At Founders League, we believe its important that the startup community know who's who in their 'hood. We'll be running a series of profiles to introduce community members and make it easier for us to connect, trade insights, and share resources.
Who: C.J. Bordeleau
Company: Image Ranker
Twitter: @cbordeleau
1) What's your gig all about?Image Ranker is a way for people to share and rate images with communities they belong to. In a world full of content that is relevant to everyone, we want to be the place the inside jokes get shared.
2) How did you get into entrepreneurship
I have always had a drive to do things differently. It wasn't until college where the drive shifted towards entrepreneurship. When I first started all I had were ideas and for a while I did very little to make those ideas into reality. As an economics grad, I would defeat myself by saying "if only I had a technical co-founder I could do this." I would search and search for one with no luck. This went on for 6 months, until one day I had the realization that no one was going to do it for me. If I wanted it to be built I was going to have to build it myself. I locked myself in a room and did every exercise on code academy and started going to hackathons. I networked with other programmers and learned from them. I now contribute to many open source projects and have collaborated on projects with other developers with 15+ years of experience. My original idea turned out to be not a great one, but it lead me to new heights, so it was a success in my book!
3) One thing you would tell an up and comer about what it takes to succeed? Act! Learn programing, learn design, network, come to events, help other startups, do something!
4) How's life on the 5th Floor of the Founders League?Awesome! The 5th floor is great space. It is a place where feedback is only a few feet away. It's a place you can work beside some great entrepreneurs. There is a little bit of everything up here from designers to developers to biz folks. It's a great mix.