David Hauser’s life changed forever the moment he taught himself how to code. Like so many other nascent entrepreneurs, the power of computer programming set him on a lifelong path as a tinkerer, always fine-tuning and building in an effort to shape his and others’ futures. In much the same way Hauser learned how to code, his entire entrepreneurial journey has been one of unrelenting trial and error, involving a mix of success, failure, and personal and professional evolution. With the creation of tech companies like Grasshopper and Chargify, Hauser used his talents and curiosity to shape his own destiny, and make a splash in the startup world. Now, in his latest endeavor, he’s directed that very sense of experimentation to the field of health and fitness, with an upcoming book documenting his extensive adventures in improving his own physical well-being. But it all started with a few lines of code that enabled him to pursue a nontraditional professional life. “I always worked for myself since before high school,” Hauser says. “I never had a traditional job.” In the late 1990s, the internet was gaining unstoppable momentum, and as websites started to become viable means of doing business, the demand for web designers and ad creators increased dramatically. This shift granted new opportunities to clever teens on the cutting edge of new technology who wanted to make a few bucks (and sometimes much, much more) from the comfort of their childhood bedrooms. Hauser, who has no formal tech training, was one of these teens, swiftly making his way into the world of banner ad management and creating his own company WebAds360. “From there, I started grabbing onto different things, learning different technologies, working with other people,” he says. “But it all started with web design.” Before graduating college, he founded a second company, called ReturnPath, to help businesses that used permission-based email lists to keep their addresses up to date as subscribers graduated college or changed jobs. Being a teenage entrepreneur in the late 1990s and early 2000s presented some major limitations, however. For one, what phone number were prospective clients supposed to call? Cell phones of the time were still extremely basic and lacking features like putting a caller on hold or setting up a conference call. Meanwhile, home landlines might be answered by baffled family members. Neither option exactly screamed professionalism. It wasn’t just a problem for young people working at home, either, as lots of scrappy new entrepreneurs were lacking dedicated business phones. So when the born and raised New Yorker headed off to Babson College in Massachusetts, and met Siamak Taghaddos, another entrepreneur with a similar problem, they put their heads together to pursue a solution. Leaping Toward Success “It started with a really simple idea,” Hauser says. All they wanted was a way for tiny companies, startups, and solopreneurs to have the phone presence of a large, established company. And when neither he nor Taghaddos could find an existing solution to their problem, they did what so many successful entrepreneurs end up doing. They built their own solution. Because they were only out to solve a problem for their existing businesses, Hauser admits they didn’t spend a lot of time on research or planning. “It wasn’t well-researched necessarily, beyond the fact that we knew we had a problem, and we thought that we could solve it,” Hauser says. During the process of creating the solution to their own problem, they realized that they were really onto something. That maybe this was going to be much bigger than a new tool for their own tool belts. And because he and Taghaddos had their fingers in a lot of pies, and the money flowing in from their existing projects was enough to fund their new endeavor, they never needed to request outside funding. In 2003, the pair officially launched Grasshopper, a service that enabled small businesses to present themselv