Million Dollar Homepage founder eyes next venture
Now that British student Alex Tew has ridden the wave of success on his popular pixel ad site, what's next?
The Million Dollar Homepage started as gamble on the public's fascination with quirky Web sites and
Now Tew is turning his attention to creating something more long-term.
Everybody says that everything that can be done with the Internet has already been done but that's simply not true, he said.
"The challenge really for me now is to find out how I can take the phenomenal success of the Million Dollar Homepage and replicate that in order to create a sustainable business model," he said. "I can't just do The Million Dollar Homepage 2."
Tew was attending the Second Chance Tuesday networking event in London and said he already has had a lot of interest from investors. And though he isn't revealing many details, he said there are a number of ventures already in the planning stage. And he understands they will have to be a lot more credible than The Million Dollar Homepage.
"In order to get serious funding, you have to come up with a real business plan," he said.
Tew would divulge only that his ideas are entirely focused on the Internet--a medium he believes is ripe for a second major boom. Tew had barely started senior school in the U.K. when the first dot-com boom came along.
"I kind of wish I was 10 years older," he said. "If I'd been around in 1996, '97, '98 I'd have been so excited. A lot of the best companies were founded then: Amazon, eBay, Google. Though I still believe there is so much more that can be done.
"In 10 years' time what is going to exist that doesn't exist now? You have to open your mind and you have to keep on having ideas and you have to persist with them, and if you get knocked down you have to get up and go for it again."
Tew said he's aware of the dozens of Web sites
"That just shows how uninventive people are," he said, adding that it mirrors the reasons why the dot-com bubble bursting was so much worse than it should have been; markets that could sustain one successful business model were often flooded with dozens of imitators looking to replicate it with no added-value of their own.
Inevitably, those jumping on the bandwagon failed and added to the dot-com death count. And Tew predicts a similar fate for the copycat home page sites.
Will Sturgeon of Silicon.com reported from London.