Owner/CEO's Name & Business's Name
CEO Ryan Thompson, TPN Holdings, LLC
Year Established
2007
Why is your business unique and what's your pitch?
Our business is called FileLater. It's the leading tax extension website in the tax industry. FileLater was the first website that enabled both individuals and businesses (LLCs, corporations, partnerships, estates) to file a tax extension online directly to the IRS. Starting your own business is relatively unique. But starting a business that requires a relationship with a government agency (in this case the IRS) makes it extremely unique. The IRS has a series of unique requirements that are not normal barriers to entry (like fingerprinting, for example). Our business is also unique because it's purely online.
What led you to start the business?
This is a case of the classic entrepreneurial story. Co-founder Ryan Thompson filed a tax extension every year. He grew tired of filing the form online and knew that there had to be a better way. Since taxes and personal finance were all trending online, he believed that tax extensions for people and their businesses should be online as well.
Lessons Learned
- To an online company, getting qualified traffic is the entire business. We've learned a lot of lessons about the best ways to get people who want to file a tax extension to come to our website. The biggest lesson is that Google wields incredible power and they must be a partner. It's Google that controls the pay-per-click market. High-ranking organic search results on Google that can mean the difference between barely being profitable and 200% growth. It's Google that controls the second most used search engine - YouTube.
