Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why I sold my company | The TechnoBuffalo Truth”.
Portion of this video is sponsored by the aura ring gen 3 Horizon. So people ask me sometimes what’s the craziest story that stands out and it’s this one was that dramatic enough. We see that in so many documentaries. I want to try it on uh. It didn’t work here, so I wanted to tell a story.
I’Ve had a lot of fun recently telling stories uh things that that I’ve gone through and things that I’ve never really shared before it’s fun, to have a platform to do it, and this one is broadly about this YouTube channel and about techno Buffalo. Some of these stories, I’ve shared, I shared the story of getting blacklisted by Apple. I shared the story of being sued by a Printing House Company to reveal a source. Those are all real like seminal moments in the building and the starting of techno Buffalo.
But there’s a lot of other stories. There were companies that tried to bribe me for positive reviews that I’ve never shared, and it’s also a story littered with some tears, some good times and uh some some tougher times along the road, but from then to now there’s been a lot of growth and change And when the big decisions of my life was starting a business and ending a business, so here is the full story of TechnoBuffalo, so this channel has been through like a lot. I started it back in June 2007 and I used the name John for Lakers um, because that was my aim screen name for middle school, just to show I had 0.04 site that YouTube was going to be anything uh. In fact, YouTube was mostly cat videos and guys get in the junk that was essentially what it was. I was embarrassed to be making videos on YouTube. I didn’t tell anybody for a long time. Um. Originally I created the account just like a comment on other videos.
You had to have an account to comment: YouTube was getting ready to start the partner program, and that was when they were gon na allow creators to monetize their own content, and that seemed like something that we all take for granted right now that wasn’t a program That existed in 2009 uh-ish when the story takes place. I didn’t meet the thresholds to be invited to Creator program, so I went and found the gentleman’s name who was running the program and I wrote him a handwritten letter and essentially said. Please let me in um. I got a letter back essentially said.
I don’t know how you got my address, but don’t write me again. You are in, and that was incredible and that grew and I was able to quit my job in a bad economy to make videos for a living, and that was an incredible opportunity. I was working a job that I hated to the point where I hope I get into a small car accident, so I wouldn’t have to go. I was making videos in my one bedroom apartment.
I swear my neighbors thought I was creating a very different type of content. I remember having to tell my parents my future mother-in-law. I’M quitting my job in a bad economy to make videos. It was a like a tough discussion anyway.
That grew and I started to see that video was going to be the future or I just have inklings that video is going to be a real big thing. The big Tech websites out there you know some Gadget. It was Gizmodo and was CNET weren’t really doing much with video uh. It was all Tech space and I figured will I make video. Maybe they would let me make video for them, so I reached out to all the major Tech sites that I could think of to make video for them, and nobody got back to me – and I was you know in my early 20s at the time I had No business background, I was a liberal arts major in college. I was prepared for nothing uh and I figured I’m gon na start a business, I’m going to create a business with no business background and beyond that, I’m gon na make a website without any website background.
That’S that’s what I’m gon na do and I tried to hype this thing up for. Like eight months I had quit my job. I had raised forty thousand dollars from from friends and family to do this and we tried to launch techno Buffalo and it crashed. I’M still like shaking I’m telling you it, cracked, like epically, epically, crashed um, and I had put all of my all of my Capital, all of my social capital – everything I could put into this and it didn’t crash because a lot of traffic crashed, because I did Not know how to supervise somebody running a website, I did not know how to run a website uh. It was a absolute disaster. I’Ve talked a lot over the years about having like sleep issues.
This is where they started. Um was when techno Buffalo uh first launched. Eventually got it worked out, I burned through all of my startup Capital to to get it working. We cut out all the stuff that didn’t work and then techno Buffalo um was born.
Initially we had four employees and an office, and I can say right now. I was not a very good boss. I did not know What it Took to manage people, and that was a real problem for me. In the early days, I ultimately went back to business school and got an MBA to try to learn how to run a business. But ultimately I don’t think that led to me being a better boss, but helped me understand kind of business better. And I think that I was one of the first creators to actually have kind of a an office.
It was where all the the writers were. It was where we were filming the videos and my time became so dedicated towards the website that it wasn’t being focused on the video side, and I took video for granted and if I have one big regret on my career, it was it’s that that I didn’t See the potential for video, I think I assume video is always going to be there and I started making a lot of videos. I wasn’t necessarily all that proud of that. I just had to make – and this is at the time where a lot of new creators were coming online – that were really changing.
What YouTube was. This is where he started. Seeing you know John Morrison come up, Austin Evans started seeing Lou from unbox therapy um and and Marquez a little bit later and they were making these bespoke pieces of Art, and I was definitely not doing that and I attribute sort of the plateauing of the YouTube Channel because my time was so split, um and I say split, it was like 80 website 20 video, and that was a real problem for the business and it was a real problem for me. I was working myself to the Bone.
I wasn’t a good boss. I didn’t feel like I was a good person I didn’t feel like. I was doing a good job on video uh. I had a breaking point. I just collapsed and if you want to see what that exhaustion collapse looks like you can see it. In my iPhone 10r review um, that was probably the darkest time for me professionally. The website had kind of plateaued Google had just redone some of their algorithms or web traffic.
Wasn’T there we weren’t getting the ads that we were supposed to be getting from some of the platforms. I wasn’t paying myself salary, try to make sure I could afford to pay everybody else. It was a. It was just a really bad time and I sort of had to have my realization that am I going to keep doing this like have I had my Heyday, it was a great time and then it was it was done and I needed to sell and I Decided if I wanted to sell just a website, sell the whole thing and just go work for somebody else or just go. Do a different job altogether. I’M gon na stop the story for a second. Then I talk about sponsors, but it’s cool.
When you get a sponsor of something you’ve actually been wearing for the past three years, to put your own money behind uh in every video, I am wearing a ring. Now, it’s not just a wedding ring uh. This guy right here is the aura gen 3 Horizon. There’S been an aura ring on my finger since their very first generation.
This thing has been absolutely incredible. My main use of sleep tracking, I’m somebody who suffers from insomnia, has been able to actually gauge what my actual sleep is. My deep sleep, my REM, sleep has been awesome, but I’ve also seen the product evolve, kind of like techno, Buffalo and kind of I’ve evolved as well. So now you’ve got things like heart rate.
Monitoring you’ve got blood oxygen, uh level in there, and the Gen 3 Horizon is sort of the ultimate evolution of what Orr is doing and now available in rose gold uh to go along with those classic colors. If you want to know more information about your body, if you want to see things about your body temperature at night, you want to see what your heart rate is. When you’re sleeping you want to track your sleep, I can’t wear my watch when I sleep, because it’s too big this has been absolutely perfect for the fitness folks out there for the folks that want to know more about their own body. I cannot recommend a wearable mower than I recommended Aura ring over the years and the latest is the aura ring gen 3 Horizon.
If you want to check it out, I think absolutely everybody should I wear it on my wedding finger as a wedding ring, but you can wear an index finger for a bit more accurate results, I’ll put a link to it down below the early days of making These videos was hard to try to come across as authoritative to try to show that I was an expert and to try to increase what I was saying and techno Buffalo was competing against companies that were owned by, like CBS AOL. These big brands with huge budgets – and it was just like me and my one bedroom apartment and I was trying to play ball the right way and I’m not going to mention – I remember the person’s name and the company that they worked for. I’M not going to mention it, but we’re at a table and the pr reps handed us the devices. So here you guys go um. So when your view period starts when you’re done, you know go ahead and make your reviews there were no restrictions on it and uh. It took me about three days to get my video done and up – and this very well known still very much.
Existing Outlet put a review up the next day, less than 24 hours later and was quoting 48 Hours of battery life testing in their video um. And I think that’s when things hit me like this is this. This is not necessarily the most ethical of of fields, it showed me a very different side of industry and I think, a lot of side that people don’t see now. This was a long time ago.
I think that things have changed a lot since then uh, but there’s definitely an underbelly to all of this, that I think a lot of people sometimes see or don’t see and I’m certainly not perfect. I’M not sick. I’M not saying I’m perfect. I’Ve made a lot of mistakes um, but seeing some of these really big known companies and these big known websites, clearly cut Corners, showed me a very long time ago that the playing field was not level, and I realized that I was not cut out for unlevel Playing field, especially on the website side uh, it was taking almost nine percent of my time. It was almost all of my aggravation.
It was 20 of my revenue and it was, it was just it was killing me. I got to a breaking point where I had to realize and ask myself like what am I doing: I’m not a good boss. I don’t feel like I’m a good person here.
Uh. Do I believe in what I’m doing? Do I not believe in what I’m doing and I have to make a decision? Do I want to sell the entire business and go work for somebody else or just do something different? Do I want to sell the website and try to focus on video, and it was a really hard decision to come to. Ultimately, obviously, I decided to sell techno Buffalo um. I sold it to mobile Nations. I ultimately just a very short time later ended up selling to Future and techno. Buffalo now is mostly just uh.
It’S still live, but it’s mostly just a aggregate of a bunch of other links and websites, and it kind of hurts to see it like that. Um a little bit, I do check it every now and then um, but it was a moment for me of making a switch and realizing that I still believed in myself. I still believed I had stories to tell products to take a look at and committed myself to to video, and then I was left with just a YouTube channel. No more techno Buffalo. I sold the trademark sold the website all that kind of stuff. It was just like John and I had to kind of figure out what my voice, what my voice was.
Whenever I talked about selling techno Buffalo, I think people are under the mindset this, like I sold this for millions of dollars. That was most definitely not the case. I was just happy to not be running it uh anymore, uh at all, so it wasn’t worth it from like a monetary standpoint um, but it was worth it from a mental standpoint and it marked a very clear. This was the old way I did things.
I need to find a new way forward, find a new way of doing things, and if I don’t know what that path is uh good friend John Morrison, TLD today reached out was like hey. Why don’t you come up to the studio? He knew the stroke because I was going under it’s like. Why? Don’T you just film hero for a while um bring your crew, you can see how we do things. Maybe that’ll help you reset creatively, uh and ultimately ended up being an incredible blessing being there resetting practices and sort of changing my mind from like journalists to Creator um, and that was a time that I am eternally grateful. Grateful for. You can see the videos.
So this was the last video of the Techno Buffalo days, and this was the first video when I was working uh with John and you can just we put them side by side. You can see a clear difference. I was finally able to do the things that I never did things that I think left me behind. When sort of creators were taking the more artistic approach I started to feel really fulfilled again uh in in video. Now the channel is not as big as it could have been, and it’s something that I am finally at peace with I’m at peace with my mistakes, I’m at peace with the decisions that I’m made along the way there are people I still wish.
I could make peace with when I was not the best manager. I was perhaps not the best person to them and I think a men’s probably should and and could be made um along the way. I was somebody who was just really frustrated and scared to lose everything that I built, but now I’m happy now. I’M content whether a video gets 10 views or a million views, I’m happy with the content being put up now. There’S a lot of sponsors in there and that’s being able to pay for staff being able to grow my own business and be able to sort of keep food on my plate.
I’M a piece with that too. I think every Creator’s got to find their right balance, but now, after going through the harder times, makes me appreciate the good times, and it makes me appreciate the people that I work with more than I’ve ever had before, but oftentimes. Now we have meetings where I am the dumbest person in the room about a topic and I love that and it’s been revitalizing and whether this channel ever grows to five six ten million subscribers. I don’t know – and quite frankly I don’t care anymore and that’s been really liberating, I’m making content that I enjoy watching that, hopefully you guys enjoy watching and for as long as I’m enjoying it.
I’M excited to be here. I’M excited to share these stories and there are many, many more still to come. .