This is the top entrepreneurs podcast where founders share how they started their companies and got

filthy rich or crash and burn. Each episode features revenue numbers, customer counts, and other

insider information that creates business news headlines. We went from a couple hundred thousand dollars to two point seven million.

I had no money when I started the company.

It was $160 million, which is the size of any IPOs.

We're a bit strapped.

We have like 22,000 customers.

With over 5 million downloads in a very short amount of time, major outlets like Inc are calling us the fastest growing business show on iTunes.

I'm your host, Nathan Latka, and here's today's episode.

Hello, everyone, my guest today is Ryan Holmes, who founded Hootsweet back in 2008 and has helped it grow into the world's most

widely used social relationship platform with nearly 15 million users, including more than

800 of the Fortune 1,000 companies. Recognize that as an authority on digital transformation,

entrepreneurship and social media, Holmes started his first business in high school. He now

applies his experience and expertise to support the startup community and socially conscious ventures. Ryan, are you ready to

take us to the top? Yes, I am, Nathan. Great to be here. Thanks. What was the high school business

at a curiosity? It was a paintball company. I started my first business in grade 10,

in between grade 10 and grade 11 paintball company. I convinced my parents

they had a little bit of property. I built a paintball course on it and bought paintball guns and

paintballs and started the whole thing. It was obviously a really fun high school business.

What would you make on that in a summer or wherever, how long ran it?

So my best, so this is why being an entrepreneur can spoil you. My best day,

I made about $6,000 in one day. And so, you know, how do you, how do you go back to like a nine to five

...