[thumper]

Originally Posted by Jgresch

Re-opening on Boundary by Benz and Autohaus, I think they're under a new name though, so probably vancouver motorcars.

Not sure on details, didn't see a site either

Trade Talk: The entrepreneurial overdrive

HO A GO-GO: Folks filled a 3,000-square-foot, Boundary-at-Kitchen showroom recently at a debut party for Shanghai-born Michael Ho’s Vancouver Motorcars firm. Pushed outside were Ferraris, sporty Audis and Ho’s Mercedes-Benz SLR 6.3 on which he must pay a hefty insurance premium. That’s because, like Latvia-born personal and business partner Anna Kudrjasova, he is 20 years old but already a seasoned entrepreneur.

The two sold their Ritzypin online womenswear firm recently when, despite satisfactory sales margins, local manufacturing was barely profitable.

Ho’s enterprises began at age 14, when he sold his World of Warcraft game account on eBay for $700, bought a similar one for $300, “and realized there was a market for that.” Recognized as a dealer who paid his clients, Ho recruited a local coder, then signed on with a Dane who stiffed him for $3,000. Even so, the business flourished, and still would, Ho, said, “if I had the time for it.”

Taking a high-school work-experience job at Future Shop, he befriended Amanjot Singh, whose now-defunct movie-streaming site has morphed into a 120-employee firm in India. At Singh’s suggestion, Ho has two $3,000 miners — computers, that is — in his office that generate one bitcoin each per month. That virtual currency has fallen 40 per cent from the $1,000-range valuation that would have seen the miners net around 200 per cent.

Ho was 17 when a cousin asked him to help buy an Audi A4. Impressed, the salesman recruited him. Ho soon used game-accounts capital to buy and sell a BMW 335. Juggling U.S. car-search trips with a Simon Fraser University lecture schedule, he founded import-exporter Advent Automotive, took over California-bound friend Roy Lee’s Momo operation, rented the Boundary Road space, opened Vancouver Motorcars and looks forward to receiving a Lamborghini Huracan.

Meanwhile, remembering “high-school friends who travelled two hours a day to do three-hour shifts,” he’s launched the sprouthire.com site to link entry-level employees and employers quickly and economically.

“I have a perfect business plan for this,” Ho said. “But, I need partners because now I work like a robot myself.” Maybe he’ll ease off when he’s 21.

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