Scott Blum

SCOTT BLUM

Place of Birth : San Jose, California
Place of Living : Mountains of Ashland, Oregon

Founder Scott Blum sold his stake to SoftBank in 1999 for $195 million just before the company first filed to go public. Stock values plummeted in the year following Buy.com’s initial public offering and in 2001 Blum reacquired Buy.com and took it private for 17 cents per share. The move to digital raised BuyMagazine’s circulation from 600,000 customers to a viewership of 3.5 million.

He is now looking to take the company public again. Softbank invested $225 million in the company. He had the astute business sense to lock in a contract to buy memory chips from Texas Instruments and Micron just before prices skyrocketed. A year later, just days before his 21st birthday, he sold Microbanks to Sentron Technology in San Diego for $2.5 million in cash.

Scott then co-founded Pinnacle Micro, with his father, William, reselling Sony optical disk drives. Eventually, the company burgeoned into an $81 million-a-year business but ran into a wall when accusations of incorrect accounting practices got him into a tangle with the Securities and Exchange Commission. As a community college dropout with no technology training, Scott, the master salesman, convinced the big-name Softbank Venture Capital to invest $225 million in Buy.com.

In 2001, Scott Blum bought back the shares of Buy.com, taking the company private and no longer trading on the OTC Board. Even though Scott was small for his age, by the time he was 14, he had already met with huge success having won four gold medals, two silver and one bronze. He is also a successful multimedia artist who has collaborated with several popular authors, musicians, and visual artists and has produced many critically acclaimed works, including a series featuring ancient meditation music from around the world.