Your Chance to Rip into Me

[Ninot]

A company of men, especially.

[DriXnaK]

Pretty much. It's not hard to form one, all you have to do is fill out the articles of incorporation.

[Ninot]

So what did your company do?

[bc1871]

Go apply for the Transport Security Administration, even the most useless elements of American society can find employment there!

[Ninot]

Maybe you could become a phys ed instructor at an elementary school. Then you can combine your love of tennis with your love of small boys.

[SlowwHand]

Everyone does something until they do something different. Henry Ford didn't start out owning a motor vehicle company.
As far as being specific, yes, go specific, if you're looking for a specific job. Going general to show different strengths is fine, too. It's either go generalized or have several different resumes that illustrate different strengths.

[DriXnaK]

Kind of hard to put it all on here since it was much larger than just what I started it as. My ultimate goal was to destroy the USTA. I had a really big plan for everything. Basically, the original product was essentially a competitive match making system for tennis. That part was really simple, and the reality is anyone can make one. Mine was differentiated by the system I designed that included a custom made rating system based on expected outcomes as well as how I made it a very open system allowing everyone to creating matches as they pleased. I then also incorporated aspects of social networking sites allowing people to have their own profiles complete with private messaging. The other part of it though was a means for me to unite several aspects of the tennis industry on one site through the partnership system I developed. Essentially they had their own profiles too and had direct advertising to our members in the form of special deals specifically targeted by county and zipcode. By doing this I was able to get into any club I wanted and I very quickly got many people on board with the idea.

Over time as I amassed funding I would morph the system into allowing tournaments with our partners all over the nation. This would put me in direct competition with the USTA. The reality is that the tennis world hates the USTA, but the problem was I had no idea how big the market was to even get started. I needed a certain amount of funds to allow me to move to the next phase. That was the gamble. At the time though I calculated that even were my worst case scenario to become true I would still break even because I knew there was a market for it I just didn't know how large. I had tested the system before hand and had spoken to many people about their thoughts on the system as I designed it. I ran the numbers and did my homework, everything was in place.

What I didn't account for was all the issues that had absolutely nothing to do with the actual product itself. The first was the fact that I got screwed over by the people i contracted with to do the site. I was already in trouble at that point due to technical issues on the site and the eventual fall out of numerous issues that I won't go into. Then the greatest catastrophe of all struck, gas hit 4$ a gallon and the economy essentially collapsed. Tennis is not a strong sport to begin with. It's expensive, it's not all that popular in comparison to other sports, and it's very sensitive to poor economic conditions. I was ****ed. The reality is I should have never started the business in the first place because I didn't have the funding to pull something off that big. Looking back it was just stupidity and naivety on my part in some of the decisions I made, but at the time I had all these people telling me what a great idea it was and I had nothing else going for me. I had to take the chance. If it paid off I could make everything the way it should be and I would at the very least provide an alternative to the USTA. Unfortunately, whatever market was there for the system totally evaporated, and even my contingency plan to put it in the hands of a corporation like Prince or something disappeared as well, as the recession wore on and tennis took a really hard hit. There are guys that I knew that had been in tennis for decades that now can't find a job, and one is even selling life insurance now.

That's business though. At the very least I learned an enormous amount from it in a lot of different areas. I was stupid to try and start something that big and far reaching with so little funding and I paid the price for it. It was doomed from the start, even if it was a great idea and system by all accounts.

[Al B. Sure!]

I suggest doing Army OCS and breaking your leg twice.

[Al B. Sure!]

It depends if you are ugly.

If you are attractive, your degree doesn't matter. You can target your applications at certain companies with female or gay HR staff and get your foot in the door.

Interesting... how would I go about knowing which companies have female or gay HR staff?

Oh wait... who am I kidding? (straight) men don't work in HR!

[Ninot]

Maybe you can sell life insurance?

[DriXnaK]

I hate sales.

[Al B. Sure!]

I hate sales.

Picture this guy doing sales or any customer service work! Holy ****!

[SlowwHand]

Why would tennis be so economy constrained? It's pretty much like basketball. There are free courts everywhere, and the outlay for rudimentary equipment is low.

[Al B. Sure!]

Did he just blame the failure of his tennis-oriented company on $4 gasoline?

[DriXnaK]

One of the big aspects of my system is that people have to travel to other clubs. Furthermore, you then have to figure in court fees. That's not to mention racquets, strings and stringing, apparel, etc. Trust me, I know first hand it's a very expensive sport. Also, all you need is a basketball to go play basketball. Yes, you can play on public courts, but a racquet is going to run you over 100$. Then there's the cost of strings and stringing, and if you don't know how to string your own racquets and buy your string wholesale you are looking at 30-40$ a pop. Then of course there's tennis balls as well as driving and court fees. It all adds up really fast. Then lets not get started on if you're going to take any lessons. Competitive players tend to like to get better, and my system appeals to competitive players.

To put things in perspective for you, I used to saw through my strings in the span of about an hour to two hours. That's using 16 guage string mind you and cheap **** at that. The expensive stuff goes even faster. I sawed through some babolat razor spin string in under 20min. Granted, most people don't hit the kind of top spin I do, but you get the point. Luckily I started stringing racquets at a very early age and I bought all my string wholesale. As it was though, it was still running me 5$ a racquet by the time I was 14. Think about that, every day it was costing 5$ for strings alone. If you don't know anything about tennis you should just shut the **** up. My dad wasted so much money on it and I won't even go into all the negative effects that happened as a result.