How A $6,000 Comeback After The Dot-Com Crash Built A $2.7 Billion Empire: 'Don't Start A Company Unless It's An Obsession'

Tomas Gorny didn't set out to be a billionaire. In fact, in 2001, he only wanted $5,000 a month to keep the lights on and his mortgage paid. Fresh off losing nearly everything in the dot-com crash, the Polish immigrant had just $6,000 to his name and a simple dream: survival.

Fast-forward two decades, Gorny is the CEO and cofounder of Nextiva, a Scottsdale-based customer experience management firm valued at a staggering $2.7 billion. According to a company spokesperson, his personal net worth now surpasses $1 billion. 

But the road to riches wasn't paved with shortcuts; instead, it was a master class in resilience, strategy and planning for the future. 

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Gorny's journey began in 1996 when he cofounded Internet Communications, a website-hosting startup. Two years later, the company sold for $6 million in cash and stock. When the buyer, Interliant, went public in 1999, Gorny's shares briefly made him a multimillionaire. But the dot-com crash wiped out all but $6,000 of his fortune.

“I never looked at it like, ‘I need to make the [millions] back.' It wasn't important to me," Gorny says. Instead, he doubled down on what he knew best: building. In 2001, he launched Ipower, a platform designed to help people and businesses create websites. 

The tech industry was in shambles, but the internet itself was booming – global users had grown from just 16 million in 1995 to over 500 million by 2001.

Gorny started small, prioritizing steady profitability over explosive growth. His early customers brought in just enough to keep the company afloat. However, as his products improved, the business eventually attracted hundreds of new users daily. 

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By 2007, Ipower was thriving and Gorny sold it to Endurance International for a reported $100 million. This strategic move gave both companies a competitive edge as giants like Google and Microsoft began dominating the market.

For Gorny, the sale wasn't about cashing out. "When you focus on building your business, your exit will be significantly better than you ever envisioned," he explains. That philosophy guided his next venture, Nextiva, which he cofounded in 2006.

Today, Nextiva is thriving in a customer experience management market projected to hit $70.2 billion by 2032, with a current CAGR of 17.5%, according to Fortune Business Insights.

Gorny's story echoes advice from fellow billionaire Mark Cuban: "If you have an exit strategy, it's not an obsession," Cuban wrote in Entrepreneur magazine. Looking back, Gorny says financial success is just validation that they've done something right and different.

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