#3 John Ready
#4 Brendan Ready
Ready Seafood and Catch a Piece of Maine
Age: 28 (John) and 26 (Brendan)
Location: Portland, ME
2007 Revenue: $10 million
Employees: 20
Year founded: 2004 (Ready Seafood) and 2007 (Catch a Piece of Maine)
Website: www.readyseafood.com and www.catchapieceofmaine.com
As undergrads, John and Brendan Ready spent their weekends catching lobsters and delivering them to buyers. "I'd park at the Northeastern parking lot Monday morning and walk into class smelling like fish," John recalls. They started with Ready Seafood, which has grown into a $10 million lobster wholesale business. Their latest venture, Catch a Piece of Maine, is a lobster trap timeshare of sorts -- for $2,995, customers take ownership of a trap for a year and receive a credit every time their traps catch one of Maine's favorite crustaceans. They can then redeem the credits for the real thing, for themselves or to give as gifts. Catch a Piece of Maine already projects $1.2 million in revenue for 2008 -- its first full year in operation -- and employs a staff of five. The Ready brothers received the Small Business Administration's 2008 National Young Entrepreneur Award.
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