Paul Budnitz is from a few blocks from the water in Burlington, Vermont, where a large part of Civil War-era brick building that served once as a warehouse, it is now a tattoo parlor, a new artsy café and shop for luxury bicycle shop called Budnitz Bicycle, which sells city bikes made of titanium costs $8000. Budnitz, is 47, began making titanium bicycles for himself in 2002, he turn that bicycle project into a bigger business in 2010. After three years he transferred to the Burlington warehouse so that he could be part of the growing bike culture of the city. In this building basement in Burlington, he thought of something new, not related to bikes, he decided to create a social network.

Budnitz said, "It sounds awesome, but I really don't know why another thing like this needs to exist." Although, the decision came as a surprise to some who worked for Budnitz from the start of the bike business, one co-worker said that his initial reaction after Budnitz told him about a new social network is coming soon, "He'd "loved" Facebook when it first came out, but stopped using it four or five years ago because it was filled with ads. He was on Tumblr for a long time after, but eventually felt a similar frustration."

Ello bringing even more attention, as many people called it a Facebook killer, according to reports, more than 10,000 users were requesting invites from Ello, every hour. Ello is referred as the, Facebook Exodus.

Budnitz added, "There was a lot of, 'What are you doing?' 'Oh we're making a social network...' And then people would go roll their eyes. You need to take a risk and look pretty stupid. Ello is definitely one of those things. We are definitely willing to look stupid. But as long as we are looking stupid and admitting it, I think we are okay."

When asked for Facebook's reaction about Ello, the Sheryl Sandberg, the second in command, she bluntly answered Fortunemagazine, "I haven't seen the site."