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17 years old, 11 startups

markbao.com

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Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#31

Post by ilovecomputers »

edw519 wrote: post #29
markbao wrote: post #17

Oh cool, I'm on here :D 18 now, and I've stopped calling them startups... a lot of them are just webapps :) (also no longer in high school, was going to update it two days ago until threewords.me came along, now at 1.8 million pageviews...) the new startup is http://supportbreeze.com ! Would like to note that my bhag (big hairy audacious goal) is to donate almost all my money into positive philanthropy (see below) an…

18 now Good. The honeymoon is over. Now you can vote, join the army, get laid without legal worries, and most importantly, be considered a true peer here without the gratuitous "17 year old" prefix on everything said about you. I have admired your progress and even enjoyed using some of your software over the past several years, usually thinking, "This guy is great. I wonder what kinds of cool things he'll be doing o…

Hold up a second, he needs to go to college first where he risks being bogged down by details that will distract him and possible crush all his dreams, but if he pulls through, he will rise with a new sense of understanding that have lead all the great contributers of society.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#32

Post by Tom0472 »

ido wrote: post #15
axod wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that you can start companies at any stage of life. You can start a company age 50, and probably have far more chance at success based on your extra knowledge. However, you can't really go to night clubs, chase girls, play dirt bikes etc age 50.

However, you can't really go to night clubs, chase girls, play dirt bikes etc age 50. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt about the dirt bikes, but I know several people in their 40s who do those other things.

My uncle rides dirt bikes aged 54 and is the Scottish senior champ

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#33

Post by artmageddon »

You're living a life that most of us could've only dreamed about... well, ok I speak for myself in that regard, but you're clearly doing awesome things! :) I can only say take a break every once in awhile and remember to play and do all the stupid stuff that you can get away with in your youth. Being irresponsible is frowned upon as an adult(and I mean that in your mid/late 20's and beyond). Ok enough grown-up talk - you're seriously awesome.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#35

Post by artmageddon »

markbao wrote: post #17

Oh cool, I'm on here :D 18 now, and I've stopped calling them startups... a lot of them are just webapps :) (also no longer in high school, was going to update it two days ago until threewords.me came along, now at 1.8 million pageviews...) the new startup is http://supportbreeze.com ! Would like to note that my bhag (big hairy audacious goal) is to donate almost all my money into positive philanthropy (see below) an…

It's quite the admirable goal.. I'll be looking over your blog throughout the day and reevaluating my goals for next year... and hell, for my life, after reading the "About me" section.

One quick thing you should know - Ramania.org has a bunch of 404's in everything but the home page. Also, clicking Ramania.com links to genevine.com...was this intentional?

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#36

Post by aik »

ilovecomputers wrote: post #31
edw519 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

18 now Good. The honeymoon is over. Now you can vote, join the army, get laid without legal worries, and most importantly, be considered a true peer here without the gratuitous "17 year old" prefix on everything said about you. I have admired your progress and even enjoyed using some of your software over the past several years, usually thinking, "This guy is great. I wonder what kinds of cool things he'll be doing o…

Hold up a second, he needs to go to college first where he risks being bogged down by details that will distract him and possible crush all his dreams, but if he pulls through, he will rise with a new sense of understanding that have lead all the great contributers of society.

It's sad how often comments about higher education are expressed in a light like this. Contact me if you have ideas on how to fix it.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#37

Post by axod »

markbao wrote: post #25
axod wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that you can start companies at any stage of life. You can start a company age 50, and probably have far more chance at success based on your extra knowledge. However, you can't really go to night clubs, chase girls, play dirt bikes etc age 50.

Thanks for mibbit :) Somehow I still manage to fit in time for everything. [x] going to nightclubs [x] chasing girls (though at this stage a big waste of time, seriously) [x] dirt bikes [x] video games ...

Thanks :)

Cool, as long as you can fit in all you want to achieve in life it's all good.

I spent a lot of my teens sat in front of a computer writing assembly language, and although infinitely enjoyable and useful to me now, I probably did miss out on some of the social aspects of being young (Not that I was particularly interested in those things at the time).

The other thing is I started roller skating when I was about 30. I really wish I'd started learning when I was 20 or 10. Some things are just a lot easier when you're younger.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#38

Post by jasonlbaptiste »

I know Mark well and we even worked together on Genevine for a bit. He's one of the brightest people I know. Seriously, he gets things done fast and understands business along with tech. They're mostly projects, he knows the distinction as shown below in a comment. It's great to build things and tinker. Eventually one of them makes sense to you, takes off a bit, a bigger vision presents itself, and you turn it into a startup. Some of the comments here gave him crap for his track record. That scares me because it might prevent people from building things. On the other hand, I think the entrepreneurship community needs to do a better job distinguishing from projects=> startups. Startups involve customers depending on you, peoples well being via salary/career as employees, possible investor's returns, and a lot of other serious responsibility. We need to emphasize the responsibility that comes with it. In closing though, keep in mind facebook started as a fun project. Zuck had built a ton of things by 19. Eventually there was a point where it turned into a startup. Maybe it's fair to say the turning point of when a project becomes a startup is when the livelihood of others depends upon said "project". Really curious to hear others' thoughts. (Sorry for long rant mode. I'm on my way to the airport on my iPhone. Will probably make some of this subject matter one of my first articles for 2011 after getting some comments here)

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#39

Post by markbao »

artmageddon wrote: post #35
markbao wrote: post #17

Oh cool, I'm on here :D 18 now, and I've stopped calling them startups... a lot of them are just webapps :) (also no longer in high school, was going to update it two days ago until threewords.me came along, now at 1.8 million pageviews...) the new startup is http://supportbreeze.com ! Would like to note that my bhag (big hairy audacious goal) is to donate almost all my money into positive philanthropy (see below) an…

It's quite the admirable goal.. I'll be looking over your blog throughout the day and reevaluating my goals for next year... and hell, for my life, after reading the "About me" section. One quick thing you should know - Ramania.org has a bunch of 404's in everything but the home page. Also, clicking Ramania.com links to genevine.com...was this intentional?

Yeah, ugh, lots of stuff to fix. Not sure why the .org site isn't working anymore.

Ramamia was renamed Genevine last year ish.

Re: 17 years old, 11 startups

#40

Post by markbao »

abhishektwr wrote: post #27

Although I am very much impressed by Mark's work, his dedication and particularly the way he is trying to be different from other teens in the same age group is really appreciable. But I am not inspired with his philosophy of 11 startups, my advice please start thinking big (I mean what is that threewords.me thing anyway), you can certainly do better things if you try to keep the larger picture in mind.

thank you very much! big is http://avecora.com - I've been told it's too big.

threewords.me was an MVP I built in three hours (two of them being design) that just randomly took off. never really meant it to be anything huge.

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