In 2012, Nate Grahek had a corporate training and development job and was building a small portrait photography business, an avocation that helped justify an occasional splurge on expensive camera equipment.
To give his photography customers a little perk — and to hone his own tech skills — he started building mobile apps that enabled the customers to load his photos of them on their phones to show to friends. Those customers loved it and Grahek saw opportunity.
"I knew right away this was a business model," he said.
With the use of mobile devices soaring the opportunities seemed endless, but Grahek's mentor, Clay Collins, the co-founder of LeadPages, offered some important advice: "Don't stray outside of your expertise."
Grahek heeded that advice and launched StickyAlbums, which focuses on selling mobile photo albums to photographers who in turn sell them to their own customers.
"It's like a digital business card," said Grahek. "The key problem I'm solving for photographers is helping them market themselves more effectively and differentiate themselves from the competition."
After building a website to promote the business, Grahek ran an online special. Within three days, he sold enough apps to gross about $10,000 in fees, but he had to build the galleries by hand because he promised his wife he wouldn't go into debt to pay for the software that could do it automatically.
After he signed up the first 500 customers, he decided to leave the corporate world and six months into the venture he was making $40,000 to $50,000 a month.