StealthSeminar, a webinar software company I co-founded in 2010, just celebrated its users generating over 1 billion dollars (USD) using the platform. What’s more amazing is that the software that I created and has been used by over 20 million people owes its existence to my DJ past, and specifically technology I created to host the Happy Hour Radio show.
One of the early keys to my success both as Anabolic Frolic and the promoter of Hullabaloo was that I was on top of technology. I was an early internet user, an early e-commerce site (selling Happy Hardcore records imported from the UK was one of the first things I ever did), the Anabolic Frolic website was the very first happy hardcore site ever indexed in Yahoo (the biggest search of the 90s, many years ahead of Google), and Hullabaloo was one of the very first rave communities on the net.
Being “first on the ground” during this time made all the difference. The deal to create Happy2bHardcore happened just because I was one of the first names and had a web presence (not unlike today when people chase after Likes and Followers while building their names). Hullabaloo created a huge diehard following not only because of the quality of the events, but because people had a place to discuss them – the HullaBoard.
Going back to my teenage years, I was always a computer nerd. Prior to the internet, I ran a traditional “BBS” for 4 years. I was always familiar with the technology and then used it in new ways as the net started to open up.
I had a knack for creating solutions to problems I had. My high school computer programming experience allowed me to learn some of the new internet languages. I did everything myself. Later I would take advantage of these skills by augmenting Hullabaloo with its own merch store and direct ticket sales, cutting out middlemen like Ticketmaster. I did a lot of custom work on my various websites.
In 2000 I was hired by an early internet streaming station to create a Happy Hardcore radio show. We called it Happy Hour. It was a huge success and became the #1 show on the channel which was the #1 dance music station on the internet at the time.
The channel was caught up in the dot com bubble and restructured in 2002 and the show ended there. But since the show was so popular, I wanted to continue it and set it up on its own dedicated server. This was all in a time before podcasts, YouTube, Soundcloud, or any easy delivery methods. This took real work and technology mastery to set up as all the streaming technology had to be taken care of by myself.
The show ran successfully for another few years until we decided to wrap up Hullabaloo. We found sometimes doing the live show was an inconvenience, so I developed a way to pre-record it, but then stream it as if it was live. This was different than just posting a download, and was a key innovation that I would draw from later.
We also experimented with pay streaming for high quality. Fans could pay more if they wanted a better quality version of the show. Again, I would figure all of this out on my own.
Fast forward to 2009, when I was retired from DJing and working in corporate speaking. I had a mentor at the time, Geoff Ronning, who would eventually become my business partner. He knew I had a knack for creating technology solutions for problems I faced. He had an idea for streaming webinar content that was recorded previously, as if it was live. Ideas are only as valuable as the execution of them so he wondered if I could do something with it.
Well, I happened to have specific experience doing something very close to this, based on my radio show. I also had a lot of other relevant skills from past rave-related projects creating other facets of what would be needed. Much of the first code was recycled straight off of my Happy Hour code base.
Summer of 2009 I built by hand a working concept of what would eventually become StealthSeminar. By March of 2010 we opened for business.
Just recently we marked over 20 million people have used the system, and over 1 billion dollars generated.
None of this would have happened if not for the specific skills and experiences I had creating technology from my rave years. Nor would it have happened if it wasn’t for the chain of events that took me from those days to the days when StealthSeminar was created. Besides my tech knowledge, it also required me to be an entrepreneur, be creative and working on things on my own. It also required that I had the spare time to work on it. It also required that I had moved on from DJing and was looking for new opportunities. It also required Geoff and I coming together and collaborating the way we did.
But I can state with absolute certainty that these billion dollars would never have been generated without the story of the happy hardcore chapter of my life. That then created the ripple effect of all the businesses that use my creation and have built their businesses around it.
Pretty wild if you think about it.
