Super Entrepreneur: Anthony Carbone

By day, Anthony Carbone is an engineer at DuPont Canada. From 6pm to 2am, he’s his own man. Not only does he travel back to his old university town, Guelph, to grow his property management firm, but he also moonlights as a web designer for hire with his partner Vinay Menon.

It’s in his soul. He has to be busy. “I’ve always been an entrepreneur, ever since high school; cutting lawns, doing landscaping, selling my time as a web programmer and developer back in university.”

Why does he do it?

Sure, there’s the obvious reason. “Just extra money, basically.” But it’s more than that. Rattling around the back of his head are a huge number of unexpressed ideas that he feels compelled to act on.

In fact, there is one idea in particular Anthony and Vinay have been
driving towards since they met in undergrad. As Anthony tells it,

I met my partner outside of the engineering building at the University of Guelph in my second year and the topic was cars, money and the Internet. It was just at the time when everything was peaking and the Internet bubble was at its prime.

They decided since to moonlight as web designers to raise enough cash to launch their true passion, a car spotting online community called MadWhips.

Car spotting?

Taking photos of sweet rides. Whips? Well, I had to ask too.

Anthony

Obviously the “whips” is referring to the new slang term for your ride.

Sunir

Is it really?

Anthony

Yeah, well, like your crib is your house, your whip is your pimped-out ride, right?

Sunir

I feel old now. Thank you very much.

But isn’t moonlighting a problem for DuPont?

Anthony says,

I have a really good relationship with my boss and he knows that I’m not really interested in going anywhere for the next two, three, four years and I still enjoy that corporate education that I’m getting by being at DuPont and interacting with all the different business units. That kind of corporate experience to me is more important than venturing off on my own right now.

Moonlighting is a distraction, though.

They’ve been striving to achieve their dream for years, working hard on the side. But it’s on the side, and their day jobs rule their schedule. The question Anthony left me with was, “when do we take on that certain level of clientele and when can we afford to say, ‘Okay, one of us can quit our jobs’?