About: John Williamson
- Website
- http://www.johndwilliamson.com
- Details
- Writing about yourself is not the easiest thing to do. It’s hard to balance the desire to speak frankly about yourself and your ambitions and staying humble at the same time. With that in mind, here is a little background… perhaps some insight (therapy will tell me later). Background: I grew up wanting to do my own thing. When I rode in the car with my dad as a child, we were either playing math games or discussing some world affair that I was curious about. I have questioned the status quo ever since. Starting at age 14 I was mowing lawns in the summer and raking leaves in the fall. I was happy to work for 5 hours a week and make the same money my friends made with their 20 hour work weeks at their jobs. After my first year of college at UK in 1999, I left school and moved out to Salt Lake City to get out of my comfort zone and see what I could do on my own. I spent the next 3 years working odd jobs, starting a small street team marketing company, exploring the creation of a nightclub, and enjoying the world-class snowboarding all around me. After the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, I returned to Kentucky to complete school at the University of Kentucky. At the start of my second semester in the winter of 2003 I found my niche. A very small group of students (fewer than 10) were getting together to form the UK Entrepreneurs Club. After a few meetings I was convinced that I wanted to get involved in a leadership position. I went on to run the Eclub the following year and stay very involved throughout my time in Lexington. During these early meetings I met one of my stable business partners, Nicholas Solon. We were both antsy to get our feet wet as entrepreneurs. This resulted in the creation of 3rd Dimension Design, a web design and development company. While I was still in school, we started the business with no clue what we were doing. I still laugh at our early days when we didn’t even know how to setup a table in HTML, much less build anything remotely functional. We did, however, understand the need to find committed partners that could help make our company real. We met the 3rd member of our triumvirate, John Harbison. For the next couple of years, the 3 of us worked tirelessly on client projects and our signature product, Vision-Resume.com. We developed the system and attempted to raise money, even representing UK as the first undergraduate team to ever participate in a business plan competition. We came in 4th place. In 2006 a unique opportunity was presented to our fledgling company. iHigh.com was being revamped into a Web 2.0 destination for the high school sports community. I had the privilege of working alongside the business legend, Jim Host for the next year. This business did not turn out to be the silver bullet for me, but it certainly taught me a lot about business, investors and myself. In 2007 I branched out as an independent web consultant, providing web development project management and consulting services. I was able to work with several fantastic clients while cutting my teeth as a project manager. In the summer of 2008 I returned to Louisville. A great friend of mine gave me an opportunity to manage a fast-paced real estate investing firm that focused on short sale flipping. I refer to this as the “deep end of real estate investing.” During this process I discovered a variety of issues that needed attention. This, of course, led to my next startup, Uvestor.com. In September of 2008, full time development began. In December 2009, Uvestor brought on its first clients. Future: My entrepreneurial career has been messy to date, but it has taught me more than any corporate career ever could. My future is not yet charted, but my plan is coming into view.
