Joe Palko has started several successful companies. In 1994, he co-founded an e-Commerce pet supply retail company, Theferretstore.com. Joe and his co-founder Scott started Solid Cactus which grew to over 200 employees when it was sold to web.com group, a publicly traded company. The company had been in the INC 5000, and had been honored for best places to work in PA for 3 years in a row.
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What will you learn in this interview?
– What was the biggest roadblock he encountered and how did he overcome it?
– What was the biggest mistake he made in business?
– What is the biggest milestone he achieved?
– What is the best piece advice that he can give a founder?
– How did he build a company and sell it to Web.com?
– What was he doing earlier in his career?
– What was the biggest challenge for him?
– What was the lowest point in his business and what did he learn from it?
– What is something most people don’t know about Joe?
FUN FACT:
Joe is obsessed with ferrets and chihuahuas.
Business Mentors, Tools, Books mentioned:
Scott Sanfilippo
Gonzalo Gil
Sean Belnick
Mike Eldridge
Background:
Joe started his own e-Commerce pet supply retail company in 1994 with co-founder Scott Safilippo.
By the year 2000, we were already one of the leading pet supply distributors in the USA. I left TheFerretStore.com to start-up Solid Cactus, a web development/small business incubator company in 2001.
As Solid Cactus grew, Scott Sanfilippo left TheFerretStore in 2004 to help head up Solid Cactus with me. Some of our clients included Lance Armstrong, Kennedy Space Center, Adidas and many others. We both sold The Ferret Store to Doctor Foster’s and Smith in 2006. In 2009, we both sold Solid Cactus to the Web.com Group, and I continued to run Solid Cactus as the GM, and VP of Web.com E Commerce until July 2011, when I joined the 3dCart team in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
After a wonderful 3 years working as 3dcart’s CMO, I left to join the AmericanEagle.com team based in Chicago. My role is VP Regional Business Development and my goal is to help grow AmericanEagle’s customer base around the country. I’ve known AmericanEagle’s owners from way back at my time as Co-Owner of Solid Cactus and I’m very excited to be on their team. They produce some of the best websites in the world, and I am proud to serve on their team. I work as VP of Regional Business Development for AmericanEagle.com.
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