[MrSandMan]

When I started Gear-Vault.com back in 2008, my goal was to create an online gear classifieds website because eBay fees were ridiculous. They'd take such a huge part of the sale. So the only other option at the time was random guitar forums to buy and sell gear.

It wasn't always safe buying from faceless strangers on random forums, but I remember it being tight knit -- and everyone knowing everyone across the interwebz for the most part -- and so never really saw many scams.... but the problem was users usually had cross post/promote on like 5 to 10 different forums to get more eyes on their sales. Same thing with people wanting to buy; they had to surf across a bunch of forums to see what was listed. And forums were so much more popular back in 2004-2008 than they are today. (Harmony Central used to be a BEAST!)

So a light went off in my head that the guitar community needed a one stop classified site, and that's when I created Gear-Vault. It was much harder than I could ever imagine trying to promote it, but it did have about 50-100 sellers on there, but I just didn't have the resources to get it to really stick, so I abandoned the idea and turned G-V into a guitar gear webzine. And that was a mild [hobby] success.

5 years later here comes Reverb.com and are doing exactly what the guitar community needed. And they really stung eBay to the point where eBay actually lowered their final sellers fee only on musical instruments from like 10% to 3% (I think)... HUGE Success!

Reverb threw millions into growing into the powerhouse they are today. They had investors with deep pockets and a CEO/Owner with experience.

Turns out, Reverb recently sold to Etsy for a reported $275 million. Wow

I look back at this like Uncle Rico did on Napoleon Dynamite and think "that could have been me" haha.

No travel device for me, though (Napoleon Dynamite reference)