The Startup Kids Page #6

I was always very different in

school. I'm severely dyslexic.

I was told at 9 years old that

I would never read or write

because I was pretty useless.

I still have trouble spelling

business and entrepreneur is a

word I couldn't even possible

hope to spell but I was very

lucky and one of the reason

why I got into computers and

technology is that I was

actually given a laptop at 9

years old to help me with my

dyslexia and I was one of the

first of kids in the whole of UK

to be given a laptop for

education.

My first semi proper business

was at twelve years old. I

bought some chickens and I

sold their eggs and I had a

proper cash flow where I used

to look after the fee and check

the sale of the eggs. You know

eggs have very good margins

at twelve years old. After my

chicken business I started my

first computer consultancy on my

15th birthday, charging 10

pounds an hour and that was

really how I started a proper

business. I think at the time I

was the youngest company

director in the country and it

wasn't until few years later I

raised twenty-five million

pounds for what was back then the

first e-commerce search engine.

At 21, after the Dot-com crash

in 2000 Ben's company

went bankrupt. When I failed I

failed in spectacular fashion.

I lost twenty million pounds. I

lost my car, the girl I loved,

my house, I couldn't even

buy a tube ticket in the

same day I was in

the rich list.

But even after this experience

he decided to continue building

businesses. In 2003 he started

Rainmakers, an innovation

and venture company.

So after I failed it did take me

a while to get back on my feet.

After losing everything, it was

very hard time in my life.

I ended up doing a reality TV

show and traveling the world.

But entrepreneur is such a deep

part of me. It took about

18 months, 2 years, to start my

own business again, but never

any second does business leave

me. I'm always thinking of

business so even after I failed

I was thinking of ideas for new

businesses I could do. Sometimes

I wish I could quiet my mind

a bit more often. But every

second by every day is consumed by

the thought of making the

world a slightly better.

It's been a, you know, a very

Long and challenging time. I had

some great successes during that

time and great failures also.

I just don't fear the failures

so much any more.

Even tough so many companies

fail entrepreneurs continue to

start new businesses in the

hopes that theirs will be that

one in ten company that

succeeds. What does it

take to build a

successful start-up?

Successful startups needs a lot

of things. They need a great

idea. They need a great team

and they need to be there at the

right time and they need the

right level of funding

There is a lot of luck in the

success of all business that

have succeeded. There were 25

search engines funded before

Google was funded. There were

Friendster and Linkedin and

Myspace and about 50 others

before Facebook became the

big winner in that area. There

is a little bit of luck that

just happens where somebody

gets it just right. That could

be skill, that they figured out

what the user really, really

wants and that's the thing that

makes those big businesses.

Some of it is that you are at

the right place at the right

time and you get lucky.

I think with any company there

is a lot of luck involved.

You can have great idea and

work really hard and be really

smart but the one thing that is

out of your control is timing.

Absolutely, team is super

important, you know, big market

I don't know, it's magic, it's

totally magic, it's all of that

stuff and 9 out of 10 times

they fail and the one time it

does work it happens in a

totally unexpected way.

Look at Twitter, right, how big

was micro blogging when Twitter

started. Look at Facebook, how

big was social networking when

that started. Those weren't huge

interesting markets but that is

what you hear from all VCs. That

is really what we look for in

those investments. These weren't

really big investment at the

time. Starting a company often

feels like series of miracles

and you have to have one set of

really good thing happen right

after the other. So it really

does feel like a lot of luck but

at the same time if you really

work hard and try a lot of things

and really experimental you can

create your own luck.

And you can make these

miracles happen.

When I was young I didn't know

what a entrepreneur was.

I understood it as a catchall

word to define any independent

small business person that is

just what I thought but it

sounded pretentious to me.

I can't even pinpoint where it

all came from but I just always

had the impression that I was

going to invent things.

Zach Klein is a 27 year old

entrepreneur. He is the

co-founder of Vimeo, a popular

video sharing site, visited by

50 million people each month. He

started his career working on

website called College Humor.

Two of his friend from college

started to post silly pictures

of themselves on the Internet in

1999. Pretty soon the site was

getting a thousand visitors

a week and Zach joined them

while he was still in college.

I never thought about quitting

college. I loved college,

The clich, I think it was some

of the best times of my life.

It was a really nice

intersection of innocence and

independence and it was lovely.

And I went to school in North

Carolina where I love and would

give anything to have four

more years there.

After graduation in 2004 he

and his three partners moved

the company to New York.

We were having a hard time

taking seriously by anyone in

the industry because we weren't

in San Francisco and New York

and I think all of us sort of

were attracted to the romance

of moving to New York City so

we decided to move there instead

The four friends rented

apartment together and ran the

website out of their spare

bedroom.

For the first three or four

months it was just the four of

us, so we sort of just got out

of bed, walked 20 yards over to

our office and just worked until

we got tired, and then we put on

clothes and go get dinner. I

remember it was a big shock when

we got our first employee and we

had to start wearing clothes to

work and having normal

business hours.

In 2005 The New Yorker published

an article named "The Funny

Boys" about College Humor

and the guys behind it.

It certainly made clear that

this wasn't fluke. That we were

very ernest business people,

very ernest entrepreneurs who

thought very carefully about

the things we were making

Within a few months of the

article being published they had

a book-deal and a movie

in the works.

Our office grew I think until

we were like 10 or 12 people,

it stayed in our apartment and

then when we could afford it,

we got the next floor above our

apartment so we would take an

elevator up the building to our

office and I don't remember what

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