Ariel Camus, a product builder, 500 startups alumni and the CEO and Founder of TouristEye, acquired by Lonely Planet in 2013. Today, Ariel is building a new education system called HackerPath that utilizes collaboration between peers and bots.

Famous Five:

Favorite Book? – Founders at Work
What CEO do you follow? –

Favorite online tool? — Google Apps
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “Relax, you’re doing well. Have more fun”

Time Stamped Show Notes:

01:12 – Nathan introduces Ariel to the show
01:35 – TouristEye is Ariel’s first company and exited it in 2013
01:45 – TouristEye is a travel guide for mobile devices with all information offline
- 02:03 – Revenue is from referral fees and premium features in application
- 02:24 – Raised funding for TouristEye
- 02:55 – Acquisition price of Lonely Planet
- 03:18 – Why did you sell TouristEye?
04:50 – Ariel was 26 when he sold TouristEye
05:00 – Ariel joined Lonely Planet after selling TouristEye
06:00 – Ariel is starting a new project related to teaching
- 06:30 – Building a new platform online
- 06:46 – The project is called HackerPath
- 07:04 – Still in the process of building the database
- 07:18 – Goal is to make it open to everyone
- 07:37 – Recruiters are charging companies a 20% fee
- 07:53 – Currently pre-revenue
08:20 – No retainers for TouristEye
09:00 – “Do something you really love. Don’t waste time and just do it”
09:24 – Ariel and his friends talk about ideas and how to make to make it happen
10:00 – What salary would be giving up should you decide to quit completely?
- 10:12 – A 6-digit salary
10:35 – “I can start a new business and pay developers to help me”
11:04 – Most of the money that were spent so far was for an experiment that was launched last week called Coderoulette
- 11:25 – Did it to validate the interest
- 11:33 – Did well on the launched
- 11:45 – Used existing technologies
12:00 – Put in $ 10-15,000 for the project
12:19 – Connect with Ariel through Twitter
13:30 – The Famous Five

3 Key Points:

Do something you really love. Don’t waste time and just do it.
Selling a business is a crucial choice – make sure you won’t regret it.
Relax and have more fun.

Resources Mentioned:

Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal developers.
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
Freshbooks – The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+
Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books.
Assistant.to – The site Nathan uses to book meetings with one email.
@arielcamus - Ariel’s Twitter handle
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

EP 455: Exited in 2013, Now Moving From "Job" To Startup CEO Again. How? with Ariel Camus

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders