(Newswsire.net -- February 10, 2013) Montreal, Canada –As a business student at Dawson College, Anthony William Shannon, is not waiting to graduate to get his first business experience.  In fact at the age of 19, he has already started several businesses to date, from importing and reselling apparel and consumer electronics on social media sites starting when he was 14, to events planning and the production of top Canadian artist musical events in local clubs.  But his most valuable business lesson came ironically from his biggest financial flop.

  “I started buying and selling polo shirts when I was 14, I guess I knew pretty young I was a decent salesman. This gave me confidence and helped me have some early successes with smaller events planning, where I would fill a venue with 100 or so young people and get paid really well for it. I then transformed this into a really big event where I rented a 1500 person hall in Montreal, and sold the place out at $ 15 per ticket.  I made more than $ 10,000.00 that night, I remember looking out from the balcony over a sold-out venue and being really proud.  Soon after I spent all I had saved, on hiring a big name act for a hip hop show, and tried to make a place for myself as a concert promoter. I ended up losing my entire investment, learning the hard way that actual event production with acts is a much more risky business, and it’s much harder to gauge ROI on projects you take on at that scale.  I learned a great lesson about management that I will never forget.” Says Anthony.

 Soon after losing it all, his father who is involved in digital marketing for film, suggested Anthony work with him in learning how to build mobile applications, which if he was good at it, he could apply his salesmanship to getting corporate app customers, which he would later learn how to build and sell.

 “My father who works in the film business, had acquired some tools for building mobile apps, and he said, - why don’t you use this to build apps you can sell to local businesses? – So I took him up on it, followed an app building training he gave me, and sold my first app to a local club for a few thousand dollars within 2 months.  Since then I have built dozens more, for a wide range of corporate clients.  If I had not lost all my money in the events management business, I would have never discovered app development, as I am not normally a very technical person. Now less than a year later, because of that financial flop, I have a whole new perspective on my future.  Besides working on corporate apps for businesses, I am also in the development stage of a new social network project focused on music.  Indy music is cool.  And I do believe the best music of this world is not being heard. This is why my current startup, which is already attracting some serious investors, uses the latest in terms of Web and Mobile technologies in order to try and solve the music and event industry’s most prominent problems.” Says Anthony William Shannon.

 Anthony has been a keen member of many of the local startup meetings in the Montreal area, and has even travelled to New York City to attend the Peter Thiel Fellowship Program yearly Summit, an event bringing together some of the top youngest visionaries of tomorrow in order to discuss, create, and share groundbreaking ideas. His current startup project cannot yet be discussed publicly due to ongoing negotiations with investors.

“Montreal offers a vibrant community of developers in the startup community, but I was really intrigued by what I learned in New York about how fast things can move in California when it comes to startups. I hope I get the opportunity soon to get my ideas into those larger creative arenas.

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/anthony-william-shannon/61/264/b0a

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