At the Small and Special conference in Seattle over the summer, Eric LeVine gave a presentation on his business CellarTracker. It piqued my interest for a few reasons. One, I use CellarTracker to track our cellar and wine purchases. I love it. It always works; gives additional information on the wine we’re buying such as other’s opinions, auction pricing and a whole lot more.

But more importantly, I was interested in Eric’s story. How did he manage to build such a successful business (even taking on much larger, VC-backed competition)?

In this video he talks about a sabbatical at, then employer, Microsoft that ultimately led to the idea for tracking wines on a Web site. In turn, that led to friends trying it out. The rest they say is history… but not without a challenge or two along the way. In the end, his vision has helped pave the way towards the “democratization of wine.”

Clinton shoots videos for Stark Insider. San Francisco Bay Area arts, Ingmar Bergman and French New Wave, and chasing the perfect home espresso shot 25 seconds at a time (and failing). Peloton: ClintTheMint. Camera: Video Gear