Mind Petals Young Entrepreneur Report 2006

Saturday, December 30, 2006 at 02:43pm by David Askaripour in MP News

2006 has been a wonderful year for young entrepreneurs. We have continued to penetrate sectors, disrupt preexisting business models, and launch innovative services that have solved problems and made lives easier and more entertaining.

One of the highlights of the year came from the acquisition offer from Yahoo to purchase the notorious facebook for 1 billion dollars. A company founded roughly 3 years ago by a freshman in college is now one of the most popular services on the entire internet.

facebook has revolutionized the way college students communicate with their friends and peers online. They have set the standard for the university-based social networking platform.

Young entrepreneur Kristopher Tate made big moves with his startup Zooomr this year. Zooomr, a direct competitor of flickr is on its way to changing the social photo-sharing presence on the net.

With their innovative geotagging and picture zooming features, Zooomr is truly becoming one of the most – if not the most – innovative photo-sharing sites on the net. Eighteen year-old Tate is making big moves and doesn’t seem to be slowing down whatsoever.

Our marketing presence hasn’t been unnoticed either. Twenty-four year old Darren Herman helped lead a $17 million investment for his in-game advertising company, IGA Worldwide.

IGA Worldwide, an in-game advertising network, is gaining momentum in this hot sector of advertising. Never before has our gaming technology been so powerful. Would you have ever thought that the gaming industry would be bigger than the movie industry?

With the release of the Nintento Wii, Playstation 3, and the latest XBOX, we have seen the gaming industry blowup with an army of avid gamers ready to purchase the latest games that hit the shelves. Any large company not thinking about in-game advertising is going to be dead in the water. IGA Worldwide will surely capitalize on the need for an in-game presence into 2007.

And let’s not forget 28 year-old Steve Chen and 29 year-old Chad Hurley, founders of You Tube. How many entrepreneurs can start a company and sell it for 1.65B 21 months later? Not many, and such a deal highlights the true potential of the young entrepreneur.

This sale of You Tube to Google marked a magnificent accomplishment for young entrepreneurs around the world. Something that helps put us young entrepreneurs on the map and reinforces our strength in the world of innovation and business strategy.

You Tube is the number on video-sharing site in the world and has changed the way that people share videos over the net forever. Google knew that they simply couldn’t attract the type of community that You Tube easily built up, so what did they do? They purchased them and acquired the minds of two brilliant young entrepreneurs who will continue to innovate and bring You Tube to new heights.

Their recent partnership with Verizon shows that You Tube isn’t slowing down by any means. Their scope is broadening and the video sector hasn’t even begun to show it’s true potential yet.

Don’t you see what’s happening? Young entrepreneurs are breaking through industries like never before seen. Our entry into the world of marketing, video, social network, photo-sharing, and beyond has been moving at a rate faster than any other demographic of entrepreneurs on this planet.

We are breaking barriers. We are continuing to defy the odds. We are innovating on a level that’s rendering older business models obsolete. We aren’t the little guys on the sidelines watching the 900 pound gorillas anymore – the roles are changing.

The young entrepreneur’s mind has become one of the most sought after assets in the entire business world. Top corporations are lining up to hire us, enticing us with $25,000 sign-on bonuses. Large internet companies are throwing millions of dollars in our faces to purchase our intellectual property. And prestigious entrepreneurship-focused universities are flaunting full scholarships for us to attend their schools.

The Young Entrepreneur is becoming more than a group of internet buddies in their dorm room hacking away. Young Entrepreneurship has become an ideal. An idea that transcends any stereotypes of our ages, our commitment levels, and our hunger to succeed in the world of business.

What we are doing now as young entrepreneurs will echo throughout society for ages to come. We are becoming the industry leaders, the movers and shakers, the ones who people are seeking advice from.

The students have become the teachers and we are no longer waiting around to get our MBAs to be considered “qualified” entrepreneurs. No longer are we waiting for our parents or professors to give us the green light to start our ventures – we have stopped thinking are started doing.

What’s the outlook for young entrepreneurship? The outlook is magnificent. We haven’t even begun to scratch the surface and 2007 is going to be an even greater year for us.

Keep up the excellent work, fellow Young Entrepreneurs! Whatever you want out of this world, you can have it. As Napoleon Hill says: “Whatever the mind can believe it can conceive.”

To Our Success,
David Askaripour
Mind Petals
founder

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