I've been the client.
Twenty-five years building software, ten of them running the kinds of businesses we now build for. A million dollars in month one, and two companies I lost.
How I got here.
I taught myself to build when the yellow pages still mattered more than the internet.
My first company — building ecommerce platforms on osCommerce, back when putting a shop online was still a project rather than a signup.
Running projects for companies whose names are on buildings.
- AT&T
- JPMorgan Chase
- Bank of America
Restaurants, a nail salon, three online businesses. I built the software for all of them.
One company, all of my focus, and the first time everything I've learned points in the same direction.
What I built, and what happened to it.
Five ventures. Two of them I still have. The rest taught me more.
Over $1,000,000 in our first month. Hoverboards were catching fire. We ran radio, television and a PR campaign that explained why — cheap batteries — and what to look for when buying one. More than thirty outlets: Good Morning America, where we sold $400,000 in a day, Inside Edition twice, ABC and Fox stations, ESPN New York. All of it went through a Shopify store I built myself.
Zero to over 20,000 international members. Where I learned to run advertising across borders, in currencies and languages that weren't mine.
A platform to buy or rent pre-owned Gucci and Chanel, with a monthly plan for a different handbag every month. Before Rent the Runway existed. Nobody had built the category yet, so there was nothing to copy.
Grew to five locations. Still running today.
Modern Asian fusion, and a bubble tea franchise. I turned off the ovens in late 2025 and walked away, which is one of the hardest things I've done. Going back through those numbers line by line is what started We Know Restaurants.
Radio, TV and PR — all at once.
Three channels, more than thirty outlets, and a fast education in what each one is actually good for.
Every hoverboard story in December 2015 was about batteries catching fire. We were already buying radio and television, and that did what paid media does — it put the name in front of people who hadn't heard it.
The PR campaign was the one I'd run again first. Instead of talking about the product we explained the problem: which cells were failing, why, and what a buyer should check before handing over any money. Newsrooms needed a manufacturer who could say it plainly, and that isn't a slot you can buy.
Good Morning America put me on to walk their audience through it, and we sold $400,000 that day. Inside Edition twice. ABC and Fox stations. The radio buy is what got us onto ESPN New York. Thirty-odd outlets in all, and a million dollars in the first month.
Paid media buys attention. Answering the question earns it — and the second one travelled further than the money behind it.
Running all three at once taught me what each channel is worth, which is knowledge I still use — and the part that transferred is the instinct underneath it. Don't build a better version of the thing everyone sells. Work out what the question actually is, and answer it properly.
And then I lost three of them.
Glitek ended for reasons outside my control. Segway brought a patent dispute, and new UL rules reset how a hoverboard had to be built — the category I'd been selling into effectively stopped existing.
Parcel Zoom and Fiona's Find ended because of me. I was running too many things at once, none of them getting what it needed, and when one went down it pulled the others with it. That isn't bad luck. That's a founder who mistook activity for progress.
Some of it I couldn't control. Some of it was my fault. I can tell you which was which.
I sat with that for a long time. What I took from it is the thing I'd have paid real money to know ten years earlier: nothing compounds unless you stay with it.
Now there's one.
Why any of that matters to you.
I've signed the lease. I've made the payroll and missed the payroll. I've paid the processor, the delivery app, the booking platform and the SEO retainer, and I've gone back through the statements line by line to find out where it all went.
And I built the software for every one of those businesses myself — while running them. That combination is the entire reason LFG works the way it does. I am not learning your business from a brief. I have been sitting where you are sitting.
Everything is buildable now, which means the only thing that still matters is knowing what to build. That part I learned the expensive way.
Tony LeFounder · LFG VenturesBring me your numbers.
Thirty minutes, with me. Tell me how the business actually runs.
“I've been building since the yellow pages mattered more than the internet.”Tony · Founder, LFG Ventures