All language subtitles for The.Startup.Kids.2012.1080p.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-DON

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The growth of the Internet has
changed small startups to some

of the most influential
companies in the world.

Behind these companies are more
often than not young visionary

entrepreneurs who grew up with
the Internet and now seem best

positioned to direct the future
of the web.

Who are these new entrepreneurs
and what drives them?

A really great founder seems to
be building a groundswell even

if there is nothing there, and
so he in effect is a magician.

He creates something from
nothing.

You are always kind of just on
the edge of your comfort zone

and everything you are doing is
basically something you are just

barely qualified for or not
qualified for, it is like

jumping off a cliff and having
to build your own parachute

I think an entrepreneur, that is
A difficult one, how do you

define an entrepreneur. I think
an entrepreneur is a person who

dares to have a dream that not
that many people have and even

more importantly dares to chase
it with their money where their

mouth is and their time and
their career and dares to take

the risk to going out there to
realize that vision.

Entrepreneurs are some of the
craziest people you ever meet,

they are people who have a dream
or an idea, something that keeps

them awake at night and they get
the opportunity to hopefully

solve that problem or do
something about it.

So the best entrepreneurs are
often either solving their own

problems or solving some huge
things and they can really

Entrepreneurship at the moment
is kind of like the new smoking,

it's cool to be creative and it
is cool to be making something

and I just love that energy.

Over the last couple of years
the cost of starting

a web-based startup has
decreased dramatically.

I think over the last couple
Of years it has changed

dramatically. If you think back
to the turn of the century,

two thousand, what you had
was very large companies often

creating websites like Yahoo,
AOL, these were much bigger

companies creating new kind of
products on the internet.

With the crash those went away
but the Internet didn't go away

and what actually happens was
that new initiative, young

innovators came along looked
at the web and said we can do

Ten years ago if you wanted to
start-up a company you got to

pay a lawyer to tell you weather
you should do a "C" Corp or

a "LLC". Bam, that is a Google
search, done, free, in like five

minutes. You know by that time
you would not even gone past the

lawyer secretary ten years ago.

It is really interesting to see
What entrepreneurs will look

like ten years from now. Before
they were managers, maybe little

engineering but now they are
young tech people and hackers

Anybody now with a laptop
and a Wi-Fi connection

can build anything

Today a lot of people will be
able to start companies who

never could have before. This
applies specially to younger

people. They are willing to put
in the long, unpaid hours

and have nothing to loose.

As you get older you get certain
ways and certain patterns and

you recognize them and behave in
certain way but I think that the

young entrepreneurs see things
differently in a way
that is often

times refreshing and therefore
groundbreaking.

One of the great benefits of
starting young in business is

that you have less to lose than
you know, once you have four

kids and something where you
have to re-mortgage your house

in order to finance your
company, that is a bigger risk

to take then if you come
straight out of university and

all you kind of have to choose
between is either you take up

a job or you start a crazy
company to do crazy thing

I have met kids out here who are
still teenager and starting

companies and all the way down
to sixteen years old, which is

pretty crazy when you think
about it.

Younger people have been
affected by less and they are

often times more idealistic and
they have bigger dreams and

bigger vision because they do
not know, necessary,

It doesn't really matter to me,
I could be fifty for all I care

because removing the age
element is really what I think,

what makes the Silicon Valley
area so fascinating. That I know

so many people that could be
really young or really old,

they still take you seriously,
they will still listen to you.

And that is why there is culture
of listening that is so

conducive to entrepreneurship
which is why this area is so

valuable to people

Brian Wong grew up in Vancouver
Canada. At 19 he had raised

4,3 million dollars in funding
for his company, Kiip, a reward

network where you play games on
your phone and get real rewards

through Kiip's network.

My parents at one point thought
I was addicted to my computer

and wanted to take it away
from me and I'm glad that

they ended up not doing that but
I spent, like, eight to ten

hours a day on my computer this
was at a point when I was very

addicted to Counter Strike
Source, which is a first person

shooter game which was extremely
popular when I was young and

still very much is and I spent
hours and hours playing that

game to maintain my top of
server status and I was at the

top of like three servers and
it takes a lot of time

I spent a lot of time on
Photoshop. I taught my self how

to design because I figured
it would be pretty fun to learn

how to do that. I taught myself
through forums and tutorials

and all that fun stuff. It was
all about wanting to create

something out of nothing.

I studied marketing and I also
did a minor in politic science

I wanted to study something
that was completely unrelated

to tech, that was in liberal
arts so that I could learn how

people on the other side of
the table were thinking

and it was very enlighten. I was
able to learn a lot about

perspectives around politic
theory and one of the things

it helped me do was to
understand power structures

and politics is inherently turn
around power and if I could

learn how to navigate these
power structures, I could be

successful in other areas and
so that is what political

science really made me do

I started a web design company,
like every other web

entrepreneur ends up doing at
some point and I called it a

design consultancy and we
basically charged people to

make layouts and it was really
me and my buddy, like, hammering

out code and then sending it off
to someone on a freelance

website to make it all work and
then send it off to that client

and charging a lot
of money for it.

Wasn't work at all. It was just
me spending time, to have fun

and it happened to pay us well.
We were able to pay most of our

college tuition from it, that

was great but other then that,
I didn't think too much of it

After skipping four grades in
school and finishing college at

only 18, he decided to move
to San Francisco.

I realized if I were to do
something meaningful for the

rest of my life it had to be in
a city that was larger,

that had more money in it and
more people I could relate to

and I knew that Silicon Valley
was the place to be, so I'm

going to go check it out and
see it with my own eyes

was it really "Nerdtopia", as
they called it, is it actually

that awesome. So I flew down and
cold emailed just people.

I figured, you know, what is the
worst thing could happen if I

email all these people and they
say no, OK great, I was not even

going to meet with them, in the
first place

By emailing people in Silicon
Valley Brian managed to get

meetings with some of the
world's most respected venture

capitalists and entrepreneurs.
He got a job at a startup named

Digg, a popular social content
website. Digg had to lay off

40% of their staff, and after
only a year Brian was fired.

I had like 2000 dollars left on
my bank account, I was about to

go bankrupt, bed was like
fifteen hundred, it is not cheap

to live in the city and I
remember talking to some of

my friends that I made over the
last few months and I was like

hey I have got this idea and
they were like, hey I know this

VC, Adam. And I met with Adam
for coffee and Adam was like,

well, this is cool, you know,
cool pitch, bla bla bla

Usually you never hear back from
them ever again but then Adam

the next day called me and he
said, hey, you want to do

a partners meeting. I didn't
even know what a partners

meeting was, at the time, you
know, what is a partners meeting

And I realized it was a very
important meeting, clearly,

because that is where they were
making the decision and the week

after that I had a term sheet
and as a nineteen year old,

sitting looking down at that
many zeros you are freaking out

because this is the most amazing
thing you have seen in your

whole life then I realized it
was my ticket, it was a very

chance thing, I got very lucky.

True Ventures's investment made
Brian able to start the company

he had dreamed about. He was 19
years old at the time which

makes him the youngest person to
ever receive funding by

a venture capital firm, beating
founder of Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg by one year.

Next 6 months was very clear to
me beyond that I couldn't see

anything, but I didn't really
care because I knew we had six

months or less to prove a lot
out so it was just a race

against time to make things
happen and I was so determined

to sit down, and be like, I'm
not leaving this room until

something happens and this is
going to make the world

a completely different world in
the next few years and you are

going to help me change that and
people were there to be a part

of this vision and I couldn't
thank them more, there were lot

of very early supporters that
believed in this crazy Asian kid

and his random idea about real
rewards and virtual achievements

it is like the people who have
supported me, I thank them and

they are part of their lives
even till this day

Being an Internet entrepreneur
is hard work. The freedom of

not having a boss comes with
strings attached.

Vacations disappear into the
mist of long hours, money

problems and sleepless nights.
Bootstrapping, the art of

building a business with little

or no money, is the most common
way to start a company today.

Sometimes I get worried about
these young entrepreneurs who

spend 10 years trying to be the
next Steve Jobs or Mark

Zuckerberg and they are sitting
in a dark room coding and they

miss out of the best years of
their lives. You need to

When I was an entrepreneur and I
think still now, it was, go to

sleep after a long night of
coding you wake up late usually

because you just need to sleep.
You drink a lot of soda, eat a

lot of junk food, you don't
dress necessary that well, I

didn't dress that well, and you
kind of just work all the time

and that is your entire life.

It is always a roller-coaster
ride, you know, every time I

hang out with one of my
entrepreneur friends, it is

always like, let's just get it
out of the way, are you on,

like, are you on a high part of
the cycle or are you down in the

depths because it is pretty much
going to dictate how the dinner

or the meeting goes, you know,
a lot of times, people are like:

we are killing it, we are going
to change the world, and you

like talk to them tomorrow and
they are like, dude, I don't

know why I am doing this, I
should have just been a banker.

This is the most manic
depressive way you can possibly

live life, right, you are never
having a good day, you are

either having the best day ever
or you think you're about to die

I know people who run a startup
who manage to balance things and

do other stuff in life as well.
I'm not one of those people.

Alexander Ljung is the CEO and
co-founder of SoundCloud,

an audio platform that enables
anybody to upload sounds on to

the web. SoundCloud is one of
the fastest growing companies

in the music world. The
company's headquarters are in

Berlin but because of their fast
growth they have opened an

office in San Francisco so
Alexander splits his time

between Berlin and Silicon
Valley.

Alexander grew up in Sweden
and went to the Royal Institute

of Technology in Stockholm
where he studied
human computer Interaction.

I didn't have the typical
entrepreneur background of, you

know, opening up a lemonade
stand and, you know, selling

magazines to the neighborhood,
but I realized in hindsight like

that, I was always doing these
intense projects.

I would come up with an idea and
then, you know, cut out

everything else in my world and
only focus on that idea so in

that way I was very
entrepreneurial in terms of

doing projects and creating
things but it wasn't in business

sense but I definitely always
had the tendency to go, you

know, over the top with project
that I was doing, weather it was

installation of interactive
shoes that made noises or ping

pong table that you could make
music with or what ever it might

be so I had a strong drive to
create things, but it wasn't,

I didn't think of it as business
quality or anything like that.

Alexander met his co-founder
Eric Wahlforss, in college when

they bonded over being the only
ones using Mac computers.

They both had a background in
music and were familiar with the

problem of collaborating with
other musicians. They decided to

create SoundCloud to solve that
problem.

In the beginning we were really
excited but I think it was, we

were more excited about it
because like we wanted this

product, and we were like, this
has to exist because then we can

do this and we can do that. I
think we were so obsessed with

what it would do for us that we
didn't necessarily see the full

potential of how big of an
impact we could actually have on

the web and the world outside
of it.

After graduation in 2007 he and
Eric decided to move away from

Stockholm to be able to focus
totally on building of the

company. They traveled around
Europe looking for the best

place for a tech startup.

We went on a trip to London,
Barcelona, Vienna and Berlin

Berlin was the last stop, and
the idea was just to feel out

the city a little bit and see
if it would be were we wanted to

move. We were in Berlin and we
were there for about a day, I

think, and we immediately
thought, okay, this is the

place. There are so many
creative people here. It's a

good tech scene so actually that
same evening when we got back to

Stockholm, we were like, you
know what, screw it, we are

moving to Berlin next week. We
took one week, rented out our

apartments, packed a big
suitcase and then moved over to

Berlin, and the next week we set
up an office at a local café

there, and, yeah, it turned out
to be even better than we

thought, so we stayed.

You know, a lot of people talk
about bootstrapped startups but

that was like, should be in the
dictionary of bootstrap. I mean

we literally, moved over with a
rucksack each and that was it,

We were in a café, and then our
next office was a conference

room of a friends start-up, I
think we lived there for a

couple of days, then they kicked
us out. We found our own office

which was this, almost like an
old abandoned attic, were we

pulled the cable outside the
window to get internet in there.

We had five good chairs in
Stockholm, we had gotten them

from another entrepreneur for
free, so those we decided to

bring down from Stockholm to
Berlin, so I think we had a

friend who took them in his car
or something, and then we were

rolling them around Berlin.

The music scene in Berlin is
fantastic so on the weekends we

would be out clubbing at all
these fantastic Berlin clubs,

from Friday until Sunday evening
and then, you know, back on

Monday, just like coding, you
know, the whole week through,

and I thing that went on for
like half the year or something

just no break what so ever.

In October 2008 SoundCloud
launched their product after

being in private beta for more
than a year.

When we decided to open the site
for the public, we thought, well

we are in Berlin, so the right
way to do that is at a club,

so we actually threw a launch
party at a club that our friends

have called Picnic. We actually
launched at twelve o'clock at

night at the club, like, we had
Sean, our chief architect was

sitting upstairs in a small room
with a laptop deploying the site

and we were like, Eric and I
were behind the DJ desk

launching the site on the dance
floor and we were just like

okay, it's going to crash, it's
going to crash, but it survived

it survived the whole night and
the morning after, I was a bit

tired but, first thing, when we
woke up, were just like, is the

site online and it was online.
We started seeing, we had

sign-ups through the night and
from there on we were

open and full on.

Alexander drew attention to his
company in a creative way.

It involved a leather jacket
and some spray-paint.

Every time I was doing a talk at
a conference I made sure that I

had some point in the talk were
I could turn around so that

people could see this jacket,
the back of it. It's good, like,

there was pictures of this
jacket, all over the web and

people were talking about it
because it looked kind of cool

and I know so many investors
that remember that jacket so

that was actually a good thing
for us to, you know, to get the

VCs who see tens of new
start-ups every day, to actually

remember ours, and so you know,
a jacket, some spray-paint, and

a cheap H&M jacket, it was
probably, you know, a pretty

good 50 euro marketing
stunt.

SoundCloud now has more than 10
million users and 60 million

dollars in funding. Their users
include such high profile

musicians as Rhianna and
Kylie Minouge.

You know, almost, everybody in
the company, knew about it.

I had this thing that the day
that Björk signs up I'm going to

take the day off, then we are
done and it was probably about

6 months ago that she signed up
in preparation for the new album

and started posting this really
awesome little sound bites where

she was talking about the new
album and that just made my day

and then I was just, okay, I
have to take the day off and ten

minutes later I realized that
the only thing I wanted to do at

my day off was to work, so then
I ended up going back to the

computer and actually ended
up working that day anyway.

To turn an idea into reality the
entrepreneurs often need to meet

additional costs. That's where
the investors enter the picture.

They give the entrepreneurs
funding in exchange for a part

of their company. Venture
capital firms and angel

investors are attracted to
start-ups because of their

potential to grow rapidly
for a limited investment.

Well I think, that angels tend
to be private individuals

people who have probably had
successful businesses themselves

in the past, and now they are
looking to invest some of their

own capital into early stage
companies and they are usually

doing it partly to get a return,
to make some more money but

partly, also because they enjoy
doing it, they see it as a great

way of mentoring and working
with young people in early stage

companies a venture capitalist
is someone who is really doing

that as a job so we have
typically raised money from

bigger funds like pension funds,
like government
and we are doing it,

to basically return money to our
shareholders.

If I'm loaning money to someone,
I kind of want them to succeed,

but mostly I just want them to
pay me back. In the case of

making an investment in a
business, I want them to succeed

really big.

The process of venture capital
is either we find you or you

find us and generally when we
are looking for you, that is a

good thing. When you come to
find us, it is more of a shot in

the dark, fifty-fifty.

First and second time you start
a company, it is very difficult

to get VC money instantly, you
have to know some angels and it

is also a very good education to
have some angels to help you out

who can then take you to the VCs
because if you are just fresh

out of school you do not know
the VCs, you don't even know

what a VC mean, maybe you think
it is a toilet.

You give your pitch and you meet
all these different investors

and visit
the venture capitalists

at their offices down in Menlo
Park. You give maybe a half

hour, forty-five minute pitch
and you talk to bunch of

different investors and after a
series of more meetings then

they decide if they will invest
or not.

We raised about a million
dollars and the feeling until we

finished raising was the feeling
of fear, would any investor buy

into this and would we actually
be able to raise the money.

Jessica Mah is the founder and
CEO of InDinero, a company that

creates software to help small
businesses better track and

manage their finances. Jessica
has been building businesses

since she was 12 years old. She
finished high school when she

was 15 and at 20 she had raised
over a million dollars for her

own startup. I was pretty bored
in school when I was young, so I

was always trying to find a way
to make more money on my own so

I was doing stupid stuff like
lemonade stands or going to

neighbor houses to try to rake
their leaves or anything to make

my own money. I got my first
computer when I was in third or

four grade and I started
programming when I was, I think,

thirteen years old
and just really wanted
to make my own game and

websites so I picked up some
books from the local book store

and did that in my spare time.

My mom is an entrepreneur so she
told me, why not take your

programming skills and make a
business out of it and that is

when I first started thinking
about building my own company

when I was working on my first
company when I was thirteen I

had at least a few hundred
customers and all of them were

paying me recurring revenue
every single month. I was

selling stuff on eBay and I was
selling my programming services.

I made some money, I didn't make
big money but enough. I was

making like high five digits.

Jessica went to Berkeley where
she studied computer science,

there she met her co-founder
Andy Su.

At first we were just doing
homework with each other but

after we do our homework we
thought why don't we do other

fun things, when we are not
doing our homework so we started

brainstorming startup ideas and
just programming project ideas

and we started building stuff in
our spare time and then that

ultimately led way to us wanting
to build a real company together

In college Jessica and Andy
started to build what was to

become InDinero. She and her
team lived together in a small

apartment in Silicon Valley.

I thought it was so much fun to
live in an apartment with my

co-founder and with our early
team because you are just. You

are literally eating and
sleeping and breathing your

startup 24-7, when you do that
and it was just a few of us in a

small tiny room, the living room
and we got our computers there

and just wake up, roll out of
bed and build our startup and

then we cooked meals and then
just went back to working again.

It was a lot of fun. The first
version of InDinero was really

bad it was just my co-founder,
Andy and I, going to a hackathon

and we had a weekend to build a
project and present it to about

a hundred people. We didn't
really care about product

quality or anything. We just
programmed all weekend

long to build it.

InDinero launched in 2009. She
and her team needed more money

to build the product. She
initially set out to raise 500

thousand dollars for the company
but received so much interest

that she eventually had to turn
investors away.

Our launch went really well and
I think it went well because we

took our time to build our
product and we didn't just

launch it when we felt ready but
we knew we were ready because we

demoed it with dozens of
entrepreneurs.
We saw them sign-up

and we knew which common
problems they had so we knew

that it was ready for the public

and then people started offering
checks and it all rolled in and

then it was the feeling of
optimism and excitement and

finally when we had all the
money we decided to spend it

really slowly. We didn't just
spend it over night on random

stuff. We were really cautious
about it because, I had never

seen that much money in my life
and all though it not that much

for a company it was a lot for
Andy and I.

I think about the business
almost all the time I try to not

think about on Saturday but
every other day, I think that if

you are not thinking about your
startup then you are not doing a

good enough a job if you are
the founder at least. Because

you are going to come up with
your best ideas at the most

random moments, when you are
driving in your car or thinking

in the shower or just walking
to work and so I think you have

to think about it all the time.
The Lifestyle is hectic, you

have to be working long hours
and you have to be enjoying that

So why are they doing this? Is
it about walking away with

millions of dollars? Or is the
ultimate goal having satisfied

users and a good product?

I was supposed to be unemployed
I was supposed to have no money

And here I am, I'm able to eat,
sleep, live under a roof and

have an office. It is already
amazing for me so I could live

on sustenance, right, and I
couldn't care less.

I think a lot of people, jumps
out of them, how wealthy some

tech entrepreneurs get. Look at
Bill Gates or Larry and Sergei,

in Oracle, or, you know, Steve
Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg and you

think, it is all about the money
but if you ask them, it is

really not. If you talk to those
guys who are entrepreneurs,

they are not in it to make big
money and it turns out, if you

think about how much you are
going to make of money, you

might make money, but it is not
really a good indicator. So I

think the primary motivation
really is that the best

entrepreneurs try to change
the world.

I think that it is always very
different and I think it is

sometime very personal too what
drives them. I think we have

certain entrepreneurs that
really want to change the world

others just realize that this is
incredible way to build a lot of

wealth, and others are really
just passionate about their

product and are really not
thinking about the business

itself. I think too many
entrepreneurs are in it for the

wrong reasons. I think they are
in it for the money, for the

fame, for the glory, and a lot
of them are going to say they

are not in it for any of that
but they are just cheating

themselves. The first time
entrepreneurs when they first

get funded they at first are
really thrilled that they got

funded and then the weight of
the money is on their shoulders

and they say, ohh wow, we really
got to do this and we are going

to make sure it works because
we have now raised money from

somebody else, from other
people.

I think that a lot of
entrepreneurs are spending their

twenties working all the time
because,
there are a few different

reasons. One, a lot of them see
the opportunity for fame and

success and more than that,
the best ones just really have

these great ideas and realize
they can do something right now,

it's cheap to do it, you can
just come up here and do

something and potentially really
alter the way the world works.

I'm not building software to
build a business and make

a ton of money and get
rich of it.

Leah Culver is the CEO and
co-founder of Grove, a real-time

group chat service for teams.
She started her first company in

2007, when she co-founded a
social network site named Pownce

which a year later got her
selected as one of the

"Most Influential Women in
Web" by Fast Company.

So I first became interested in
programming and sort of doing

little bit more with computers,
when I was about fifteen, it was

kind of trendy at the time to
make your own webpages and

everyone wanted to have their
own homepage so I got one of

these free Angelfire, GeoCity
homepages and started to

learn HTML. I wasn't quite sure
that that was I wanted to for

a job, I think it was kind of I
always thought was really fun

but I actually wanted to be a
graphic designer when I was

younger because my mother
was a graphic designer
and I think it is

easy as a kid to just want to do
what your parents do because my

mother always loved her job and
I thought that it would be so

cool to love what I was doing.

She graduated from college in
2006 and decided to move to

San Francisco. After graduating
from college I really wanted to

move someplace warm because I
grew up in Minnesota which is

very cold and I got a job at a
start-up in San Jose and I

worked for startups for a little
while and then I realized that I

wanted to do my own. I wanted to
work on my own projects. That is

why I got into programming
because I wanted, you know,

to work on my own things.

Leah needed a new laptop but
couldn't afford it. She came up

with a unique way to generate
enough money to buy a new one

when she sold ad space on her
computer to several companies by

laser-etching their logos on the
surface of the computer.

So I said: Buy a space of
advertising on this laptop and I

made like a corny webpage for it
like, hey if you buy an ad on my

laptop I show it off on all this

San Francisco cafés and things
and I didn't actually think that

anyone would pay attention to
this stupid website.
I did it kind

of as a joke and out of the
frustration that I didn't have

enough money and people ended up
actually buying ads on it and

paying for these cute little ads
and it was fun. It was a lot of

work to get people to buy the
ads but I ended up getting

enough money to buy the laptop
and etched it and made a video

of it and made the whole thing a
production and tried to really

get the most value to the people
who actually did buy the ads and

I felt a little bad, you know,
somebody have to get something

good out of it but it was a
really interesting experience

and probably, like, really good
lesson in marketing and sort of

following through on a project.

Leah's first startup began as a
hobby when she started playing

around with sending messages
and media to her friends. She

got two of her friends involved
and they turned it into a social

network. The site got a lot of
attention and at some point

invitations to use the service
were being sold on eBay.

My first startup was actually
Pownce and it is sort of a funny

story because most people will
go through several big failed

start-ups or little failed
start-ups that no one ever heard

of before they end up making a
product that is fairly popular.

Pownce was very popular for a
first start-up It is not really

the traditional way that
start-ups are built most of the

time you will have some small
start-up that don't work out

that well but I was lucky enough
to work with Kevin Rose on

Pownce who is fairly well known
and ended up getting a lot of

publicity for my first
start-up.

Your first startup is really,
really exciting. Everything is

a big deal and everything
matters and you get T-shirt and

stickers and it is so exciting
to have sort of your own startup

A year later the company was
struggling due to a lack of

revenue. The team decided to
sell Pownce to a software

company called Six Apart.
Two weeks later the site

got shut down.

How did it feel to sell the
company. It was interesting.

It's kind of exciting because
you are like someone wants to

buy my company and it's
exciting but at the same time it

is kind of sad because you lose
sort of the independence and

freedom to work on the project.
They ended up shutting down the

site which I wasn't super happy
about so that wasn't a great

experience. Things can go wrong.
You can end up blaming people.

You can end up, having a lot of
fighting when things aren't

going super well and they never
go super well. I don't know why

anybody thinks that startups are
rainbows and sunshine. It's a

lot of hard work, I mean if you
want rainbow and sunshine work

a 9-5 job and have a hobby on
the side because hobbies will

always be rainbow and sunshine
cause when they don't work out

you don't want to work on them.
I think there is a part of our

generation, my generation where
you need to be perfect and good

in everything and part of being
an entrepreneur is: You will

fail, you will mess up and do
things wrong. I mean even

Pownce, the site got shut down,
like, acquired and shut down

because we ran out of money

that is kind of a failure but
you need to be able to say that

is okay and move on from that.
Or something might not work out

in the way you expect and I
think that is hard for a lot of

people to know that they are
going to do something wrong.

Failure is a part of the startup
culture. In the news we only

hear about the successful
companies but what about all

the others. 90% of all start-ups
will fail.

You can't have everyone be a
success, it's just not a

tenable situation so most
start-ups still do fail but the

good news is that when those
start-up do fail it is a great

lesson often times for the
entrepreneurs and you usually

see a lot of them come back
and try again.

What is really important is to
make sure that, you know,

I'm not really putting my
whole identity in this start-up

and I realize that this
might fail.

In our experience
about 6 out of 10 out of the
investments we make

fail and we lose all our money
and maybe 2 out of 10 float

along and maybe we make our
money back or maybe two times

our money so really one or two
of those ten investments that

make it a huge success that
make venture capital worth

pursuing and those are the one
or two that make us many, many

times our money.

Yeah, failure is totally
accepted here. It is actually

even better if you failed in
your profile, people value a lot

that you failed and it's totally
okay, I fail every day

in something. Guys who do really
well they are guys who have

crashed another company before,
and the guys who haven't crashed

another company yet this is the
company they need to crash.

I made 30 million dollars when
I was 17 and lost it all by the

time I was 20, and that
experience really made me

realize that in life the most
important thing is the people

around you and it is easy to
forget that and get caught up in

the hype. You only get one
life. You got to live it.

Don't forget to actually
enjoy it.

Ben Way is an English serial
entrepreneur. He grew up in

England and was early fascinated
with building businesses.

He started a computer
consultancy at age 15. At 17 he

had raised 40 million dollars,
making him one of the first dot

com millionaires. By twenty he
had lost it all.

I was always very different in
school. I'm severely dyslexic.

I was told at 9 years old that
I would never read or write

because I was pretty useless.
I still have trouble spelling

business and entrepreneur is a
word I couldn't even possible

hope to spell but I was very
lucky and one of the reason

why I got into computers and
technology is that I was

actually given a laptop at 9
years old to help me with my

dyslexia and I was one of the
first of kids in the whole of UK

to be given a laptop for
education.

My first semi proper business
was at twelve years old. I

bought some chickens and I
sold their eggs and I had a

proper cash flow where I used
to look after the fee and check

the sale of the eggs. You know
eggs have very good margins

at twelve years old. After my
chicken business I started my

first computer consultancy on my
15th birthday, charging 10

pounds an hour and that was
really how I started a proper

business. I think at the time I
was the youngest company

director in the country and it
wasn't until few years later I

raised twenty-five
million pounds for
what was back then the

first e-commerce search engine.

At 21, after the Dot-com crash
in 2000 Ben's company

went bankrupt. When I failed I
failed in spectacular fashion.

I lost twenty million pounds. I
lost my car, the girl I loved,

my house, I couldn't even
buy a tube ticket in the

same day I was in
the rich list.

But even after this experience
he decided to continue building

businesses. In 2003 he started
Rainmakers, an innovation

and venture company.

So after I failed it did take me
a while to get back on my feet.

After losing everything, it was
very hard time in my life.

I ended up doing a reality TV
show and traveling the world.

But entrepreneur is such a deep
part of me. It took about

18 months, 2 years, to start my
own business again, but never

any second does business leave
me. I'm always thinking of

business so even after I failed
I was thinking of ideas for new

businesses I could do. Sometimes
I wish I could quiet my mind

a bit more often.
But every second
by every day is consumed by

the thought of making the
world a slightly better.

It's been a, you know, a very
Long and challenging time. I had

some great successes during that
time and great failures also.

I just don't fear the failures
so much any more.

Even tough so many companies
fail entrepreneurs continue to

start new businesses in the
hopes that theirs will be that

one in ten company that
succeeds. What does it

take to build a
successful start-up?

Successful startups needs a lot
of things. They need a great

idea. They need a great team
and they need to be there at the

right time and they need the
right level of funding

There is a lot of luck in the
success of all business that

have succeeded. There were 25
search engines funded before

Google was funded.
There were Friendster
and Linkedin and

Myspace and about 50 others
before Facebook became the

big winner in that area. There
is a little bit of luck that

just happens where somebody
gets it just right. That could

be skill, that they figured out
what the user really, really

wants and that's the thing that
makes those big businesses.

Some of it is that you are at
the right place at the right

time and you get lucky.

I think with any company there
is a lot of luck involved.

You can have great idea and
work really hard and be really

smart but the one thing that is
out of your control is timing.

Absolutely, team is super
important, you know, big market

I don't know, it's magic, it's
totally magic, it's all of that

stuff and 9 out of 10 times
they fail and the one time it

does work it happens in a
totally unexpected way.

Look at Twitter, right, how big
was micro blogging when Twitter

started. Look at Facebook, how
big was social networking when

that started. Those weren't huge
interesting markets but that is

what you hear from all VCs. That
is really what we look for in

those investments. These weren't
really big investment at the

time. Starting a company often
feels like series of miracles

and you have to have one set of
really good thing happen right

after the other. So it really
does feel like a lot of luck but

at the same time
if you really work hard
and try a lot of things

and really experimental you can
create your own luck.

And you can make these
miracles happen.

When I was young I didn't know
what a entrepreneur was.

I understood it as a catchall
word to define any independent

small business person that is
just what I thought but it

sounded pretentious to me.

I can't even pinpoint where it
all came from but I just always

had the impression that I was
going to invent things.

Zach Klein is a 27 year old
entrepreneur. He is the

co-founder of Vimeo, a popular
video sharing site, visited by

50 million people each month. He
started his career working on

website called College Humor.
Two of his friend from college

started to post silly pictures
of themselves on the Internet in

1999. Pretty soon the site was
getting a thousand visitors

a week and Zach joined them
while he was still in college.

I never thought about quitting
college. I loved college,

The cliché, I think it was some
of the best times of my life.

It was a really nice
intersection of innocence and

independence and it was lovely.
And I went to school in North

Carolina where I love and would
give anything to have four

more years there.

After graduation in 2004 he
and his three partners moved

the company to New York.

We were having a hard time
taking seriously by anyone in

the industry because we weren't
in San Francisco and New York

and I think all of us sort of
were attracted to the romance

of moving to New York City so
we decided to move there instead

The four friends rented
apartment together and ran the

website out of their spare
bedroom.

For the first three or four
months it was just the four of

us, so we sort of just got out
of bed, walked 20 yards over to

our office and just worked until
we got tired, and then we put on

clothes and go get dinner. I
remember it was a big shock when

we got our first employee and we
had to start wearing clothes to

work and having normal
business hours.

In 2005 The New Yorker published
an article named "The Funny

Boys" about College Humor
and the guys behind it.

It certainly made clear that
this wasn't fluke. That we were

very ernest business people,
very ernest entrepreneurs who

thought very carefully about
the things we were making

Within a few months of the
article being published they had

a book-deal and a movie
in the works.

Our office grew I think until
we were like 10 or 12 people,

it stayed in our apartment and
then when we could afford it,

we got the next floor above our
apartment so we would take an

elevator up the building to our
office and I don't remember what

the exactly the count was but I
think we had something like 30

people before we had our first
person above thirty and we had

to hire that person because we
needed an accountant and that

was the youngest accountant
we could find.

Vimeo started as a side project
by Zach and one of the

co-founders of College Humor
Jakob Lodwick. After hours they

built the site and began
experimenting with uploading

short videos for their friends.

Vimeo is definitely my proudest
work, it is certainly the thing

that I took the most time
designing. I actually haven't

had desire to design something
since Vimeo.

I remember having an office
and having a door and sort of

shutting my self off for six
months while I sort of iterated

on this constantly. We weren't
very sophisticated making

websites then. We didn't have
any best practices.

We didn't know how we should be
building the site collectively.

Jake and I still considered very
much a personal project

and so he gave me a lot of space
and time to make something

I was really proud of. I
remember writing letters to my

friends and family saying "I'm
sorry, you don't know me

anymore" and that sort of thing
because I just sort of let all

of my relationship go because
nothing was important as this.

I remember breaking, I broke up
with a girlfriend cause I had no

time or interested really, it
was really more of an interest

thing. Nothing was exciting to
me as this thing. Knowing that

there were tenths of thousands
of people using the service and

in love with it and waiting to
see what we could do next

In 2006 IAC, a big Internet
company, acquired both

College Humor and Vimeo. After
being a side project for a time

in 2007 Zach and Jakob got the
go-ahead from IAC. Vimeo became

a full-time, fully funded
start-up. The website user base

was growing steadily but in 2008
Zach decided to leave the

company. I think what it was
there was something,

the entrepreneurial spirit had
been sucked out of the company

because we were know own by such
a massive company that was

making a lot of decisions for us
and I felt myself being squeezed

into this role of just a
designer and I didn't really,

I learnt design because that was
just the easiest way to make

myself useful to the process of
building those companies but I

wanted to learn so much more
and I had money for the first

time in my life and I never
wanted to work on the Internet

just for the sake of working on
the Internet. There were a lot

of things that I wanted to do
so I left to do them.

So buying some wood and building
cabins with my friends here is

something I wanted
to spend time doing
so that's what I left to do

Zach now spends most his time
living in the woods, without

electricity and unreachable
by phone.

I've lived in this cabin behind
me for a year, for about half

the year. I spend three or four
days of the week down in

New York, cause I'm still
involved with Internet, and then

another three or four days I'm
here and there is usually,

I don't know, 8 to 10 people
with me, just to sort of make

a little place, that we all can
spend time doing whatever we

want to do. I came to this
place, I think, primarily,

because I love the outdoors, I
have always wanted a place like

this but I keep coming back
because it is in this place I

feel the most creative recently.
My entire career have just been

spent online, pushing pixels
around and there is something

novel and thrilling for me to
build with wood and stone, with

my friends. To iterate with
these materials. To make

physical things we can use,
that we can be inside of and

other people look at them.
I can't recreate that sense of

pleasure working online. I can't
explain it, I don't think it is

permanent. It is just right now
this is where I'm most inspired.

The most interesting place to be
is the place that allows you to

become very singularly focused
and when you are that way you

are really at your peak and I
think it is when you are the

most comfortable with your self.
I think it when you are the most

attractive to other people that
you are bound to be interested

in and you sort of become
magnetized. You just find other

people who are also driven to
make or to think the same things

and it puts you in a really
creative place where there is no

fear. Where people are just
really happy about the things

that you are making together
and it is in this space that I

think you achieve the
greatest things creatively.

Success is what you make of it.
I mean I know some of the most

successful entrepreneurs can be
unhappy. So I think for me to be

a successful entrepreneur is
both having a work and life

balance. You know, I want to be
successful but at the same time

I want to live life.

Don't be indirect about how you
think. Don't take a job to go

somewhere else. If you want to
be in Silicon Valley and you

want to do a start-up, go to
Silicon Valley and do a

start-up and don't let anyone
stop you because when you get

out here it is a whole new world
of all kind of possibilities.

So many people have the wrong
idea that they have to follow

some kind of path. Do your MVP.
Build your initial prototype and

then pitch it and have a initial
customer. It doesn't matter.

Everybody start a company in a
different way. If you are to

follow another guy's path you
aren't being a true entrepreneur

The most comforting thing to me
again was just the fact that all

these people that are on
magazine covers, they started

out just like you, in their
twenties, with no experience

and they were able to figure
things out. That I think should

give comfort to anybody who is
excited about starting a company

You can't teach entrepreneurship
you either are an entrepreneur

or you're not. I think if you
are you're going to end up

doing it and that is just who
you are. You can't change that.

As long as you have passion for
something and some fundamental

core idea I think that you
should just hone in on that and

really do everything you can
to explore that.

Follow your heart. Follow the
things that really matters to

you. If you do that you will
become a big success.

There has never ever been a
better time to do it than today.

You know you're only young once.
Life is too short to give it up.

If you got the opportunity to
do something like this you owe

it to yourself, you owe it to
the world, owe it to your

children to take this as
far as you can.

Not say you are going to wait
until after college or prepare

yourself to become entrepreneur
or to take classes even about

entrepreneurship but just to it
while you are still taking

classes and to not give any
excuses for building a company

because no matter what you could
come up with excuses.

The hardest thing is just
to start.

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