Andrew Wilkinson
| Andrew Wilkinson | |
|---|---|
| Born | Vancouver, British Columbia |
| 🏳️ Nationality | Canadian |
| 💼 Occupation | Investor |
| Known for | Tiny, Tiny Foundation, MetaLab |
| 🌐 Website | tinycapital.com |
Andrew Wilkinson[edit]
Andrew Wilkinson is a managing partner at Tiny [1], a long term holding[2] company for internet businesses. Wilkinson oversees a group of companies under the Tiny umbrella that cumulatively employs over 500 employees and generates over a hundred million dollars. He is the founder of MetaLab and has been touted as building the Berkshire Hathaway of the internet.
Early Life and Education:[edit]
Wilkinson was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada and developed an early interest in computers and technology at a young age. Following his early formal education, Wilkinson moved to Victoria, British Columbia in 2001. During the same year, Wilkinson took over a tech news site called MacTeens.com. While managing this site, Wilkinson started to gain significant traffic to his site by covering tech news and reviewing tech products[3]. Wilkinson started to grow his team and eventually got an opportunity to interview Steve Jobs. After graduating high school, Wilkinson attended Ryerson Journalism School. His tenure in college was short-lived and he decided to drop out after a few months. He started to become a freelance designer and this led to him starting MetaLab.
Career[edit]
Wilkinson started his business career in high school after launching a successful technology news site. Wilkinson’s fledgling business started generating hundreds of thousands of views and he began hiring writers to meet demand. This initial traction gave him an informal education on operating a business and it led to him eventually starting MetaLab.
In 2006, Wilkinson started a design agency called MetaLab[4]. In a short period of time, MetaLab became a market leader for silicon valley companies that were looking for marketing and web design services. Some of the notable companies that were MetaLab clients included startups like Slack, Coinbase, Pinterest and Shopify as well as Fortune 500 companies like Apple, Google, Walmart, and Facebook. Today, MetaLab has launched over 205 products for clients and 3 of those products became billion-dollar businesses.
Following his success with MetaLab, Wilkinson continued to found profitable internet businesses. By 2013[5], Wilkinson was running 5 businesses with over 100 employees and began to hire an executive team to lead each of the companies. Unhappy at work, he decided to sell one of his businesses, Pixel Union, which was the top partner in the Shopify Themes marketplace.
Unsure of what to do with the proceeds, Wilkinson started reading about investing and quickly learned about Warren Buffett. This led to Wilkinson transitioning from a business operator role to investing full-time.
After delegating his operating business to CEOs, Wilkinson founded Tiny with his long-time business partner, Chris Sparling. Tiny began buying profitable internet businesses and quickly started growing their portfolio due to their unique value propositions. Tiny would purchase businesses from founders in a swift, seamless manner by providing full or partial cash outs for founders in addition to getting deals done in less than 30 days. Additionally, Tiny would promise to not make any significant culture changes and hold the companies long-term. This led to significant growth in Tiny’s portfolio and now there are over 25 businesses under the Tiny umbrella. Notable companies in Tiny’s portfolio include Dribbble, MetaLab, PixelUnion, Creative Market and more[6].
Philanthropy:[edit]
In June 2020, Wilkinson announced the launch of the Tiny Foundation[7]. Wilkinson has noted interest in charitable areas such as science, journalism and child protection services. The first initiative from the Tiny Foundation was the launch of the Tiny Journalism Fund, which seeks to foster independent journalism in Canada. The Tiny Journalism Fund aims to support 20+ independent Canadian news organizations from 2020 to 2030.
Personal life:[edit]
Wilkinson currently resides in Victoria, Canada along with his wife Holly, who is the director of the Tiny Foundation [8] and his two sons. He oversees Tiny’s operations from Victoria, Canada.
References[edit]
1. https://www.tinycapital.com/ 2. https://colinkeeley.com/blog/andrew-wilkinson-tiny-capital-operating-manual 3. https://bench.co/blog/small-business-stories/andrew-wilkinson/ 4. https://www.metalab.co/company 5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUdWweQeAiI 6. https://www.tinycapital.com/companies 7. https://twitter.com/awilkinson/status/1275063655512432641?lang=en 8. https://www.tiny.foundation/
Andrew Wilkinson[edit]
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