Digital Social Hour
How I Built 12 Companies Without Investor Money | Cameron Johnson DSH #1076
08 Jan 2025
Chapter 1: What inspired Cameron Johnson to become an entrepreneur?
And so I think ultimately, you know, you can see a lot more shared ownership. All right, guys. Cameron Johnson here.
Our first AmFest together. We were just talking about how fun it's been. It's been great. Great turnout, huge event, lots of speakers. Everybody's having a good time. Yeah. And you're not a beginner to entrepreneurship. Your first company at nine years old. Started my first business when I was nine years old. It was a small business, a printing company, printing greeting cards and stationery.
Chapter 2: How did Cameron make his first $50k at age 12?
And it was when I was 12, I started selling beanie babies over the internet. You remember the craze, or you might not have even been born. I caught the tail end. I heard of them. I never had them. Okay, well, it was right in my childhood. And so when I was 12, I started selling Beanie Babies over the internet. I was making 50 grand a year. Crazy. And back then, that's decent money.
It was a lot of money. It's still a lot of money, but I'd probably be almost six figures right now. Right, exactly. With inflation these days. Yeah, inflation's nuts. So those kind of fell off though, right? Beanie Babies. Yeah, fortunately, I migrated into some internet companies that were a lot larger.
But I actually got out of the Beanie Baby business only because I was heading into middle school and I didn't want to be teased or known as the Beanie Baby kid. So that's why I got out of the business.
But I started an online advertising company called SurfingPrizes.com and we had 200,000 customers in 60 countries when I was in middle school, when I was 14 and we were doing 100,000 a week in revenue. Holy crap. Yeah. And so why don't you just drop out at that point? Well, I wanted to graduate high school.
I did not plan to go to college because I always told my parents, Michael Dell didn't graduate college. You know, go down the list. Richard Branson didn't graduate high school. I would always cite all of these successful entrepreneurs. My parents wanted me to go to college. I went to Virginia Tech for one semester. I raised $10 million for a company I started, and then I dropped out.
Once you got the money. Once, yeah, then dropped out. Yeah. Similar to me. I wasn't at those numbers, but once I had some revenue in my business, I think they're more receptive to dropping out. Yeah, exactly. I had a plan at that point. It wasn't like a one-hit wonder. Yeah. How tough was it raising that money? So this would have been 1999. And so the dot-com craze was still going on.
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Chapter 3: Why did Cameron turn down $10 million in VC funding?
Chapter 4: What are Cameron's thoughts on the future of car ownership?
I think what's going to be more interesting is whether or not people actually own cars. Because right now, 95% of cars are not used on a daily, you use your car 5% of the time a day. And so you've got all of this expensive, if you call it a car real estate, you've got these expensive car real estate. They're just sitting in parking garages or sitting in a driveway or a garage at home all day.
And so I think ultimately, you know, you can see a lot more shared ownership. All right, guys. Cameron Johnson here.
Our first AmFest together. We were just talking about how fun it's been. It's been great. Great turnout, huge event, lots of speakers. Everybody's having a good time. Yeah. And you're not a beginner to entrepreneurship. Your first company at nine years old. Started my first business when I was nine years old. It was a small business, a printing company, printing greeting cards and stationery.
And it was when I was 12, I started selling beanie babies over the internet. You remember the craze, or you might not have even been born. I caught the tail end. I heard of them. I never had them. Okay, well, it was right in my childhood. And so when I was 12, I started selling Beanie Babies over the internet. I was making 50 grand a year. Crazy. And back then, that's decent money.
It was a lot of money. It's still a lot of money, but I'd probably be almost six figures right now. Right, exactly. With inflation these days. Yeah, inflation's nuts. So those kind of fell off though, right? Beanie Babies. Yeah, fortunately, I migrated into some internet companies that were a lot larger.
But I actually got out of the Beanie Baby business only because I was heading into middle school and I didn't want to be teased or known as the Beanie Baby kid. So that's why I got out of the business.
But I started an online advertising company called SurfingPrizes.com and we had 200,000 customers in 60 countries when I was in middle school, when I was 14 and we were doing 100,000 a week in revenue. Holy crap. Yeah. And so why don't you just drop out at that point? Well, I wanted to graduate high school.
I did not plan to go to college because I always told my parents, Michael Dell didn't graduate college. You know, go down the list. Richard Branson didn't graduate high school. I would always cite all of these successful entrepreneurs. My parents wanted me to go to college. I went to Virginia Tech for one semester. I raised $10 million for a company I started, and then I dropped out.
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Chapter 5: How does Cameron maintain drive and ambition?
Once you got the money. Once, yeah, then dropped out. Yeah. Similar to me. I wasn't at those numbers, but once I had some revenue in my business, I think they're more receptive to dropping out. Yeah, exactly. I had a plan at that point. It wasn't like a one-hit wonder. Yeah. How tough was it raising that money? So this would have been 1999. And so the dot-com craze was still going on.
They would say 2000 was really the bust. Yeah. So, I mean, I actually went out to raise $5 million and my partner and I ended up being offered $10 million. Yeah. We ended up turning down the venture capital though, because what we're good at is being entrepreneurs and sort of being CEOs. And if we had taken on the money, we would have been minority shareholders.
And we saw that as, oh, well now we're just an employee. So sure, it sounds like a lot of money, but it's not going to us. It's to fuel growth. And we thought that we wouldn't be calling the shots anymore that the investors would. So we actually turned it down. That makes sense. I'm too young to remember the internet bust. I was four years old in 2000. Talk to us about what happened then.
Chapter 6: What is Cameron's approach to investing in startups?
Did you see that coming at all? So I didn't necessarily see the internet bust coming. But the bust was mainly companies that had no revenue. And so it was, you know, a pets.com back in the day and all of these different dot com one hit wonders that were raising a ton of money, but they had no revenue. And so that was really what the bust was primarily. My businesses were always profitable.
Chapter 7: How did Cameron build his businesses without investor money?
Chapter 8: What lessons has Cameron learned about entrepreneurship?
And we saw that as, oh, well now we're just an employee. So sure, it sounds like a lot of money, but it's not going to us. It's to fuel growth. And we thought that we wouldn't be calling the shots anymore that the investors would. So we actually turned it down. That makes sense. I'm too young to remember the internet bust. I was four years old in 2000. Talk to us about what happened then.
Did you see that coming at all? So I didn't necessarily see the internet bust coming. But the bust was mainly companies that had no revenue. And so it was, you know, a pets.com back in the day and all of these different dot com one hit wonders that were raising a ton of money, but they had no revenue. And so that was really what the bust was primarily. My businesses were always profitable.
I had 12 before I was 21, millionaire before out of high school. They were all profitable, but that's because our expenses were always low. I didn't go out and you see all these companies at the time that were getting these really expensive, huge office buildings. We didn't do any of that. We were teenagers starting a company virtually.
My partners, my two partners in serving prizes, we had never even met in person when we started the company. So we built a multi-million dollar company when we were 14 and we never even met in person. That's nuts. I think operating lean is good. I was never a fan of companies raising pre-revenue unless they absolutely needed the money.
Right, right. You need to be in some specialized industry, healthcare or something else that's unique to be able to raise money pre-revenue. It just doesn't make sense. But just the psychology of using someone else's money is different than how you're going to use your own.
Totally. And I always, you know, you respect your own money because you worked hard to earn it. And so that's why I've never, still to this day, never taken outside investor money. You never raised money even to this day, which is impressive because you're running some huge companies. Exactly. How many companies do you have right now?
So I'm an investor in probably 75 plus startup companies and they're not all startup now. Hopefully they've all grown it to some level. And then I own a chain of car dealerships in Virginia called the Magic City Auto Group. And so, yeah. Yeah. You're a fourth generation car dealer, right? Fourth generation car dealer.
So I took the proceeds that I had made from my internet companies and I said, you know, I preached everything starting up as go lean, right? Start from, you know, at the time it was my childhood bedroom when I started my business. But keep your overhead low and then it's so much easier to reach profitability. Now I do the complete opposite of that.
We have really, really expensive assets, you know, 50 plus acres of land across our dealerships, hundreds of employees, the exact opposite of everything I did growing up. Yeah.
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