I am Anari Sengbe, here’s my Entrepreneur’s story

I’ve always been a guy with ideas. If you ran into any of my childhood friends and they’ll tell you, “vic” (my childhood nickname) was always up to some money making idea. 

While the idea’s part is natural, idea’s are free… everyone has them. I credit afternoon cartoons for the will to try and pull my idea’s through. If you grew up in the US, you may remember cartoons like DuckTales, Rescue Rangers or TaleSpin. Almost every episode was centered around some money making plot and most importantly the 20 mins spent trying to execute the plot. 

I guess that stuck with me, so whatever idea came to my mind was followed through with an attempt to pull it off. 

My biggest idea regret of those days is “WebVideoId”, a video streaming service I hired developers in India to build a couple years ahead of youtube. Friends and family thought it’s another one of vic’s wild idea’s and thought nothing of it, proclaiming no one would record themselves on video and put it on the internet and I should give it up and get a regular job. 

Which I did in early 2006 as a loan officer with the largest mortgage company in the world at the time, Countrywide home loans.

In 2007 the mortgage market crashed, I was back to square one and youtube is now the shit.

2007 is also the year I made a significant life changing decision. A decision I call the best decision I ever made. This decision created waves in my butterfly universe still rippling today. If not for this decision, I likely would know nothing about steemit and I wouldn’t be as involved in crypto currency as I am today.

The decision I made was to open my web browser to google.com and type “how to build websites”. 

I moved back in with family, I rarely went out, I locked myself in my room and learned. Again my family chimed in, they were worried… the talks of jobs started again. This time I paid them no mind… furious they talked me out of a lucrative idea before. “$1.5 billion youtube sold for” I’d scream back at them.. “$1.5 BILLION”.

Days turn to weeks, weeks turned to months and finally I was able to edit, and or add features to Gamezy dot com, the latest idea I paid a couple developers in India to build months earlier.

Out of necessity I had to teach myself to code. My money was running out and every new feature or site improvement was quoted higher than the last one by the developers.

The platform was awesome, in my opinion. Gamezy allowed gamers to play each other for $5, $10 in madden, nba 2k etc on their xbox or playstation. My zeal for the deal was still ripe from my days in the aggressive mortgage world, so I would spam my competitors sites and drag gamers over to mine. I hit the gaming forums heavy trying to build relationships and slowly I started winning a few gamers over. 

This user acquisition push taught me a valuable lesson about branding… often stoned gamers, have to be able to spell the name of your gaming website. No one could spell Gamezy… 

After a couple days of pondering I landed on Gamerholic (surprised it wasn’t taken) and Gamerholic.com was born in 2008. The push to growth was hurdled by set backs of chargebacks. A gamer would play another gamer for $100 lose and file a dispute with their credit card company.  The nail in the coffin came in early 2012, when over $3,500 in chargebacks came from one player for games dating back over 45 days.

In June of 2012, I was faced with the crossroads of back to the 9–5 or starve and chug Gamerholic along. This time I made the 2nd best decision I’ve ever made in my life, that decision was to move to San Francisco with $300 borrowed from my mom... all she could spare.

If I’m going to crash, I’m going to crash knowing I gave it my all. Baloo never gave up when both wings were on fire… somehow he pulled it off. If there’s one thing afternoon cartoon specials taught me, it will work out in the end.. IF you are clever enough.

From reading some of my other posts, you may get the feeling I love San Francisco and I do. It’s a city that will take care of those willing to make the trek and chase their dreams of working at google, or building your own google. Monday through friday there are meetups for you to learn of some new coding language, a new feature the plethora of startups here are offering, or just a meet and smooze with other entreprenuers and develpers. These meetups are served with FREE pizza and beer.

On weekend there are hackathons, where you could win cash prizes, meet decision makers from various brands and expand your coding knowledge. Hackathons became my differentiator. My beat up Dell, a replacement after losing my HP to theft, stood out among the rows and rows and mac books singling me out as a guy who doesn’t know as much… so often I was a solo coder at hackathons.

Finally breakthrough!, I won the Emirates Airlines hackathon by building “PlayFlight” a way to use airline miles as virtual currency in video games.

Then I won another with HP by building Shine an app that used gamification to identify alpha's in an organization.

then another with Mercedes benz by building benzpay. A way to pay for gas, parking etc directly from your car with bitcoin.

Then mastercard loved my NuPay idea

then made it to techCrunch

and the Hillary Clinton campaign by building Go Vote, an app that allows donor's to donate towards free rides for voters and to have volunteers wait in line til the voter gets there.

Bitcoinist

cointelegraph and more...

Over the past 4 years, because I made the decision to learn to code AND because I made the decision to make the move to San Francisco, I was able to prove without a doubt that vic’s crazy idea’s are valid. I had achieved some sort of redemption from family and friends. Not that (that!) was my aim, but it was a HUGE monkey of my back. 

The money didn’t come yet, BUT the respect was now so valid, so encouraging that I now walk around with my chest poked out a little thumpier than before as my standard posture. 

Back tracking a bit, within months of moving to SF in 2008, I learned about bitcoin… the most interesting part to me was “no chargebacks”.

I transitioned Gamerholic to a crypto currency arcade, gamers win bitcoin playing video games. I also created Gamerholic coin, a SHA-256 crypto currency for gaming.

I'm my wild idea universe, I believe gaming is the best way to educate the masses on bitcoin and a gaming crypto currency is a legitimate option to solve world hunger. Grandious as it may sound, within 25 years the entire planet will be mobile, minus the none adaptive Amnish folk.

A kid any where in the world can win some form of crypto currency for doing well in a math game, EVEN if there are still unstable countries on the earth.

Gamerholic coin currently traded on bittrex.

My message to other entreprenuers...

stick to your convictions and your inner belief of what's right to you. Our histories and locations may be different, BUT there's a thing inside every true "there are problems to fix" entrepreneur that requires you listen to it and no one else who's not encouraging. Sometimes that encouragement must be earned and we must also accept that as entreprenuers.

Regardless the set back Follow through, follow through, follow through as best you can.