Hi Mat! What's your background, and what are you currently working on?

Hi, I’m Mat. The biggest startup failure I’ve had in life was when I decided to put some efforts to build a business. I was always building useless products like Hardcore Prawn Lawn, a website that has no purpose, receives on average 230,000 unique visitors, and was eventually sold for thousands of dollars.

Flip back to 2008, I was a naive 16-year-old who decided to get into importing consumer electronics, such as USB drives and MP3 players. I saved up $1,000 from working a horrible afternoon job and was on my way to becoming the first debt-free graduate in recent years. Fast forward less than 12 months later, the business, which was now named Zor Technology, was on track to do 6 figures in its first year, I was put on one of those humiliating “top ten young entrepreneurs to watch” lists and overnight, it ended with a threatening call from Apple.

Nowadays, I’ve grown up. I’m currently working on Wacky Waving Man, the world’s first USB-powered wacky waving man desk toy. This is something that I’m incredibly passionate about. It’s useless, it has cost me a shit ton of money to create, is over-engineered and again, serves no purpose.

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What motivated you to start Zor Technology?

I was 16 years old when I first started importing consumer electronics. My only motivation was to help improve my families’ standard of living. Prior to this, I was at school Monday-Friday and working every afternoon at my local printers getting paid $6.50 an hour. When you grow up with a single parent working 4 jobs to put food on the table, you realize pretty quickly that you need to help out in whatever way you can.

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How did you grow Zor Technology?

At first, I was selling all my products on eBay. If you’re unfamiliar with eBay as a seller, it’s essentially like your first time with a prostitute. Everybody is disappointed with the end result, the seller is always the one getting fucked and when it’s all over you’re crying in the dark alone. I realized it wasn’t a long-term solution and decided to move away from it.

Over time I would sell my products on my own website, however I didn’t invest a single dollar into marketing. All sales were made either through word of mouth or referrals. I’d like to refer to my blog post titled: “My Early Business Life: A 6 Figure Business That Fell Apart When I Was 16” where I talked about one of my marketing strategies:

“Because I was always busy both before and after school, some of my friends caught wind of what I was doing and wanted in. Looking back now, I had somehow recruited affiliates, but back then they were simply friends helping out. I had designed a flyer template which I gave to each affiliate (I’ll stick with the term affiliate for now) and had them add in their name and contact number at the bottom of the flyer. I raised my prices to $55.00 per item giving each affiliate $15.00 per sale which left me with $40.00 profit. I remember before the Christmas break going to school a few times with a box full of MP3 players and handing out lots of 10 to people who expressed interest in selling. This was probably one of the easiest things I did to make a few thousand dollars – who knew teenagers were good salespeople!”

Within a few months, the business was doing it pretty well and was on track to 6 figures in the first year. My entrepreneurial story started to go viral which helped me make Zor Technology more famous. However, everything was going too well to be true. Only a few months before the business turned one year, I was forced to shut it down.