If you’ve been reading PPC Ian for a while, you know I’m a tremendous fan of stock options. One of the huge advantages to the corporate online marketing career path (as opposed to affiliate marketing) is the ability to accumulate stock in leading privately held companies that later have the opportunity for major liquidity events. Just recently, I wrote abut how I made it big in online marketing. How did I make it big? I cashed in on my NexTag and QuinStreet options! Today I’m excited to share another success story: I own very early stage shares in Inflection.com and according toTechCrunch Inflection.com just secured $30 million in funding. That’s right: Every private company I have worked for has turned into an investor’s dream. I love the online marketing career path!
I’m Not Writing This Post To Brag
So I’m super excited but want to make it very clear from the start that I’m not here to brag. Rather, I’m here to empower and share the power of the online marketing career path with the world. I know I’ve mentioned this many times but I must underscore it again: Online marketing professionals are in demand, especially pay per click professionals. Due to this fact, you get your pick of which companies you want to work for. This abundance of choice (which 99 percent of the working world doesn’t have) affords you the opportunity to make wise investment decisions. View your employer as an investment opportunity and you too can have three amazing private company investments in a row, just like me! PPC is unlike any other career for this simple reason.
Hey Jon, Have Anything To Say This Time?
So after my recent post about making it big in online marketing I received several spam messages from someone named “Jon”. Jon did not provide a valid email address, but was quick to tell me that I did not make much on my QuinStreet stock (which is quite untrue). Hey Jon, this post is for you. Also, I think I know who you are. How are things going at your fourth tier ad network? I actually enjoy getting these types of messages. As my friend John Chow says in his book Make Money Online, haters are the number one leading indicator of your own personal success. Hence, the Inflection news coming in such a timely manner!
Inflection.com Rocks and They’re Going To Dominate
Ok, time for me to get serious again. I wanted to close out by talking a bit about Inflection.com and my personal experience there. Right before my current gig, I thoroughly enjoyed running Inflection.com’s paid search business as their Director of SEM. I’d like to close out with a few great things about Inflection:
- The co-founders are awesome. Brian, my former boss, started the business in his Harvard dorm room. He joined forces with Matthew, his brother and serial entrepreneur, and started Inflection. They bootstrapped it and quickly turned the company into a 50 person cash machine. These guys know their stuff and I’m obviously not the only one who thinks so. It’s extremely rare to land 30 million funding in this economy.
- The team is very seasoned (which is one of the big reasons they are doing so well)! I have two pieces of information to quickly prove this to you. First, their executive VP of business development used to be President of Match.com in its early days. Second, their VP of finance was VP of finance at Netflix and took that company public. When I was there, half the team were Stanford graduates like myself, how awesome.
- Inflection’s products are cool. Just check out Archives.com!
Here’s to Inflection’s continued success! Want to work at this amazing company in the heart of Palo Alto near my alma mater Stanford University? Send me your resume to jobs@ppcian.com and let me help connect you!
Picture in this post © Inflection.com
Wow congrats on your pick as an investor in that company. They look like a real promising company and definitely deserve success.
Hey Ian, don’t even bother addressing haters in your blog posts because what they want is attention. Just start blocking his comments and he will leave.
You would get a lot more traffic to these types of posts if you shared actual figures though too. Because doing really well could mean $100k or it could mean $1MM. In either case, the end result is that it helps to give and idea of how much you can earn if you go after stock options. I personally always heard they were worthless unless you were under employee 10 – again I’m not doubting you, I just know putting numbers to it gives a good idea to people what to expect.
In either case congrats on the success!
Couldn’t agree more! More haters = greater success.
Dino,
Thanks so much for the comment and kind words. As always, much appreciated!
Best,
Ian
Chris,
Thanks so much for the awesome comment! I couldn’t agree with you more. Unfortunately, however, I’m prohibited from sharing a lot of info because of the agreements I have signed with these companies. What I can do is speak at a more general level and especially address your question about being employee 10 or less.
In therms of stock options and liquidity events, I have seen employees in general make anywhere from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand. It depends on many factors. What I will definitely say is you don’t have to be early (employee 10 or less), but of course that doesn’t hurt. It does matter what level you’re at, as you climb up the ladder you get exponentially more options. It also matters how long you’re at the company. Most companies have a four year vesting schedule with a one year cliff. Of course, it also matters how well the company does and how well you perform as an employee (star employees get rewarded from time to time with additional stock option grants).
The beauty in all of this? It’s all on top of your regular salary! It’s pure gravy. Chris, thanks again!
Best,
Ian
Michael,
Thanks so much for the comment, much appreciated!
Best,
Ian
Nice, congrats to your continued success. You are definitely climbing to the top. Let haters hate, they make you famous.
Thanks so much D3so, as always very much appreciate it!
Haters? More like people who are plain jealous of your success. These idiots have nothing better to do, that’s why they need to find some way to put you down.
Forget them! Just address those people who like, trust, appreciate you. Like all these people posting comments here.
Samuel,
Well said! I really appreciate that. Thanks so much for the comment!
All the best,
Ian