 Within a couple of years,
01:40 we were the fastest growing website hosting company
01:43 in the world.
01:44 Then together we continued to build the business in 2011.
01:47 We have sold that business for nearly a billion dollars.
01:51 Then we took it public.
01:53 And today it is the second largest
01:55 website hosting company after GoDaddy.
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