Question

What does Andrew Mohebbi name as being the best thing about being an entrepreneur?



What does your company do?

PBReview.com is a consumer review Web site for paintball products and fields. The Web site has the most comprehensive listing of paintball products, paintball fields, and hundreds of thousands of reviews.



When I sold the site in 2007, it was visited by 200,000 to 300,000 people per month.


How did you decide to start your company?

I had been designing Web sites for a couple years, both personal and professional. When I first started playing paintball, I personally recognized a void in consumer reviews (the paintball industry was still in its infancy in the late 90s).



What made you think your business idea would be successful?

It was an equation that had been very successful in other sports and hobbies where there is an intense interest in the exact equipment and gear one uses. I saw sites like MTBR.com in the mountain biking arena and knew there would be interest for something similar for paintball.


What competitors did your company have, and why did customers choose your company instead of your competitors?

Over the seven years I ran the site, a dozen or so direct competitors came and went. It's a challenge to establish an online community, especially when there are already a few dominant community Web sites in the industry. To break in, you need something compellingly different, and none of them had that.



People kept coming to PBR because I was constantly working to add more features and improve existing ones. The Web site's code was completely rewritten once and constantly tweaked.



Also, while there were other paintball communities, there were no other dominant paintball consumer review Web sites, and that meant PBR had the majority of user generated reviews.



Did you get any investments from other people to start or expand your company?

Nope. A Web site of this kind never needed much capital.



How did you decide on pricing for your products or services?

One hundred percent of revenue was from advertising. Establishing rates was somewhat of a challenge for a couple reasons. First, the site started to have significant traffic just as the first [Internet business] bubble was popping. Second, the companies interested in advertising varied significantly in size and budget for advertising. Third, it was pre-Google Adsense, the most common and easy way to monetize a Web site. I experimented with pay per click (PPC) and monthly rate advertising programs and looked to similar industries (size, profit margins, etc.) for the price points.



Advertising was sold online through a custom programmed ad system. It was set up so that advertisers managed their own ads via an account and pre-paid via credit card.

What are the hardest things about being an entrepreneur?

Having to deal with everything that goes into running a business instead of just focusing your time on what you enjoy (i.e., programming). This is obviously dependent on the size of the business. It can also be hard at times to motivate yourself to do what will keep you competitive, but isn't necessarily required to continue operations.



What surprised you the most about being an entrepreneur?

How much it changed my personal views of money. After having financial success, I came to realize that making a lot of money wasn't my main drive anymore. It became more about doing something really well and constantly looking for ways to improve. (Disregard this if you plan to have investors!)

Answer 1

He says the best part was the shift in motivation: it stopped being about making a lot of money and became about doing something really well and constantly looking for ways to improve.