To handle the job of reviewing an increased lineup of products and covering the breaking news of additional consumer technology industries, I recently doubled my staff to 20 full-time employees. We also set up an outpost in New York City, and moved to a new office location in Boston to accommodate additional personnel and a state-of-the-art testing lab.
Certainly, graduating from Tufts University and literally having more time available to devote to my businesses fueled the expansion. More potential business partners know my name, my companies, and our reputation compared to one year ago, and each day, more consumers turn to my publications for trusted advice.
My advice to other young entrepreneurs is: be fearless. If you have an idea, don't hesitate to get started on it. When I launched CamcorderInfo.com as a young teenager, I didn't stop to think about failure. As I grew older, and thought about launching more publications, I had more experience and could imagine all the things that might go wrong. But I decided not to be afraid.
If I had been cautious, I never would have made the list.
#13 Luke Skurman, College Prowler
College Prowler's annual growth continues to outpace our expectations, thanks to robust demands from consumers for our core products and our new offerings. These offerings have provided several new revenue streams for the company. Our recently re-launched website is creating a healthy revenue stream from paid subscriptions. The new website also provides advertisers with customizable ad opportunities that are generating new revenue while also drawing strong praise from our advertisers. Our exclusive content is also contributing significant revenue to the bottom line through licensing agreements. In addition to these three new sources of revenue, College Prowler expanded its core offering of guidebooks by adding 50 new titles. In the coming year, we plan to expand even more, including building out our team to meet demand and look for even different ways to leverage our exclusive student-generated content.
At College Prowler, we follow the advice that we give to young entrepreneurs -- we understand that failure is part of success. Taking risks with new ideas means that guarantees for success go out the window first. Have confidence in your innovations, but be prepared to learn from your mistakes. Our efforts at College Prowler focus on creating innovative products that have room to grow in the marketplace while we learn from consumers. We recognize that every good idea may not be received by the marketplace, so we look to improve on every idea in order to leverage each opportunity to its fullest.
#14 Lou Honick, HostMySite.com
Business has been great since last year. My company is up to about 180 employees and still growing. We just opened a major data-center expansion in January, which is already about 40 percent full. We are planning a new corporate headquarters (about 20,000 square feet to start, expandable to 60,000) and another major data center build by the end of this year. We projected revenue to top $21 million this year (about 60 percent growth over fiscal year 2006) and we are well on track to meet or beat that goal. Most of the growth has been achieved through strong word of mouth, especially in the enterprise Web-hosting space, due to our focus on providing outstanding service. While I know most businesses talk about customer service, we really live and breathe it here.
Being on the 30 Under 30, I think it was a great experience and has yielded some recognition. I speak at various Internet and Web-hosting industry events and the fact that I was on the list last year has been mentioned several times at those events.
What advice would I give to other young entrepreneurs? Probably to focus as much as possible on improving your people skills. When I was in my early 20s, I was very brash, overbearing, and difficult to work with, mostly as a result of my passion for the business and for ensuring a good customer experience. I would yell, throw things, even punch holes in the wall when things went wrong. I'm still passionate about my business and keeping our status as a customer service powerhouse in our industry, but I take a better approach to dealing with problems. I would say it is important to look at problems and failures as opportunities to improve rather than opportunities to lay someone out for doing a bad job. It's also a much happier day at work when my blood isn't constantly boiling, and we're still accomplishing great things. I think age and experience (I just turned 30 this year) mellow you out but it would have been great if I could have figured some of these things a bit earlier.
#16 James Messina, Messina Wildlife
Business has been up since the article came out last year! Since being selected to the 30 Under 30 list, my sales are up over 65%, and we expect to have over $2 million in sales by the end of this year. We were able to add Lowe's and QVC to our list of customers and are working with Home Depot (NYSE:HD), Whole Foods (NASDAQ:WFMI), and K-Mart for additional rollouts in 2008. The best advice I can give other young entrepreneurs can be summed up in three thoughts:
First and foremost, follow through on your promises. No matter how big or how difficult, do what you say you are going to do. Your word is the one thing you can offer people that no one else can. There's plenty of competition out there, but you there's only one you. You are the most important part of your business. People won't forget the times you come through for them… or the times you don't.
Second, welcome setbacks. The good times are easy to enjoy. But not everything you're going to is going to turn out wonderful and some things will out and out fail. WELCOME THESE TIMES. LEARN FROM THEM. Those moments will do more good for you in making you a better businessperson then any string of successes. If you're only looking forward to success, you're going to have a rude awakening eventually. But a setback isn't the end of the world, it's a lesson that can teach some of the most exciting things about you, your product or your company that you never saw before.
