

Teenage Girl's MySpace Layouts Worth Millions, Drops Out Of High School - vlad
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/118/girl-power.html

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garbowza
It's awesome to see not just a young person succeeding on their startup, but a
female as well. Clearly female hackers are more rare than their male
counterparts, so bravo to Ashley for blazing her own trail.

~~~
SwellJoe
She's more a designer than hacker, but nonetheless, she's really good. It's
not my cup of tea for my own sites, but her design sense is impressive for one
with so little experience and training.

~~~
iamwil
Current design fad in our world are gradients, big fonts, and reflections.
Hers is pretty refreshing, but in order to achieve those effects, she used a
lot of unorthodox methods.

I don't know if it's some sort of layout software that's doing it, or she did
it by hand, but it's a lot of absolute positioning.

I still think very page-like and being semantically correct when it comes to
my layouts. Her methods gives me something else to think about. In addition,
if her page source is any indication, CSS and HTML is nowhere near the
expressibility that is required for complicated layouts. If it were, her
source would be more semantically valid, and she wouldn't be using divs for
the buildings and all the little windows in the upper right corner.

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henning
the fact that the average young person has neither taste nor technical ability
is evidently quite a lucrative business opportunity.

unfortunately myspace has repeatedly shown that they are hostile to external
business partners and don't want to turn myspace into an ecosystem. at any
time they could capriciously shut you down. it's rupert murdoch and fox news
you're dealing with.

~~~
SwellJoe
She has, quite effectively, hedged her investments against such an occurrence.
If you read the article, you'll see that she is playing on multiple social
networks, cell phones, and online utilities. She's a damned mogul, and the lot
of us should be so lucky to cover our asses as effectively. She's going to do
very very well in life as long as she keeps her head on straight when things
get crazy and when markets evolve (and as she grows up).

Of course, I also agree that betting on MySpace or Facebook alone is a death
wish.

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vlad
She's 17 years old, and she declined a 1.6$M offer.

~~~
rms
It was a lowball offer. The article says she has $70,000 a month in revenue.

~~~
vlad
Didn't mean to criticize her, but to add more information.

Anyone like to valuate her startup?

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rms
4 times revenue? So around 4 million. I'd still be surprised if she took that
offer.

Her best method of growth seems to be competing with Weebly with her page
generating software. I assume that unlike Weebly she'd be willing to put ads
on the pages of her users, so that could also be very profitable.

~~~
SwellJoe
Where'd you get 4 times revenue? Even that is low-ball for a company with a
million in revenues and nearly zero costs. Of course, in most tech
acquisitions it's not an all-cash deal and lots of stock in the new owner
comes along with it.

But still 1.6 million for a company with a million in annual revenues is an
offensively low offer. Whoever made it ought to be ashamed of trying to take
advantage of a 17 year old girl that way. Good for her for not being
overwhelmed by the big numbers. Even if sales topped out today, and she never
saw any more growth, that's a business worth tens of millions over a lifetime.
And, worst case, if all of the markets she deals in dry up over the next three
years...she still makes enough to retire comfortably on (and a lot more than a
measly 1.6 million). I suspect that with her business savvy, though, she'll be
able to continue to build into new areas.

~~~
rms
I recognize that 4x revenue is a lowball offer and she probably wouldn't take
it. But a standard 10x revenue seems way too risky to me in an emerging market
of teenagers. I'm sure I could find better things to put my money in, if I
actually had money to invest. There's also no telling how much worse the
company will do if the former founder becomes a complacent employee.

It was an "associate" of Myspace cofounder Brad Greenspan who made the
acquisition over. Brad Greenspan was the guy who accused Rupert Murdoch/News
Corp of defrauding investors by undervaluing Myspace. Even more insultingly
they came back with an offer to give her $700,000, a car, and her own internet
TV show which is clearly much worse than the previous offer.

~~~
SwellJoe
"I recognize that 4x revenue is a lowball offer and she probably wouldn't take
it. But a standard 10x revenue seems way too risky to me in an emerging market
of teenagers."

That's a risk of any early stage acquisition. If you're strongly risk averse,
you aren't doing this kind of deal. Every tech startup at this early stage has
dozens of unpredictable variables, but when you have a strong cash flow,
explosive growth, and plenty of users, the value goes way up.

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mattmaroon
I actually get this magazine in paper (thanks for that Delta Airlines!) and
was pretty surprised by that story too. I think it's yet another plentyoffish
style story that makes the web look a little more democratic than it really
is.

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trekker7
Insanely great. Reminds of that post about K->12 students doing startups a
while ago... maybe they can do it, after all.

~~~
samb
yes, but i think it's a logical leap to propose that you can teach it at that
level. i'm not entirely convinced it can be "taught" at any level.

~~~
Goladus
Exactly. This was a bright girl whose hobby turned out to be really lucrative,
she grew into it completely naturally. This let her get better at it without
running into the normal motivational difficulties a typical teenager would
see.

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cellis
Ok seriously. This is right under my nose! Detroit. I'm in Mt. Pleasant. Wow.
Awesome that the googleplex ann arbor isn't the only successful tech
development in this troubled economy. And at only 17, I applaud her.

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primiani
First post!!

Very inspiring, saw this on digg. I am glad to see some women internet
entrepreneurs. Also, that sector of the market is very hard to break into, try
doing a search for myspace layouts. These websites are plagued with ads. She
said in her article she focused on user design and branding which is key.

As much as we all hate myspace. We have to think also, there is a new younger
breed of myspace users that are learning html, javascript, css, etc. becoming
web designers/developers who might not have learned or wanted to learn
elsewise. That is what I think is still great about myspace and other
customizable sites.

\- Joey Primiani

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edu
68 points? what happened today? it has been because reddit has been
unavailable?

~~~
SwellJoe
It's a fantastic story with a lot of appeal to young entrepreneurs? (Reddit
also sucks these days, but I don't think it's all recovering redditors
traffic.)

~~~
edu
Yes, I like the story, it is inspiring. But 70 points are a lot. Is there a
top-10 list of most voted stories?

~~~
ph0rque
news.ycombinator.com/best

~~~
mangodrunk
I think there is a problem with it (86, 90, 81):

9\. Kiko guys back as reality tv stars (techcrunch.com) 86 points by gaz 164
days ago | 25 comments

10\. y combinator news bookmarklet (writewith.com) 90 points by phil 174 days
ago | 12 comments

11\. Seven steps to remarkable customer service (joelonsoftware.com) 81 points
by beau 191 days ago | 8 comments

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steve
So how does she make all that money? Advertising? Contracts she's won?

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ph0rque
I forwarded this article to my sisters, who are around that age.

~~~
vlad
This will inevitably become standard fare to boost one's high school resume
for college. What's special is that this girl did this on her own initiative
without rich or highly-educated adults to guide her along the way. She did
something for fun and it worked out. I hope you stress the fun, socializing
aspect to your sisters and not a money-making scheme, since that will just
them off from the idea.

Maybe there just haven't been enough rolemodels for girls to look up to.

~~~
ph0rque
My standard speech to them is that hacking is the ultimate in flexibility:
whether they found a startup, make a standard career of it, or choose another
path (such as marriage/motherhood, the popular choice in my family's
subculture for young women), they will always be able spend some time hacking,
wherever and whoever they are.

As far as earning money, they're working at retail stores earning single
digits/hour to earn spending money; if I was a bit richer, I would hire them
to learn hacking/build an app as a way of earning at least that amount. Money-
making is definitely not a turn-off for them.

One more thing: it's not _just_ that there are too few role models for women;
there's too much peer pressure not to be a girl geek. For guys, being a geek
has a certain cachet to it; people treat you as smart. This is not true for
girls. So there's more pressure for girls not to do hacking/engineering/other
geeky things. This is my observation, anyway; YMMV.

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smackaysmith
Perhaps the only good news to come out of Michigan this year.

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Kelevra
Wow. Good for her and all that, but I think skipping out on school is a
mistake, whatever she's earning.

