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Google's founders were just 25 when they launched the company that turned them into billionaires. The entrepreneurial dream is alive and well among young adults fresh out of school, with enthusiasm and creativity to spare. In fact, 25- to 34-year-olds start businesses more frequently than any other age group, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.
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Among the new Google wannabes are the four twentysomething young men who have made big bucks operating CollegeHumor.com, an online repository for tasteless videos, silly digital pictures and sophomoric commentary, contributed mostly by college kids. High school buddies Josh Abramson and Ricky Van Veen started the Web site as college freshmen and brought in Jakob Lodwick, 24, and Zach Klein, 23, while the four were still undergraduates. The site, which earns its revenues by selling ads, T-shirts and other products, is expected to pull in $9 million in 2006.
Abramson and Van Veen live the frat boy's fantasy, but they went into the venture with the seriousness of CEOs. "We wanted to start a Web business, and we wanted to do it together," says Abramson. "My brother worked for Advertising.com. He told us about silly Web sites making huge amounts of money in Internet advertising." A concept that relied on juvenile and blue humor spoke to their strengths, says Van Veen.
The site soon attracted plenty of beer-centric, breast-baring content, along with an ad deal that generated $8,000 to $9,000 a month. Business fell off when dot-coms went south in 2000, but "we'd made enough money to keep going," says Van Veen.
In 2003, Van Veen graduated from Wake Forest and Abramson from the University of Richmond. Lodwick -- whom they had met online -- graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology the same year and Klein from Wake Forest the following year. The 2003 grads moved the business temporarily to San Diego and later to a $10,000-a-month apartment in New York City, where the hours were 24/7 and the dress was casual. "We worked in our underwear a couple of feet from our beds," says Lodwick.
Alas, everyone has to grow up -- or at least go up -- sometime. Now the partners take an elevator from their apartment to a sun-filled space a few floors above, which they share with 15 young employees.
Ads have rebounded nicely. There's a book, The College Humor Guide to College (Dutton, $24), and a movie deal is in the works.
The partners' payoff, besides a day job to die for? Well, there's the apartment, plus dinners at nice restaurants, travel for Klein (who also funded a grant program for young artists) and all the books Van Veen can read. Most of the stash, however, serves a long-term purpose (listen up, kids). Says Abramson, "The vast majority of our money goes into savings."
Inspiration strikes
Ryan Comfort found the inspiration for his business halfway around the world. Comfort, who graduated in 2005 from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, was touring Asia before his senior year began when an oil painting in a Thai market caught his eye. Comfort learned that the artist painted oil copies of photographs, and he was so impressed with the quality that he decided to start a business selling paintings by Asian artists to U.S. customers via the Internet.
Comfort arranged his schedule to graduate a semester early and took a part-time job while he developed his Web site and set up a distribution network and a marketing plan. He invested $15,000 of his own savings and borrowed $3,000 from his parents, which he has since repaid with interest.
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