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I've been an entrepreneur since I was 18. I started a company with a bunch of buddies that got funded in my senior year, and that's when I finished school. It was called Scour, a peer-to-peer service, file-sharing.

I was a telemarketer in my senior year at high school. I had to sell prosthetic limbs to paralysed veterans. I was making 150 bucks a week and it was horrible.

Samasource's largest clients are technology companies such as Microsoft, Google, Getty Images, and TripAdvisor, which contract with my company rather than a traditional outsourcing company in order to participate in 'impact sourcing' - conscious efforts to reduce poverty by moving money into places that need it.

I operated a business where I let someone steal three-quarters of a million dollars.

I started out printing silk screen t-shirts. I sold ink pens. I worked construction. I worked at a gas station. I pumped gas. I was a mechanic for a little bit. I went into sewers, down into sewer lines. I had a lot of somewhat unpleasant gigs for a time there.

My second business would have succeeded but for competitors' jealousy. I was selling motorbike gear cheap, but the people I was undercutting complained to the manufacturer and cut off my supply. It showed me how corrupt business can be. When I sold phones, the same thing happened, but this time I was ready.

EBay gave me the framework to discover I was an e-commerce entrepreneur. I touched everything, from shipping to logistics.

I was a scam artist in high school for a while.

I spent my entire first pay cheque from 'Cracker,' a TV show on ABC, on an Audi because my other car broke down and I needed to get to work.

There is an enormous shadow industry of scammers and amateurs who prey on aspiring writers, who divert people from the real publishing industry into this shadow world of vanity publishing and fee-charging agents.