Do what you want but Don’t quit your day job
You can’t count on bankers or angels to get your venture off the ground. So maybe you should shoehorn it around a 9-to-5 career Samuel Tharp spends 50 hours a week as a vice president at ZoomInfo, an Internet search service that helps companies find information about prospective employees. After work Tharp, 39, returns to his Acton, Mass. home and spends two hours on another job: He is the founder of year-old Otrib.com, a service that helps people plan funerals, send death notices and write tributes to those who have passed away. In April Otrib had 25,000 unique visitors who spent 15 minutes, on average, on the site. A month later Tharp started selling ads to companies such as 1-800-Flowers.com, which pays $12 per 1,000 impressions. Otrib, which gets a cut of up to 15% on sales of bereavement cards and flowers that mourners purchase on the site, brings in $5,000 in revenue a quarter. Tharp hopes it will eventually grow big enough to free him from his day job. Until then Tharp, who spent $100,000 of his savings to bring Otrib to life, is happy to have his six-figure ZoomInfo salary to keep his company and his family afloat. “My day job gives me the freedom to take my time building Otrib,” Tharp says. “On my terms.”
