Author: Sam Estrin is a Serial Entrepreneur and Startup Advisor
My name is Sam Estrin and I began my career, at the age of fifteen, as one of five founders of MotherNature.com. As the original CTO of MotherNature.com, I developed the first version of MotherNature.com and was responsible for managing the supporting infrastructure. Billed as the world's largest online vitamin, supplement and mineral supplier, MotherNature.com was taken public by Bear Stearns, Whit Capital and Hembrect and Quest in 1999 and reached a peak market cap of $600M.
At the age of nineteen, I co-founded MediaWebcast. A publicly traded "trans-media" company, MediaWebcast, created four cable TV shows and garnered revenue through cable broadcasting, streaming video, VHS / DVD and international content distribution. As CTO, I directed the team responsible for the creation and management of all TV show websites, maintained infrastructure and created complimentary software products. Software products like MediaLimiter, an application developed to combat online video copyright infringement. MediaWebcast reached a peak market cap of $70M.
At twenty-one, I founded Odin Metatech, Inc., a firm that produced unique technology solutions including Odin Organic Framework (enterprise content management system) and Odin Assemble (rapid web application framework). Odin Metatech quickly expanded to provide complimentary consulting services including content assessment, SEO/SEM, marketing, compliance and security.
At twenty-eight, I began working with TASER International. As CTO, I led key development activities within the Evidence.com division, which created the Evidence.com SaaS product. My responsibilities included planning future architecture, developing security policies, managing both the development team engaged in improving user experience and Solr search team, authoring the Evidence Transfer Manager software, transcoding services and virtualized development environments. TASER International trades under TASR with a market cap of $273M.