How Shaun McBride co-founded The Spacestation: And created a coalition of companies powered by creativity.

• Author: McBride, Shaun "Shonduras"

IN EARLY 2015, my super amazing wife Jenny was pregnant with our first child, Adley, and we were building a network of five computers in our basement with my buddy Craig, aka "Tall Chicken." We didn't know we were building what would become a "Spacestation." We were just focused on creating a cool streaming setup that could screen swap in real-time. We were ready to build a gaming community through streaming.

Simultaneously, we were converting another basement room into a janky studio to start creating YouTube videos and making even cooler Snapchats. The vision behind this basement build-out was to expand around my "Shonduras" community. We were preparing to approach new platforms and establish more brands. I was so bullish on the success other creators and influencer marketers had found, and I needed to scale.

BECOMING SHONDURAS

Before we get too deep into how we founded The Spacestation, let's slide back to the beginning--to discuss how I became Shonduras. The name is actually really meaningful for me, and it associates with a forever memorable time of personal growth. Since my name is Shaun and I served a mission in Honduras, I just kind of got the nickname "Shonduras." I created my first social media accounts across Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat using this nickname.

I didn't post much though, just a few skate and snowboard edits. The first video on my YouTube was actually a public speaking assignment uploaded to present in front of a class at Weber State University, where I eventually got a degree in technical sales.

Most of my classes at Weber State were online, which allowed me to snowboard tons while managing a skate and snowboard shop. A big takeaway from college was some senior project where I was challenged to create an online business model. (My biggest takeaway from college was Jenny, who eventually became my amazing wife, as mentioned earlier.)

My idea for the project was a jewelry boutique that could start from a community on Facebook. Feeling confident about the idea, Jenny and I decided to actually try it, spending what we had in savings on our first run of jewelry.

We shipped the jewelry from the back of the skate shop and paid my sisters in pizza to help with the product. Jenny did the photography, I built the Facebook community, and together we created this brand that would be driven by its community. Initially, growth was through giveaways, lots of giveaways, giving us the engagement needed to let the community name the drops and choose our future products. Organically, their engagement on our posts would feature us on friends' feeds across Facebook.

During this explosive first year, we found a mentor who could scale this to its full potential. He ended up buying the business we had created, which we were very okay with--we could now pay off all our student loans and eat beyond the dollar menu. Beyond the money, I learned the power of building social media communities.

After the sale/success of the jewelry community, my mind was twisting with ideas around what we could do next--could this be a career path? How could I create a...