| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : MAY 29, 2000 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| PEOPLE
From High-Tech Hobby to Big Bucks Two teen entrepreneurs turn youthful interests into serious business As a teen entrepreneur, Christopher Klaus says he was afraid to take too much money from grown-ups. So when Novell offered him $20 million for the computer-security software he had invented at age 18, he claims he countered with an offer of $20,000. Now 26 and worth about $300 million, Klaus says the timid behavior of his youth turned out to be a shrewd business move. By initially underselling himself, he says, his software rapidly gained acceptance in the marketplace. And his fledgling company, Internet Security Systems, got a big boost. The Atlanta company, which Klaus founded after dropping out of Georgia Institute of Technology in 1994, is now one of the leading computer-security software companies in the nation. Klaus is the company's chief technology officer and its single largest shareholder, owning 5.7 million shares, or 13% of the company. HACK ATTACK. Like Klaus, many young entrepreneurs don't start out thinking they can make money off their high-tech hobbies. Aaron Greenspan, 17, for instance, who runs Think Computer out of his bedroom in Shaker Heights, Ohio, says he argued with his mother when she first suggested he charge for setting up computer operating systems. He was 11. "I didn't think anyone would pay an 11-year-old for anything but babysitting -- and some were reluctant to do that." But Greenspan, who says he was initially attracted to computers because of a lifelong interest in buttons, began taking clients and has already worked with more than 120 customers, squeezing their projects in between homework assignments. Klaus began playing on the Internet as a young teen in the late '80s, before almost anyone had heard of it. He had access through a family friend who worked at a nearby university. For him, it was love at first click. At age 17, while he was attending a summer program at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, hackers were breaking into Livermore computers, back then one of the most secure networks in the world. Livermore scientists and security officials didn't know how to stop the hacking, let alone identify and track down the culprits. NO LOOKING BACK. Klaus wondered if he could devise a program that would analyze the weaknesses of a computer network and then stand guard waiting for someone to break in at the weak points. He sold the Livermore scientists on his idea and began to write code -- which eventually became the ISS product line. At first, Klaus had no idea what to do with what he had written. It seemed huge and overwhelming. So he posted it for free on the Internet. The response was huge. That's when he began to wonder if he might turn his software into a business. As a freshman at Georgia Tech, he sat in class not listening to the lecturers but crunching numbers on a business plan. Klaus calculated that he could make a go of it and left Georgia Tech. He began his business alone, working out of one room in his grandmother's house. Days were spent prowling the Web for possible customers. The business took off, and Klaus has never returned to school to get his degree. "Hey, you can't have everything," he says. But he recently contributed $15 million to the college, more than any other twentysomething has contributed to a university. The school plans to name a building after him. By Rochelle Sharpe in Boston, with Deborah Rubin and Charles Haddad in Atlanta Edited by Douglas Harbrecht _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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RELATED ITEMS Teen Internet Moguls RESUME: Michael Furdyk RESUME: Cameron Johnson RESUME: Brad Ogden RESUME: Angelo Sotira RESUME: Paul Dinin RESUME: Rishi Bhat ONLINE ORIGINAL: Microsoft Puts Teens under the Microscope ONLINE ORIGINAL: Girl Geeks Start to Breach the Wired World ONLINE ORIGINAL: From High-Tech Hobby to Big Bucks ONLINE ORIGINAL: Changing the Image of the Inventor ONLINE ORIGINAL: The Legal Pitfalls of Doing Business with Teens INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online | |||
