While many believe that a career begins when acquiring employment after graduation, there are a number of students who put that myth to rest. College student entrepreneurs do exist as evidenced by a variety of now famous and former students.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin
The wildly popular search engine was created by the two grad students while they attended the University of Michigan in 1998. The venture, originally entitled “BackRub,” was established as part of a research project, designed to index the Stanford digital library. However, the creation began using too much of the facility’s bandwidth and interfered with the student’s other studies. The name Google emerged as a play on words as Brin and Page determined that the tool might organize and access a googol amount of information. Though the two attempted to sell their creation, they failed. However, Google soon acquired $25 million in investments.
Mark Zuckerberg
While an enterprising student attending Harvard, Zuckerberg, along with three friends and classmates, established and wrote the code for the now popular social network site known as Facebook. The site has earned more than $6.9 billion to date, making the young genius one of the wealthiest people on the planet before the age of 30. His somewhat controversial story came to life on the big screen in the Oscar-nominated movie entitled “The Social Network.” According to Bio., Zuckerberg has since donated millions of dollars to the New Jersey school system and vows to continue participating in charitable endeavors throughout his life.
Bo Peabody
Along with a classmate and their economics professor, Peabody created the social network known as Tripod.com in 1992. The online site was designed to allow college students, or young adults, the option of building and uploading individual sites online, which caused an influx of user-generated information. The men sold their triumph to Lycos in 1998 for $58 million. According to the Business Insider, Peabody’s success and wealth allowed him to invest in a number of other online businesses. In 1998, he co-founded the former Streetmail, now known as Waterfront Media. By the year 2000, Peabody helped establish VoodooVox and FullTurn Media in 2004. In 2006, he helped create UplayMe.
Marc Adreessen
As a student attending the University of Illinois, Adreessen combined efforts with Eric Bina and other classmates to create a browser called Mosaic. The browser enabled users to find information via mouse clicks and pictures. Soon, Mosaic boasted more than 2 million users. According to Bio., Adreessen’s work caught the attention of James Clark, who founded Silicon Graphics Inc. Clark then contacted Adreessen. The two created the now-famous browser known as Netscape. AOL purchased Netscape in 1999. Thanks to his many investments and business ventures, Adreessen today has a reported net worth of more than $253 million.
Many others have succeeded in creating and profiting from online businesses while yet attending college. Interestingly enough, only three of the most famous ideas were created with the thought of developing an actual business. Undoubtedly, many more students try and fail in their efforts. The specialists at digITech offer a bit of cautionary advice to those desiring to start an online company.
