Young Entrepreneur Learns Ups And Downs

Washington Post:

By the time he arrived at Virginia Tech in January 2004, Fahad Hassan still was not over his first business failure. He had poured his heart into a computer support business in his final year of high school, but after a promising few months the customers dried up and the expenses ballooned.

At Virginia Tech, he didn’t feel invested in classes and even got rejected as a business major. He was so stressed that he took a term off.

Then, in the summer after his junior year, inspiration struck. The Gaithersburg student pulled out a notebook — a brown diary where he’d write personal notes and paste motivational messages — and started to sketch a Web site.

He imagined a social networking place, featuring the friend-linked-to-friend aspects of such popular destinations as Facebook and MySpace. But his site would include calendar and contact features, and mix in course management software favored by schools and colleges.

Last year that idea became a company called Daylert, with Hassan as its 21-year-old chief executive.

Regardless of a business person’s age, getting a start-up off the ground is a risky proposition. Researchers at the University of Maryland recently examined the fate of venture capital-seeking Internet companies started at the height of the technology boom in the late 1990s. Only half existed five years later.

Since Hassan launched his company, he’s had to work tirelessly to solicit venture capital money and to manage employees who are old enough to be his parents.

Read more.

Photo by Michael Williamson.

« Previous Post

Next Post »