John Gotts has been self-employed for the majority of his adult life and has worked with his father creating web start-ups since 1993, finding success in 2004 selling anti-spyware software online. John has identified ideas ahead of the market that have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. John's been involved in credit-card rewards software, anti-spam, anti-spyware, attempting to legitimize the BitTorrent space with the MPAA, web search, Wiki.com, hydrogen generation, advanced search and explored an energy company with retired U.S. Senator Larry Craig, who is now an adviser to his new venture in Palo Alto. John's work on hydrogen generation initially aimed at reducing fuel needs for diesel engines. Although there was not a remarkable decrease in fuel intake, there was an enormous increase in low-RPM HP and engine torque, and a dramatic reduction in emissions. This work continues today with help from his partners in Idaho.
John was invited to LaunchSiliconValley.org in June 2009 to showcase his latest foray in the web search market, but ended the venture when it was found that the site was too accurate and ad click-through-rates dropped to less than 1%, from an average of 11% for traditional websites like Google.
In July 2009 John moved to Palo Alto and with his father founded iBuzzIt, Inc., which runs the website, Chum.ly (CHUM dot LY, although Chumly.com forwards to the correct web address if you mis-type). iBuzzIt expects to employee more than one hundred people by the end of April. John serves as the company's Chairman & CEO and is currently hiring C-level and mid-level management to help oversee Chumly's growth. Marketing and PR efforts will begin in earnest in late-March to early April of 2010. Chumly is an invite-only social media site, which is wholly-owned by iBuzzIt, Inc. Garage Technology Ventures (
Garage.com) is a major shareholder and Bill Reichert, the managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, has been mentoring John for more than half a decade. Heather Burton, John's sister, was an early investor along with John and his father.
John is returning to Washington State in March 2010 to help bring living-wage jobs and better education to the people in his district. John has already begun his campaign for U.S. Congress in the November 2010 election. John campaigned in 2008 and 2009 for State Representative in Washington. John intends to bring a non-partisan message to his campaign, knowing that united we stand and divided we fall. John took nearly 40% of the vote in 2008 and received nearly 33% of the vote in 2009, even after announcing that he was withdrawing from the race to start his new venture in California. John advanced to the general election when he beat the competing Democrat in the race, who actually campaigned. John believes that his message of good jobs paying living-wages resonated with the Washington State voters and intends to make this the main issue of his campaign in 2010.
Although John has seen tremendous success he takes equal pride in the projects he's involved himself in that didn't come to fruition. Gotts is quoted as saying, "Just as Edison failed 10,000 times before getting the light bulb to work, so must an inventor/entrepreneur have the tenacity and drive to respect failure as a learning experience." With that attitude John has self-funded his own start-ups for the better part of two decades and continues to innovate today as a self-made, self-educated inventor and business person.
John Gotts has a profound love for business and has since riding his skateboard to E.F. Hutton at ten years old, where he learned to read and understand the Wall St. Journal from one of the stock brokers in the office. At this age he would also spend time at the Lansing Public Library pouring over annual reports and later discuss interesting businesses with his father. While living in Sun Valley, Idaho in 1994 to 1997 John Gotts wrote a stock trading newsletter called TrendTrading.com, which focused on trading core blue-chip stocks, which John would buy or short based on historical charts and trends.
John is an avid high-speed snowboarder and enjoys playing the guitar, singing karaoke and skydiving.
