Gumroad

How long is a weekend? Sometimes, just one Big Side Project.

Sahil Lavingia is a self-taught developer who resides in San Francisco, California. 

The creators of Pinterest contacted Lavingia during his first semester at USC. He left school and joined the site as one of its founding members.

At the height of its popularity Lavingia left Pinterest to establish his own business.  

Sahil Lavingia launched Gumroad in 2011. Over the course of one weekend in 2011, Sahil created the initial version of Gumroad. Gumroad enables creators to market their digital goods to their audience directly.

“I was at home on a Friday night in Palo Alto and I really wanted to learn realistic icon design,” Lavingia says. “So I sat down at my computer and worked on this photorealistic pencil I’d designed in Photoshop. It took me around four hours and I thought, ‘Wait a sec–if I follow a bunch of designers on Twitter, a bunch of designers probably follow me, and I should try to sell this. I could just put it up for a buck, and if you buy it, I’m gonna do it again.”

While remaining the only member in Gumroad, Lavingia announced in February 2012 a $1.1 million seed round from a distinguished group of investors that included Accel, Chris Sacca, Max Levchin, SV Angel, Josh Kopelman, Seth Goldstein, Naval Ravikant, and Danny Rimer.

In his blog, he says, “It doesn’t matter how amazing your product is, or how fast you ship features. The market you’re in will determine most of your growth”.

Three months later, it was revealed that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) had led a $7 million Series A financing for Gumroad. Former Twitter engineering head Michael Abbott made the investment as a KPCB partner for the first time.

Surely he has been one of The Most Interesting Teenager In Silicon Valley.

– Do you have a favorite billionaire? Check out Compare Billionaires to see how they are doing today –