The Startup Kids Page #4

was 15 and at 20 she had raised

over a million dollars for her

own startup. I was pretty bored

in school when I was young, so I

was always trying to find a way

to make more money on my own so

I was doing stupid stuff like

lemonade stands or going to

neighbor houses to try to rake

their leaves or anything to make

my own money. I got my first

computer when I was in third or

four grade and I started

programming when I was, I think,

thirteen years old and just really

wanted to make my own game and

websites so I picked up some

books from the local book store

and did that in my spare time.

My mom is an entrepreneur so she

told me, why not take your

programming skills and make a

business out of it and that is

when I first started thinking

about building my own company

when I was working on my first

company when I was thirteen I

had at least a few hundred

customers and all of them were

paying me recurring revenue

every single month. I was

selling stuff on eBay and I was

selling my programming services.

I made some money, I didn't make

big money but enough. I was

making like high five digits.

Jessica went to Berkeley where

she studied computer science,

there she met her co-founder

Andy Su.

At first we were just doing

homework with each other but

after we do our homework we

thought why don't we do other

fun things, when we are not

doing our homework so we started

brainstorming startup ideas and

just programming project ideas

and we started building stuff in

our spare time and then that

ultimately led way to us wanting

to build a real company together

In college Jessica and Andy

started to build what was to

become InDinero. She and her

team lived together in a small

apartment in Silicon Valley.

I thought it was so much fun to

live in an apartment with my

co-founder and with our early

team because you are just. You

are literally eating and

sleeping and breathing your

startup 24-7, when you do that

and it was just a few of us in a

small tiny room, the living room

and we got our computers there

and just wake up, roll out of

bed and build our startup and

then we cooked meals and then

just went back to working again.

It was a lot of fun. The first

version of InDinero was really

bad it was just my co-founder,

Andy and I, going to a hackathon

and we had a weekend to build a

project and present it to about

a hundred people. We didn't

really care about product

quality or anything. We just

programmed all weekend

long to build it.

InDinero launched in 2009. She

and her team needed more money

to build the product. She

initially set out to raise 500

thousand dollars for the company

but received so much interest

that she eventually had to turn

investors away.

Our launch went really well and

I think it went well because we

took our time to build our

product and we didn't just

launch it when we felt ready but

we knew we were ready because we

demoed it with dozens of

entrepreneurs. We saw them sign-up

and we knew which common

problems they had so we knew

that it was ready for the public

and then people started offering

checks and it all rolled in and

then it was the feeling of

optimism and excitement and

finally when we had all the

money we decided to spend it

really slowly. We didn't just

spend it over night on random

stuff. We were really cautious

about it because, I had never

seen that much money in my life

and all though it not that much

for a company it was a lot for

Andy and I.

I think about the business

almost all the time I try to not

think about on Saturday but

every other day, I think that if

you are not thinking about your

startup then you are not doing a

good enough a job if you are

the founder at least. Because

you are going to come up with

your best ideas at the most

random moments, when you are

driving in your car or thinking

in the shower or just walking

to work and so I think you have

to think about it all the time.

The Lifestyle is hectic, you

have to be working long hours

and you have to be enjoying that

So why are they doing this? Is

it about walking away with

millions of dollars? Or is the

ultimate goal having satisfied

users and a good product?

I was supposed to be unemployed

I was supposed to have no money

And here I am, I'm able to eat,

sleep, live under a roof and

have an office. It is already

amazing for me so I could live

on sustenance, right, and I

couldn't care less.

I think a lot of people, jumps

out of them, how wealthy some

tech entrepreneurs get. Look at

Bill Gates or Larry and Sergei,

in Oracle, or, you know, Steve

Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and you

think, it is all about the money

but if you ask them, it is

really not. If you talk to those

guys who are entrepreneurs,

they are not in it to make big

money and it turns out, if you

think about how much you are

going to make of money, you

might make money, but it is not

really a good indicator. So I

think the primary motivation

really is that the best

entrepreneurs try to change

the world.

I think that it is always very

different and I think it is

sometime very personal too what

drives them. I think we have

certain entrepreneurs that

really want to change the world

others just realize that this is

incredible way to build a lot of

wealth, and others are really

just passionate about their

product and are really not

thinking about the business

itself. I think too many

entrepreneurs are in it for the

wrong reasons. I think they are

in it for the money, for the

fame, for the glory, and a lot

of them are going to say they

are not in it for any of that

but they are just cheating

themselves. The first time

entrepreneurs when they first

get funded they at first are

really thrilled that they got

funded and then the weight of

the money is on their shoulders

and they say, ohh wow, we really

got to do this and we are going

to make sure it works because

we have now raised money from

somebody else, from other

people.

I think that a lot of

entrepreneurs are spending their

twenties working all the time

because, there are a few different

reasons. One, a lot of them see

the opportunity for fame and

success and more than that,

the best ones just really have

these great ideas and realize

they can do something right now,

it's cheap to do it, you can

just come up here and do

something and potentially really

alter the way the world works.

I'm not building software to

build a business and make

a ton of money and get

rich of it.

Leah Culver is the CEO and

co-founder of Grove, a real-time

group chat service for teams.

She started her first company in

2007, when she co-founded a

social network site named Pownce

which a year later got her

selected as one of the

"Most Influential Women in

Web" by Fast Company.

So I first became interested in

programming and sort of doing

little bit more with computers,

when I was about fifteen, it was

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