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

always thought was really fun

but I actually wanted to be a

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

I thought that it would be so

cool to love what I was doing.

She graduated from college in

2006 and decided to move to

San Francisco. After graduating

from college I really wanted to

move someplace warm because I

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.

Leah needed a new laptop but

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 of

advertising 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

anyone would pay attention to

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.

My first startup was actually

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

and ended up getting a lot of

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

A year later the company was

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

you are like someone wants to

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

the side because hobbies will

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

lesson often times for the

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,

I'm not really putting my

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

make venture capital worth

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

even better if you failed in

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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