DO

John Rampton was already a serial entrepreneur by age 32, with two successful exits under his belt. His first major success came with Maple North, acquired by Art and Science for seven figures. But it was Pixlou—a 360-degree home photo technology company—that proved most lucrative, selling for over $10 million, partly due to a patent John had secured on the 360-degree spinning photo technique. With capital from these wins, John was primed for his next venture.

The inspiration for DO came from observing Venmo's explosive growth and realizing a massive gap in the market. "Why isn't this worldwide?" he wondered. He had also experienced the pain firsthand as a freelancer—waiting 5-7 days for payments to clear in his bank account was absurd for a trusted business person. Every business in the world needs to get paid faster, and John saw a massive opportunity to build the modern-day Western Union.

John officially launched DO in 2015 as a self-funded venture, but he didn't skimp on the foundation. He invested nearly $500,000 of his own capital in the company—much of it upfront. The domain alone cost $130,000 for do.com. He built a CTO partnership, retaining majority equity while giving his technical co-founder meaningful skin in the game.

DO positioned itself as a bills and payments platform with invoicing, time tracking, and payroll capabilities. The core business model was elegantly simple: the company made money by taking a small percentage (0.5%-1%) of every credit card transaction processed through the platform, with variation depending on card type (AMEX transactions commanded slightly higher fees).

John leveraged his core competency: online marketing and SEO. He had previously built Host.net from nothing to page one rankings on Google in just nine months for one of the internet's most competitive keywords ("hosting"). That success proved he could rank websites and drive organic traffic at scale.

With DO, he deployed the same playbook. Within nine months of launch, DO had attracted approximately 60,000 signups, with about 50% (30,000) becoming active users. The platform was driving "tens of thousands of customers each month," according to John, primarily through organic search and his marketing expertise.

By February 2016—just nine months after launch—DO processed $4 million in transaction volume in a single month. At an average fee of roughly 1%, this translated to approximately $40,000 in monthly revenue. The split was heavily weighted toward B2B (95%), which made sense given the invoicing and payroll features.

What worked was John's ability to build brand trust and rank for payment-related keywords. His reputation as a top PPC expert and online marketing guru gave DO credibility from day one. The product solved a real, urgent problem: getting paid faster.

However, the business was immediately attractive to larger players. Within 6-8 weeks of launch, a competitor approached with a serious acquisition offer—a term sheet valued in the "multi-millions." John declined. His mindset was clear: "Our goal is not to be acquired. Our goal is to change... our goals to change... put them out of business." He wanted to compete head-to-head with PayPal, Venmo, and Stripe, not exit early.

As of the interview (likely early 2016), DO was nine months old, had 60,000 signups, 30,000 active users, and was processing $4 million monthly in transaction volume. With zero external funding and $500,000 of John's personal capital invested, the company was self-sustaining and profitable at the metric that mattered most: transaction volume growth. John was spending the majority of his time on DO while maintaining his other ventures and writing commitments, using his platform to build the next generation of B2B payments infrastructure.