A Million Dollars I Couldn’t Touch

Two months after announcing PowerBuilder Developer’s Journal on the Powersoft BBS, I found myself staring at more than one million dollars’ worth of subscription cards spread across my kitchen table.

It was exhilarating — and terrifying.

I had a serious problem.

I didn’t have a credit card merchant account.

In fact, I didn’t even have a business checking account.

* * *

At the same time, the artwork for the ads I had sold began arriving in the mail, each envelope stuffed with prepaid checks.

Altogether, they totaled about $18,000 — enough to cover the printing cost of 10,000 copies of my first issue, with money left over.

There was just one catch.

I had told advertisers our company name was SYS-CON Publications, and that’s exactly how they had written the checks.

* * *

I walked to several banks near my home, checks in hand, confident this would be a formality. Every one of them gave me the same answer.

They couldn’t open a business checking account because my company wasn’t incorporated. Apparently, being a “business” wasn’t enough.

I wasn’t IBM — but that didn’t seem to matter.

* * *

So I went back to the most powerful tool of the early 1990s — the Yellow Pages.

I found a number that felt almost too convenient to be real:

1-800-COMPANY.

I called Company Corporation, read my credit card number over the phone, and just like that, they incorporated me as SYS-CON Publications, Inc.

Less than a week later, a thick corporate book arrived at my door.

Inside were the articles of incorporation, a corporate seal, and every official document that suddenly made my kitchen-table operation a real company.

It still wasn’t enough. No bank would open a business checking account for me — never mind a merchant account to process subscriptions.

The explanation was always the same. The business was home-based.

And to the banks, that meant it wasn’t a “real” business — regardless of the checks piling up on my kitchen table.

* * *

Eventually, I found a bank at the corner of 45th Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan that didn’t flinch.

I was greeted with a smile and assured that I would walk out in under an hour with both a business checking account and a merchant account — checkbook included.

It was Habib Bank, a Pakistani bank.

My checks would say Habib Bank, not Chase or Citibank.

It wasn’t the image I had imagined, but at that point, image mattered far less than survival.

With a business checking account finally open, I wasted no time depositing the $18,000 in advertising checks that had been sitting on my kitchen table. For the first time in weeks, I could breathe. And sleep. The printing bill was covered.

I could finally focus on laying out the first issue upstairs, sitting on the edge of my bed, turning my bedroom into a production studio.

* * *

Soon after, a Habib Bank employee arrived with a credit card terminal and a quick lesson on how to use it.

I explained that I already had more than one million dollars’ worth of subscription cards waiting to be processed.

That’s when I hit the real showstopper.

* * *

My merchant account allowed me to process no more than $20,000 per month.

Home-based business. Fraud risk. No credit history.

The rules were simple.

Prove yourself first.

If there were no chargebacks or refund requests, the limit would be raised — slowly.

As I began entering subscriptions into a makeshift Excel spreadsheet, preparing to merge them into a Word Avery label template, Carmen moved with remarkable speed, processing our first $20,000 worth of subscriptions.

By the end of that initial push, we had roughly $38,000 in the bank — about $83,000 in today’s money — a number that felt both surreal and fragile.

It was obvious we needed help.

I called several temporary employment agencies, hoping to bring in someone part-time.

Every conversation ended the same way.

The moment I mentioned that the business was home-based, they shut the door.

Sorry — we can’t help you.

Another dead end.