Josh MacGown was born in Pennsylvania however he spent most of his early years in Louisiana where he attended private school, played baseball, football and was and trained as a Junior Olympic weightlifter.
“He was always extremely logical for his age. It’s unique when a 5 year old is explaining physics to his older siblings.”
Growing up MacGown could almost always be found building in his Father’s workshop. At age 10 himself along with his friends built a treehouse that landed a full page of the local newspaper.
He engineered an elevator that climbed fifty feet into the canopies to carry tools and supplies to the upper levels of the treehouse. When asked he simply said, “We needed a way to get this stuff up there, so I built an elevator”.
MacGown started his first business when he was only eleven years old. At the time, MacGown and his friends were in the middle of the paintball craze that was taking the nation by storm. MacGown soon realized the expenses of such a hobby were beginning to hinder his friends’ ability to play as much as they’d like. He set out to find a solution to most frequent expense causing his friends to sit on the sidelines, refilling their carbon dioxide tanks used to power their paintball markers.
This venture would prove to be MacGown’s first real test creating a solution for a glaring problem. He began by building a system of valves to attach to a bulk cylinder of CO2 that he modeled off of a similar system at his local paintball field. After a successful test, he set up shop in his father’s garage and began handing out business cards to his friends offering his services.
MacGown received his first computer at age twelve ushering in a new medium for him to create. He went on to build programs and websites through the end of elementary school and into high school. In 1999, he had created an online based contact system for his classmates. The system resembled Facebook in many areas allowing his friends to message, post, and share all within the web application.
After high school MacGown continued in his entrepreneurial ways, launching his first documented business in 2004 that took advantage of the growing eBay opportunity. The small business allowed local business owners to liquidate unwanted or excess inventory in a short time span utilizing auction sites.
MacGown moved to the Lehigh Valley from Louisiana in 2008 in order to attend the Wescoe School of Business with plans to return after the school year.
During this time MacGown found an exciting new market that was at the earliest stages of infancy. Touchscreen smart phones were officially a reality and tablets were making their way into the hands of consumers at a rapid pace.
Witnessing the lack of service consumers were facing when these devices became damaged first hand, he began researching a solution. After months of planning MacGown decided to take the leap of faith and launched in 2009.
The newly founded company operated in a small office space in Allentown, Pa officially becoming the first smartphone repair shop in the state. After proving the concept had both consumer demand and was scalable he grew the business into storefront models around the Lehigh Valley.
“Rising Entrepreneur” StartSomething, 2011
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