The Startup Kids Page #5
kind of trendy at the time to
make your own webpages and
everyone wanted to have their
own homepage so I got one of
these free Angelfire, GeoCity
homepages and started to
learn HTML. I wasn't quite sure
that that was I wanted to for
a job, I think it was kind of I
graphic designer when I was
younger because my mother was a
graphic designer and I think it is
easy as a kid to just want to do
what your parents do because my
mother always loved her job and
cool to love what I was doing.
2006 and decided to move to
San Francisco. After graduating
from college I really wanted to
grew up in Minnesota which is
very cold and I got a job at a
start-up in San Jose and I
worked for startups for a little
while and then I realized that I
wanted to do my own. I wanted to
work on my own projects. That is
why I got into programming
because I wanted, you know,
to work on my own things.
couldn't afford it. She came up
with a unique way to generate
enough money to buy a new one
when she sold ad space on her
computer to several companies by
laser-etching their logos on the
surface of the computer.
So I said:
Buy a space ofadvertising on this laptop and I
made like a corny webpage for it
like, hey if you buy an ad on my
laptop I show it off on all this
San Francisco cafs and things
and I didn't actually think that
this stupid website. I did it kind
of as a joke and out of the
frustration that I didn't have
enough money and people ended up
actually buying ads on it and
paying for these cute little ads
and it was fun. It was a lot of
work to get people to buy the
ads but I ended up getting
enough money to buy the laptop
and etched it and made a video
of it and made the whole thing a
production and tried to really
get the most value to the people
who actually did buy the ads and
I felt a little bad, you know,
somebody have to get something
good out of it but it was a
really interesting experience
and probably, like, really good
lesson in marketing and sort of
following through on a project.
Leah's first startup began as a
hobby when she started playing
around with sending messages
and media to her friends. She
got two of her friends involved
and they turned it into a social
network. The site got a lot of
attention and at some point
invitations to use the service
were being sold on eBay.
Pownce and it is sort of a funny
story because most people will
go through several big failed
start-ups or little failed
start-ups that no one ever heard
of before they end up making a
product that is fairly popular.
Pownce was very popular for a
first start-up It is not really
the traditional way that
start-ups are built most of the
time you will have some small
start-up that don't work out
that well but I was lucky enough
to work with Kevin Rose on
Pownce who is fairly well known
publicity for my first
start-up.
Your first startup is really,
really exciting. Everything is
a big deal and everything
matters and you get T-shirt and
stickers and it is so exciting
to have sort of your own startup
struggling due to a lack of
revenue. The team decided to
sell Pownce to a software
company called Six Apart.
Two weeks later the site
got shut down.
How did it feel to sell the
company. It was interesting.
It's kind of exciting because
buy my company and it's
exciting but at the same time it
is kind of sad because you lose
sort of the independence and
freedom to work on the project.
They ended up shutting down the
site which I wasn't super happy
about so that wasn't a great
experience. Things can go wrong.
You can end up blaming people.
You can end up, having a lot of
fighting when things aren't
going super well and they never
go super well. I don't know why
anybody thinks that startups are
rainbows and sunshine. It's a
lot of hard work, I mean if you
want rainbow and sunshine work
a 9-5 job and have a hobby on
always be rainbow and sunshine
cause when they don't work out
you don't want to work on them.
I think there is a part of our
generation, my generation where
you need to be perfect and good
in everything and part of being
an entrepreneur is: You will
fail, you will mess up and do
things wrong. I mean even
Pownce, the site got shut down,
like, acquired and shut down
because we ran out of money
that is kind of a failure but
you need to be able to say that
is okay and move on from that.
Or something might not work out
in the way you expect and I
think that is hard for a lot of
people to know that they are
going to do something wrong.
Failure is a part of the startup
culture. In the news we only
hear about the successful
companies but what about all
the others. 90% of all start-ups
will fail.
You can't have everyone be a
success, it's just not a
tenable situation so most
start-ups still do fail but the
good news is that when those
start-up do fail it is a great
entrepreneurs and you usually
see a lot of them come back
and try again.
What is really important is to
make sure that, you know,
whole identity in this start-up
and I realize that this
might fail.
In our experience about 6 out of
10 out of the investments we make
fail and we lose all our money
and maybe 2 out of 10 float
along and maybe we make our
money back or maybe two times
our money so really one or two
of those ten investments that
make it a huge success that
pursuing and those are the one
or two that make us many, many
times our money.
Yeah, failure is totally
accepted here. It is actually
your profile, people value a lot
that you failed and it's totally
okay, I fail every day
in something. Guys who do really
well they are guys who have
crashed another company before,
and the guys who haven't crashed
another company yet this is the
company they need to crash.
I made 30 million dollars when
I was 17 and lost it all by the
time I was 20, and that
experience really made me
realize that in life the most
important thing is the people
around you and it is easy to
forget that and get caught up in
the hype. You only get one
life. You got to live it.
Don't forget to actually
enjoy it.
Ben Way is an English serial
entrepreneur. He grew up in
England and was early fascinated
with building businesses.
He started a computer
consultancy at age 15. At 17 he
had raised 40 million dollars,
making him one of the first dot
com millionaires. By twenty he
had lost it all.
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"The Startup Kids" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <https://www.scripts.com/script/the_startup_kids_21381>.
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