163: Should You Buy the Airbnb IPO? With Forbes' Tom Taulli

Tom Taulli has been in the tech industry for some time. While in the eighth grade, his dad bought him a computer and just left it on his desk. So he started to figure it out. And yes, he became obsessed with this machine. Then when he was a freshman in high school, he started to code and sold some of his programs to magazines (in the early 1980s, these publications had listings of code for readers to type in!) From all this, he knew he wanted to be a part of the tech world.

Although, it was not until college that he started his first business. You see, he was fairly bad at taking exams. What to do? Well, he created software for exam preparation. He would sell this to a national provider of bar exam preparation. The business would then go on to grow, as they added more and more exams.

But the biggest venture of his was launched in 1997. It was Hypermart.net. Think of it as kind of a first-generation Shopify. From the start, the growth was strong and they would sell the company to InfoSpace.com.

In the meantime, he has always been writing, such as for Forbes.com, Bloomberg.com, Kiplinger and BusinessWeek. He has also written a variety of books, mostly on tech and finance. His latest include Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction and The Robotic Process Automation Handbook: A Guide to Implementing RPA Systems.

As of now, he is an advisor to some awesome startups.

 

Listen to ILAB 163 on iTunes here or subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

 

 

Where we are:

• Johnny FD – Sri Lanka / IG @johnnyfdk
• Sam Marks – North Carolina / IG @imsammarks
• Derek Spartz - Los Angeles / IG @DerekRadio

 

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Discussed:

• Tom Taulli's Article on Airbnb IPO
• Airbnb's Retail Road Show Video Pitch
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