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Joel Bomgar was a field network engineer with a complaint.
As a part-time IT support representative in Jackson, Miss., Bomgar would spend twice as much time driving to meet clients as he did fixing their IT problems. It was unbillable time, Bomgar said, spent in a rickety hand-me-down car, that also stole away time from class assignments at Belhaven college where he was getting a Bachelor's degree in business administration. What was a senior to do? Write his own remote support software application, it turned out.
In a Zuckerbergian stroke of code-writing frenzy and entrepreneurial flourish, Bomgar spent his last months in college developing the software, and, his first months after graduation, promoting it through a rudimentary html page he wrote for the purpose. It was among the first software tools to allow technicians to remotely access clients' computers, allowing them to view their clients' screens from afar and fix the problem. In the first two months of business, Bomgar sold 50 licenses at $500 dollars apiece.
"I hacked together a piece of technology I didn't really intend to sell," he said. "It was really just to make my work easier. But I figured I couldn't be the only tech support person on the planet that had these frustrations."
Thus, a startup was born. Seven years later, Bomgar Corp., headquarted in Jackson, Miss., now has over 5,000 customers worldwide, including Zappos and the IT support teams in academic institutions including The Johns Hopkins University applied physics laboratory.
The company is on track to make $30 million in revenue this year, and has 150 employees working in six offices, including hubs in London and Paris. At 30, Bomgar remains its CEO.
"I'm a big Mark Zuckerberg fan," said Bomgar, invoking the comparison to his fellow millennial startup superstar. "Obviously, Facebook is bigger than we are, but when you look at what he started and the way he did it, a lot of it is the same thing."
Read more Turning An Idea into $30M a Year: Joel Bomgar, CEO - Finance and Accounting Jobs News and Advice
As a part-time IT support representative in Jackson, Miss., Bomgar would spend twice as much time driving to meet clients as he did fixing their IT problems. It was unbillable time, Bomgar said, spent in a rickety hand-me-down car, that also stole away time from class assignments at Belhaven college where he was getting a Bachelor's degree in business administration. What was a senior to do? Write his own remote support software application, it turned out.
In a Zuckerbergian stroke of code-writing frenzy and entrepreneurial flourish, Bomgar spent his last months in college developing the software, and, his first months after graduation, promoting it through a rudimentary html page he wrote for the purpose. It was among the first software tools to allow technicians to remotely access clients' computers, allowing them to view their clients' screens from afar and fix the problem. In the first two months of business, Bomgar sold 50 licenses at $500 dollars apiece.
"I hacked together a piece of technology I didn't really intend to sell," he said. "It was really just to make my work easier. But I figured I couldn't be the only tech support person on the planet that had these frustrations."
Thus, a startup was born. Seven years later, Bomgar Corp., headquarted in Jackson, Miss., now has over 5,000 customers worldwide, including Zappos and the IT support teams in academic institutions including The Johns Hopkins University applied physics laboratory.
The company is on track to make $30 million in revenue this year, and has 150 employees working in six offices, including hubs in London and Paris. At 30, Bomgar remains its CEO.
"I'm a big Mark Zuckerberg fan," said Bomgar, invoking the comparison to his fellow millennial startup superstar. "Obviously, Facebook is bigger than we are, but when you look at what he started and the way he did it, a lot of it is the same thing."
Read more Turning An Idea into $30M a Year: Joel Bomgar, CEO - Finance and Accounting Jobs News and Advice