Thread: Best Young Entrepreneurs Under 25

This found my attention this morning on the AOL Welcome Screen...

The teaser is "Meet Young Entrepreneurs Who Took the Fast Lane to Success" ...

http://smallbusiness.aol.com/feature...-entrepreneurs

Very cool. Didn't know Asians would jump into the fastlane. Usually we become doctors or something

Originally Posted by dhuang

Very cool. Didn't know Asians would jump into the fastlane. Usually we become doctors or something

Lol

Originally Posted by PhxMJ

This found my attention this morning on the AOL Welcome Screen...

The teaser is "Meet Young Entrepreneurs Who Took the Fast Lane to Success" ...

http://smallbusiness.aol.com/feature...-entrepreneurs

Good find. Seeing all these young entrepreneurs is definitely an inspiration to me. If only it had the same affect on my parents...

Originally Posted by dhuang

Very cool. Didn't know Asians would jump into the fastlane. Usually we become doctors or something

I'm afraid to add something to this!

good stuff i read all of them. i saw a couple ideas they have run with that i have contemplated in the past. funny how you start to see that. just didn't act on them b/c of other stuff.

good to know that ideas i'm having and seeing are working and filling needs

Originally Posted by royemunson

good stuff i read all of them. i saw a couple ideas they have run with that i have contemplated in the past. funny how you start to see that. just didn't act on them b/c of other stuff.

good to know that ideas i'm having and seeing are working and filling needs

Dont you just hate that? It shows your on the ball though...lol

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Dont you just hate that? It shows your on the ball though...lol

Yes and No - ideas come all the time but wanting to focus on one or another without jumping around is something I've been working on.

As you stated - it just means that my ideas are working and I'm on the right track. Provides feedback in a different form.

Last year's article - http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06...5/index_01.htm

Originally Posted by rico

Last year's article - http://images.businessweek.com/ss/06...5/index_01.htm

Wow, spend an hour and read all those stories. Really excellent stuff and a testament to the power of having innovative revenue models.

Eric Wu
Live By Campus

www.livebycampus.com
Scottsdale, Ariz.
Age: 24

Both of Eric Wu's sisters are doctors, and he expected to follow in their footsteps, but doing business appealed to him more. At the University of Arizona, he co-founded a job posting site for students called jobdoggy.com, which he flipped for $75,000 within a year and a half. He then borrowed money against his scholarships and bought rental properties around the campus. As the housing market boomed, his equity grew, but Wu had trouble finding tenants. That's why his LiveByCampus, a property listing Web site for students, was created. If a user signs a lease with a property listed on the site, LiveByCampus pays the user $100 for using the service. Apartment and residential property management groups pay LiveByCampus $195 for each successful lease transaction.

To stir up business, Wu hired two people to give presentations at student organizations, advertised on social networking sites, and formed partnerships with area property rental companies. Wu estimates about $50,000 in 2006 revenues and says that by February, 2007, his site will serve seven campuses, starting with Arizona before spreading to Texas, Colorado, and California.

Why "Getting a Job" sometimes is the best thing an aspiring entrepreneur can do ... it exposes unmet opportunities. Read below why ...

Jared Isaacman
United Bank Card

www.unitedbankcard.com
Hampton, N.J.
Age: 23

Jared Isaacman put together the plan for United Bank Card, a nationwide transaction processing company, alone in his parents' basement. The idea, he says, was not really unique. He simply noticed—he was working in IT for a credit-card company at the time—that the big financial institutions ignored the processing end of the credit-card business and focused more on issuing the cards to consumers. The industry was using outdated hardware, and transaction processing and setup times for new business customers were slow. Once he realized he was onto something big, Isaacman recruited close friends and family, who worked 100-hour weeks to build the framework for the company. Instead of thinking about locating venture capital, Isaacman says he took the $10,000 in stocks his grandfather had given as far as he possibly could.

That was in 1999. In 2005, the company did $56 million in business and Isaacman says he expects 2006 to be similar. This year, United Bank Card processed more than $5.5 billion in credit-card volume for over 60,000 unique businesses across the country. The company enables a variety of businesses, from restaurants to multilocation retailers, to accept credit-card and other noncash-based payments from their customers. Isaacman says that most people don't realize that it's not the banks that do the heavy lifting in the credit-card industry, it's the processing companies like United Bank Card that kick into gear when a card is swiped at a business. Isaacman's plans for the future include "selective acquisitions" with the goal of further increasing the company's market share.