This
ex-construction worker from Portugal found his home on the web when he got into
porn. Alright, no, x-rates.com isn't a porn site. But, that's the first thing many
people think of when they see the domain name. Instead of porn, Tiago had a mind
for money... and how much it was worth... in other countries.
Tiago started at an Internet development company late in 1998 with a will to learn
more about computers and the Internet. At that time, the Internet was a pretty
messy place (has it gotten any better?) with information at our fingertips, but
at the cost of making them bloody nubs from hours of endless searching.
It was after only a few months of learning HTML and Perl that Tiago decided to make
his daily surfing easier. Since he always checked the exchange rates page on the
Federal Reserve site, he decided that it would be much easier if the information
came to him every morning. Soon he had friends asking him if they could get a copy
of the day's rates. So started a daily exchange rates mailing list that
soon blossomed into a full fledged web site. A web site that within a little
over 2 years can now boast over 15,000 visitors a day and over 1.2 million
pages served each month.
Unfortunately, things didn't always look so rosy.
There were many times where Tiago was given patronizing comments by coworkers
on how his site was a ridiculous idea. "Who wants to go to your site when they
can hit the federal reserve site and get the same information?" was a comment that
he heard all too often. He didn't care. He believed that if you make a site
with good intent, the site will prosper. Unfortunately, this isn't always the
case but it's nice to know that sometimes it DOES happen.
Now, before you hit the interview...
We here at TW have known Tiago most of his Internet life. We'd like to say
that we are ecstatic Tiago's site is doing so well and wish him wealth and
happiness in all his ventures.
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