After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1999, David Park founded discussion forum service Coolboard.com. It took more than a dozen software developers, product managers, and quality assurance staff 18 months to build the company’s core technology. To fund it, Park raised $10 million in venture capital, of which $4 million was spent before the company was launched. It went down in flames in 2003, a casualty of the dot-com bust.

In 2005, Park launched his next business, MBA admissions blog and forum Beat The GMAT in San Mateo, Calif. Rather than take venture capital, he limited startup costs, spending just $119,000. The site steadily gained traction, but Park…