Who is Michia Rohrssen?
Most people today know me online as a 9-figure entrepreneur and investor.
But my story starts from humble beginnings. Read on to learn how I got here.
1989
Born - Ithaca, NY
I was born to hippy parents in a small town in Upstate NY.
I was born on St. Michaels Day, but of course naming me Michael would make my name far too easy to pronounce.
Instead, my parents loved the Bob Marley song Kaya and decided to combine Michael and Kaya to come up with Michia (pronounced muh-ky-uh).
1995
The Move to South Carolina
My family split up when I was 4 years old. Eventually, when I was six I went to live with my mom in South Carolina. We didn’t have much but we made ends meet.
A year later, my uncle, who worked at IBM would end up gifting us a desktop PC. Looking back, this moment of pure luck and generosity would be one of the most impactful moments of my life.
2001
My First Online Business
When I was 12 years old I had one goal in life - play as many video games as possible. Unfortunately, my computer was completely outdated and couldn’t run the latest games. After weeks of searching “how to make money online” I came up with my first business idea. Mining Runescape Gold with bots. In short time my bot army was making over $100/day, a lot of money for a poor kid living in the suburbs of South Carolina.
Sadly, my bots were banned just over a week later, but I couldn’t care less. I had made over $1,000 and bought myself a fancy new gaming computer. I was the first kid I knew with an LCD monitor, a marvel of technology at the time.
2007
Internet Hustling Era Begins
After graduating high school I got hit with some bad news - my family couldn’t afford to help with college. I tried selling cameras at Circuit City to make ends meet, but the pay at $7.25/hr wasn’t exactly paying for my $30k/year school bills.
Instead, I looked back to my Runescape days and started trying to make money online again.
I launched dozen of websites from ankle tattoo affiliate schemes to full blown info products featuring yours truly teaching self-defense on a 7 DVD physical set that could be purchased for $297 and shipped directly from our warehouse. These were the early, wild west, days of online marketing and I was hooked. After college, I started my own digital agency helping other companies setup paid and organic acquisition.
2014
The Great Collapse
Seven years into my internet hustling era and I was making up to $1,000/day traveling the world as a digital nomad with nothing but a laptop and a sense of adventure. And then…it all collapsed. Google banned some of my websites, clients stopped paying and I was broke.
Even though I was making 6 figures, I didn’t know how to save, manage or invest money. No one ever taught me these things and I was just a kid figuring it out himself. Tail between my my legs, I started doing more research. It was clear I still had a lot to learn.
In my research, I came across these kids my age making millions and even billions all in their 20’s. It all seemed to be happening in Silicon Valley, so at 24 years old I sold everything I owned and bought a one way ticket to San Francisco, CA.
2015
Co-founded Prodigy
After a year in San Francisco it became clear. I had to start a tech company. But how?
I eventually met Marty Hu, who would become my co-founder and CTO at Prodigy. Our idea was simple. $1.3trillion dollars of cars are sold every year. But car buying still sucks. If we can make it a little better, we' could be on to something big. We coded the MVP on my Ikea couch in my 300 SQFT apartment and after that graduated to our first office - the free Capital One co-working cafe where we raised our first $250k.
2021
Prodigy Acquired for $110m
After 6 years Prodigy had grown from two guys in a very small apartment with big dreams to an industry leading company processing over $4 billion dollars in annual car sales.
We’d raised $21m from some of the world’s best investors and had built a world class team.
Fresh off the two best quarters in company history, Upstart approached us about an acquisition. They asked me what it would take to buy us. I said $100m would probably do the trick. They called my bluff and offered $110m as their first offer. Who I was to say no?
2023
Giving Back
In the 2 years following the acquisition, I stayed on and continued to run Prodigy as CEO, growing the business from 42 employees to over 200 and 8x'ing our customer count.
It’s always hard to close such a large chapter of your life, but I felt like I’d accomplished more than everything I promised Upstart and my team. But I felt I could accomplish bigger and greater things if I focused my energy on a new mission.
And with that, I started this website. My goal is simple: to share everything I learned in nearly 2 decades of entrepreneurship for free with the hopes that you can achieve your own dreams.