Dave Levine: I
was born 5/6/68 and grew up in Lynnfield Ma. As a child I was usually a good boy doing as
my parents asked and kissed the asses of all teachers. In High School, I was in the
“brain” group and thus spent most weekends studying, but I longed to have more
fun. After High School, I went to the University of Michigan because I wanted a big school, was told it was a great school, and since they accepted me in November, I didn’t have to do any more applications. I majored in Economics, loved the school, and learned how to party.
After college, I spent a year in Japan because back in 1990 everyone thought the Japanese were going to take over the world. I figured I better see what is up over there, since I had my own plans for world domination. I lived with a Japanese family in Shibuya, Tokyo and supported myself by teaching English. Almost every night I went out with my Japanese buddies drinking beer and meeting people; in the process I became conversationally fluent in the language - especially slang.
After Japan I went to NYC
with the idea of becoming rich fast. Unfortunately no one would hire me and I ended up
working for the government. After six months of experiencing waste and inefficiency beyond
belief, I gave my notice. The next week, they
fired me.I had decided to leave NY to work at my father’s vending company as he promised to give me free reign. I worked hard and learned a lot, but after seeing the world wide web for the first time in 1994, I told my father that I would have to take a leave of absence to start a company on the internet.
My business idea was to take orders on the web and then forward the order to companies who would drop ship the products to my customers. My goal was (and still is) to build a billion dollar company with no employees, no overhead, and no inventory. I named my business Convergence, Inc.
I started Wicked Cool Mall (now WCOOL.com) and opened stores selling lobsters, sneakers, watches, paintings, t-shirts, etc. But my most successful store by far was one called Cyber-Sex-Toys. Eventually I decided there was no value in promoting many stores in a mall and phased out the slowest stores one by one.
SEXTOY.com has been one of the largest retailers of sextoys on the internet since 1995. In 1996, I started an affiliate program offering other webmasters the opportunity to customize and promote a free version of the sextoy site and earn commission on every sale. We were the first and are now run the largest affiliate network of sextoy sites on the net – SexToySex.com. We also started a wholesale membership club and are now the largest at selling sextoys at wholesale prices on the internet through SextoyClub.com.
Meanwhile Wicked Cool Mall became WCOOL.com and remained as the destination for my personal spewing of opinions. For two years I wrote an essay every week about ideas I didn’t hear being expressed elsewhere. Then for a year and a half I had a live cable access TV show where I and guests would have discussions and take the incessant crank calls from local viewers. I also produced the worst movie ever made – DoodieMovie.com.