A company doomed to fail

E-Cycle was created to fail.

"Our business model was a complete 180 degrees. It didn't make sense," says Caroll.

According to Caroll, E-Cycle was going to pay money to buy surplus or outdated electronic equipment from the state of Tennessee. They were then going to ship it to the Philippines where it was going to be broken down.

Caroll says in the "real" world, they couldn't find any company that would pay for surplus equipment. It's usually just thrown into landfills. In other words, E-Cycle was paying for garbage.

Of course, Caroll and the E-Cycle team didn't tell people this. Instead they told people that they had been using this business model in other states and it had been successful.