Born into a well-off family in the Philippines, Erwin Felicilda grew up with maids who filled his cup of water when he tapped it against the table.
He wouldn't always have it so easy.
His family moved away from that opulent lifestyle to an apartment in Illinois - via a stint in New Mexico — before he was a teenager.
He went from maids cleaning his room to doing chores for the first time in his life.
"It was a wake-up call," he said. "I didn't know what to do."
Growing up in America, he was bullied because of his ethnicity. Things didn't start looking up until his family made a move to Gainesville in 1998.
Felicilda, 27, is a young Gainesville businessman who went from rich to poor to college dropout to success. Even in a tough economy, he saw it through.
In the last three years, he started two businesses of his own.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, seven out of 10 new businesses in the U.S. survive at least two years, and half survive at least five years.
"I could make a website in an hour for $50 and sell it for $100," Felicilda said.
He always knew he wanted to work in business. He liked fast cash, and he thought higher education was the way to go. He enrolled at Santa Fe College.
Even though he had good intentions, college didn't really turn out to be what he expected.
"I never wanted the experience of learning to be confined in a classroom setting," he said. "I wanted to step out from the status quo, and knowing that a number of people have done it successfully, I could do the same with the proper mindset."
When he was 21, he dropped out of college to focus more on starting his own businesses.
His first success came in 2009, when he was 24, after a few years of working in sales and marketing.
He built, sold and auctioned websites based on popular Google searches. This sparked his first company, NewaveDezign.
He designed a website based on the Japanese anime character Naruto. It was filled with articles and links to Naruto gifts on Amazon.com. The website gained enough traffic for him to sell it for $400. It was the first taste of many successful website sales.
Using a site called Flippa, he auctioned the websites to the highest bidder.
With his money, he traveled around the world, visiting countries like Germany, Spain and the Philippines.
He launched his next company, KnownMedia, in 2010. It's a marketing company that focuses on web design, social media management and video marketing.
His company also makes apps.
An app called "Ab Workouts" contains videos of exercises and an e-book that explains how to get a six-pack. It hit the top 10 ab workout apps on Android with more than 5,000 downloads, he said.
For Tim Tebow fans, Felicilda created an app called "Tim Tebow," which has news about the Broncos, interviews, pictures and links about the famous football player.
Now, at 27 years old, he considers himself a "nomadic entrepreneur," always traveling and creating new businesses.
Though KnownMedia is still active, Felicilda said he's stepping back so he can concentrate on a new start-up business.
"I'm always excited to start new ventures," he said, "especially if it's a challenging one."
InforMeta SEO, which will launch in the beginning of March, is a private label search engine optimization company. Felicilda said it will help business websites gain traffic by having sites show up at the top of search engines.
Felicilda and his business partner Dalton Bateman are in the process of signing a lease downtown. Until then, Felicilda works from home.
He said he likes Gainesville because it's the best place for start-up businesses and has a potential for growth.
Between 2004 and 2007, small businesses in Gainesville had a growth rate of 7 percent. In 2007, 5,937 businesses were established in Gainesville compared to, on average, 11,214 in all mid-sized metropolitan areas, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Anjali Kundra, vice president of client relations at a start-up company called RoomSync in downtown Gainesville, agrees with Felicilda.
"Gainesville is a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship," she said. "There's so much growth for businesses and opportunities for young people."
Erwin Felicilda, 27, co-founder of InforMeta SEO, poses for a photo on Sunday afternoon.
