The History of FanBox.com

Many people have asked how FanBox was started; by whom; and what are the motivations of the FanBox team.

Using this blog, I will do my best to bring you the FanBox story - by interviewing FanBox employees - both current and past employees. 

If you work (or previously worked) at FanBox, please send me your stories, photos or videos -- and I will do
my best to assemble them into their correct chapter.

As I progress, I will continually add more chapters over the coming weeks and months -- and go back to edit previous chapters -- until we have the full story of the Good, the Bad, and Everything In-Between.

The Beginning

FanBox was started here in a 3-bedroom condo (apartment #402) in San Diego, California:

It was started in a residential condo (instead of an office building) because the company had no money and wanted to keep the costs very, very low.

Everyone knew that if they wanted to eventually be able to give money back to the community users and their chosen charitable causes, they would need to keep the company private and out of the control of profit-seeking investors.

This condo was owned by one of the employees, so they didn't have to pay rent.

The company had no money, and could pay no salaries or give employees any benefits -- for years.

Here's Greg, who departed a company called mp3.com to take on the company's marketing responsibilities:

Amanda was one of the very first engineers, and quickly got a reputation as someone who could do technical magic:

Amanda, like the other FanBox engineers, was amazingly talented and intelligent.

FanBox was an extremely difficult place to work if you were not simply the best at what you did, because -- due to the lack of resources -- you had to figure out how to get a lot done each day -- usually as much as what 5 or even 10 "normal" engineers could accomplish in a day.

Every single person that lasted more than a short period of time at FanBox, had at least the following three (3) things in common:

1) They were extremely intelligent, and world-class excellent at their craft. 

For example, Amanda had previously achieved a perfect SAT Score (ZERO wrong answers) -- it was discovered years into her employment at FanBox -- a fact that she had not volunteered up herself.

In another chapter, I will detail some of the technologies that these same people invented -- some of which are things that you are using today -- each and every day -- not just on FanBox but virtually everywhere on the Web.  

When I get to writing that chapter, you will be amazed that you didn't already know that many of the things that you use every day (on Facebook, Yahoo, Google and other web sites) were actually invented by FanBox employees -- and to prove it, the United States Patent Office recently awarded a series of official patents to FanBox for these inventions.