Recently saw some of these companies on inc.com, and thought hopefully their stories could somehow motivate us to start now, or influence us into developing our ideas.
O yeah, All of them started in college…
Age: 26
Location: Falls Church, VA
2007 Revenue: $7.5 million
Employees: 70
Year founded: 2001
Website: www.k4solutions.com
Sumi Krishnan was just 19 years old when she entered the competitive federal contracting market. Today, her company regularly lands multimillion-dollar contracts to provide help desk support, network engineering support, video teleconferencing, and data management services for Air Force bases and other agencies, including the Pentagon. This summer, the company was awarded a contract to oversee office automation and military personnel administration support for the 88th Communications Group at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, one of the nation’s largest military installations.
Nick Friedman
Omar Soliman
College Hunks Hauling Junk
Age: 27 (Friedman) and 27 (Soliman)
Location: Tampa, FL
2007 Revenue: $2.5 Million
Employees: 165
Year founded: 2005
Website: www.1800JunkUSA.com
Raised in the nation’s capital, these two entrepreneurs were schoolmates of Chelsea Clinton and Al Gore III before they launched America’s first all-student junk removal franchise three years ago. The company’s “hunks” — clad in bright orange hats and green shirts — will haul away everything from construction materials to old couches, and Friedman and Soliman donate a portion of revenue from each job to local college scholarship programs. Today, the company employs more than 100 college students at nine outlets across the country and recently launched College Foxes Hauling Boxes, a spin-off based near Washington, D.C., which helps homeowners get rid of unwanted clutter. Revenue is expected to hit $4 million by 2009.
John Bicket
Sanjit Biswas
Meraki
Age: 28 (Bicket) and 26 (Biswas)
Location: San Francisco, CA
2007 Revenue: Undisclosed
Employees: 40
Year founded: 2006
Website: www.meraki.com
Launched as an MIT graduate student project, this rapidly expanding company uses inexpensive WiFi routers to create cheap, grassroots wireless networks in underserved regions of India, South America, and Africa, among other areas. Its 20-something founders have already landed over $20 million in funding from such key players as Google and Sequoia Capital. After a successful test drive in San Francisco, Meraki now connects customers in 125 different countries, providing broadband-speed access to the Internet for under $10 a month. “In two years, we went from selling products from our living room to selling them around the world,” Biswas says.
Aaron Levie
Dylan Smith
Box.net
Age: 23 (Levie) and 22 (Smith)
Location: Palo Alto, CA
2007 Revenue: Undisclosed
Employees: 37
Year founded: 2005
Website: www.box.net
Launched as a college project in a dorm room by these two Seattle area high school buddies, Box.net allows users to share, store, and access any type of digital file from anywhere at anytime. This year alone, the company netted $6 million in venture capital and has attracted nearly 2 million users, a number that’s sure to grow with Dell having recently added a direct link to Box.net on its new Inspiron Mini 9 notebook to boost the device’s storage capacity. Box.net users range from individual consumers to small businesses and large corporations, which use the site to collaborate on projects. Co-founder Aaron Levie says after receiving a call from billion entrepreneur Mark Cuban during his sophomore year, “we started realizing we stumbled upon something big.”
Keith Nothacker
KHN Solutions
Age: 29
Location: San Francisco, CA
2007 Revenue: $2.2 million
Employees: 7
Year founded: 2001
Website: www.khnsolutions.com
While selling consumer products online during his senior year at the University of Pennsylvania, Nothacker saw a business opportunity in handheld breathalyzers. He began importing the product and created a retail site. After two years of maxing out credit cards and juggling two part-time jobs, Nothacker finally gained momentum, with orders for the breathalyzers coming in from businesses, hospitals, law enforcement units, and concerned consumers. Today, the company manufactures several of its own models and has had its breathalyzers used in episodes of CSI: Miami and CSI: Las Vegas, as well as on the set of an upcoming Renee Zellwigger film. KHN Solutions ranked No. 3,003 on the 2008 Inc. 5000 list of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies.
Tina Wells
Buzz Marketing Group
Age: 28
Location: Voorhees, NJ
2007 Revenue: Undisclosed
Employees: 10
Year founded: 1996
Website: www.buzzmg.com
Tina Wells was a teenager herself when she began writing product reviews for young girls, years before the youth marketing movement exploded. Today, her reviews go straight to the source, providing market research and strategies for SonyBMG, Sesame Workshop, and other youth-oriented businesses via a network of more than 9,000 teen consultants. Wells, who’s been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, says she used to wear suits to impress her corporate clients. “Now I wear whatever I like,” she says.
Bobby Kim
Ben Shenassafar
The Hundreds
Age: 28 (Kim) and 28 (Shenassafar)
Location: Los Angeles, CA
2007 Revenue: $2 million
Employees: 30
Year founded: 2003
Website: www.thehundreds.com
What started as a blog and a simple T-shirt line produced by two law school classmates has become The Hundreds — a worldwide skateboarder lifestyle and apparel brand with an online magazine that attracts more than 1 million unique visitors a month. Kim and Shenassafar are the company’s sole owners, and they credit much of their success to their independence. “We’re not a corporate clothing company trying to sell down to you,” Kim says. “We’re ringing you up and sweeping the floors, and then going back to running a 30-person company. Our customers relate to it because we’re on their level.” Revenue is expected to hit $4 million in 2008.
