Peter Sinclair: Kids grab a share of internet fortune

Never before in the field of human commerce have so many kids made so much money so quickly.

Succeeding in business has historically been an adult occupation - oh, there's the odd tycoon reputed to have got his start selling lemonade from a roadside stall when he was 12, but in general, like writers or soldiers, merchants require maturity to prosper.

Yet, as it has so many others, the internet stands this tenet on its head. E-business, it seems, is a game at which teenagers can excel just as they do at Quake.

Today there's a whole new generation of kids who can - and the 15-year-old, self-made millionaire is becoming a uniquely internet phenomenon.

The poster-boy of the breed is student Shawn Fanning, who almost casually designed Napster over a few days at college because he felt there had to be an easier way of sharing your music collection than physically swapping tapes and CDs.

Before the vengeful furies of the RIAA effectively ripped it to shreds, Napster had effortlessly secured a membership of millions upon millions of users and Fanning was worth quite a few million dollars himself, even if he was considered too young to run a company and had to do it through his uncle as chairman and largest shareholder.

This sort of ageism is a common stumbling-block for teenage entrepreneurs. When Hamilton's 15-year-old Sahil Gupta, for example, formed his own company Net4U last year, he installed his older brother Anshul as director.

The Hamilton Boys High fifth-former started even younger, as a 12-year-old haunting auctions in search of little Pentium 100s, adding a few extras and selling them privately. Then he got the idea of specialising in net-ready machines, and the business really took off.

Net4U is now a growing internet service provider specialising in offering a highly competitive JetStart package for its Waikato subscriber-base, and while Sahil still sells a few computers each week, he sees his future in the ISP field and hopes to have racked user-numbers into the thousands by the year's end - although school, he says, "gets in the way of business."

Still, with his father a senior lecturer at Waikato Polytech, he's not likely to be let off homework any time soon. Besides, this ambitious teenager has his sights set on a conjoint degree in law and computing.

This precocious entrepreneurialism seems to be burgeoning all over the country. Regular Herald readers may have noted Adam Gifford's story on Govind Pillai last week.

The former Dunedin student, now Sydney-based, is teaching Microsoft how to run its hardware and at 18 is the youngest person to appear in the International Who's Who of IT for 2001.

And what about Cambridge teenager Kylan Diprose, who rounded up a few mates and started his own firm? Gettasite Web Development now boasts a lineup of Waikato business clients, and will no doubt help the teenager through his Bachelor of Aviation degree at Massey.

The way things are going, you can't help wondering how long it will be before New Zealand sees its first pre-teen millionaire ...

BOOKMARKS

BEST RENDERING: Right Hemisphere

After Worlds.com's patent claim to all 3D rendering used on the web, I was glad to hear from Mark Thomas that New Zealand's own experts in the field, Right Hemisphere ("Enriching the human experience"), is unlikely to be affected. "How can you patent Euclidean geometry?" Mark asks reasonably - though, with the record of the US Patent Office, I wouldn't entirely rule it out. Specialising in UV mapping (how to enfold a 3D object within a texture), this low-key local success-story has just partnered with Nvidia (the graphics card people) as they prepare to take up a key position inside the Xbox.

Advisory: one to be proud of.

MOST VENERATED: Royal Society

Good to see that Britain's Royal Society (founded 1660, making it the world's oldest scientific academy) has elected some new "Fellows," as they're called. Joining the mighty shades of Newton, Darwin, Rutherford, Einstein and Hawking are popular astronomer Patrick Moore, biologist Richard Dawkins (author of The Selfish Gene) and Tim Berners-Lee, the man who devised the hyperlink and invented the web.

Advisory: motto: Nullius in verba - "Don't take anyone's word for it ... "

MOST BESPOKE: One Off The Cuff

It's taken Brendan Main, formerly of Auckland's classic Monsoon Menswear, 16 months, but he's finally made it. New Zealand's first interactive online tailoring service is in business, and it's really impressive - beautifully crafted and triumphantly functional. It's just a matter of running a tape-measure over selected bits of yourself, selecting your fabric from gabardine to twills and plaids, then specifying pleat styles, pockets, hems, cuffs and so on from user-friendly drop-down lists. The web at its most convenient.

Advisory: the way to go for guys who hate to shop.

* petersinclair@email.com

LINKS


Napster

RIAA

Net4U

International Who's Who of IT

Getta Site

Right Hemisphere

Royal Society

One Off The Cuff