Most of you know how YGG began. For those that don't, it was simply a forum created in spite of another for young entrepreneurs. There were a small group of us that back in August of '05 decided to join Eric and contribute to his little community rather than respond to the same “what business should I start” questions on the site we all left.
At that time I didn't know much about Eric. He always had a bit of attitude in his replies. I liked that. As YGG slowly grew, I saw pictures of him marrying his lovely wife Diana. I saw his first house. I started to chat with him a little more.
In early '06 I approached him with the idea of partnering to build an enormous community for young go getters. Some 9 months and two horrible developers later, we ended up with an iframe madness at a time where we really knew nothing about CMS (content management systems) or blogging. Fortunately, that site was short-lived.
We started to go in the right direction when we made the move to WordPress. A developer in Alaska by the name of Brandon, was kind enough to lend a hand in helping develop our first version of the blog. Since then we've gone through 2 more versions/styles of the site, have been interviewed by blogs and media of all sizes, and grown to a substantial size with members, readers, and subscribers all over the world with a passion for entrepreneurship and helping one another.
Back in November Eric and I tried our best to plan for a series of updates to the site. We had plenty of big ideas, topics just dying to be written, and possibly a leap to a new platform. With Eric moving into his second house and me juggling a client and several projects, the stars never seemed to align.
The options were to either keep at it or consider selling the site. Had we gone with the first option the irregular flow of content would have been consistent for many months to come, if not forever. I think we both became over-occupied to maintain our hopefull momentum.
So instead of apologizing every other post for not living up to our promises, we set out to find someone we thought could help YGG grow to the size and quality we'd always discussed.
We did find that person. In fact, it's two persons, one of which has been a member since the day YGG opened it's doors back in August of '05. We've been discussing the possibilities of an acquisition with them for nearly a month now, all in secrecy so we avoided any unneeded speculation. The deal was officially closed a few days ago and we are extremely excited to introduce the new owners of Young Go Getter.
They are Justin Nowak and Dion Delaurier. Both are Canucks who reside
in Winnipeg and Justin being the old-school member of YGG.
Eric and I were deterred from the idea of selling YGG because of the few options for doing so. We really didn't want to put it on a site like Sitepoint, and have an ad-hungry blogger step in with the priority of monetizing every square pixel. We wanted someone that shared the same vision we had and were willing to put the time and effort in to make it happen.
Justin and Dion are those exact people. They are living examples of young go getters and have a passion for every realm of entrepreneurship.
The next few weeks will be a transition for all of us. Almost all of which you won't see and hopefully shouldn't affect the new content coming from Dion and Justin. We are going to help both of them understand the ins and outs of YGG and transfer different tools over this period.
Eric and I will still have our YGG e-mail accounts for a while if you'd ever like to contact us directly (travis@younggogetter.com and eric@younggogetter.com).
Most people think blogs are tiny little journals where you document what you ate for lunch — they don't mean much. Young Go Getter isn't a blog. It's not a forum. It's a community of tons of entrepreneurs of all ages that have developed relationships with one another through this site.
I've chatted on the phone with Jason, who lives in Florida, for hundreds of hours for well over a year. I've helped a guy named James, who lives in New York, install his first copy of WordPress at around 4 in the morning. I got to have dinner with Darius and his girlfriend who flew into Toronto to meet me. I've chatted with hundreds of people through Skype, IM, Twitter, whom I've either helped, or they helped me. All of this would not have happened without Young Go Getter. I wouldn't know 1/100th what I do now about internet based business or blogging, were it not for this site.
I am more than grateful for the thousands of you that return to this site each day, as is Eric. Nothing made me happier than seeing all of your pleasant responses, getting support from you when we needed a few more Diggs, and all of the kind e-mails I've received over the years. YGG has been one of the most important stepping stones in my life. And for that, I thank you all.
We will still be contributing to this site and to Justin and Dion's plans for it's future. I hope you will too.
I ask that you please don't request to know the amount of the deal as all four of us would like to keep that number private. Thank you.
We wish each and every one of you the best for this coming year.
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