Achieving success at a young age: the stage of entrepreneurship is on the Internet

On July 21, news broke that 21-year-old American girl Catherine Cook had sold the social networking site she founded at the age of 15 for $100 million. According to foreign media reports, Catherine Cook initially just wanted to create an electronic yearbook website, but a great idea that occurred by chance led her and her brother David Cook to establish the social networking site MyYearBook in 2005 when they were both only 15 years old high school students.

Since its creation, Catherine Cook has raised a total of $17 million in investment for MyYearBook. The site attracted 70 million users and had 1.2 billion page views per month.

It is understood that in addition to advertising as a profit-making method, MyYearBook also has "Lunch Money" virtual currency. One-third of the site's revenue comes from this virtual currency which was launched in 2008. Lunch Money is very popular among users, who must complete certain online tasks to obtain the currency.

In addition, in its third year of operation, MyYearBook became the third largest social networking site in the United States and ranked first in popularity among teenagers in schools. Catherine Cook has even been hailed as someone who could be the next Zuckerberg.

The social networking site Quepasa from the United States acquired MyYearBook for $100 million. Quepasa said that in addition to being interested in MyYearBook's users, they are more interested in the site's profitability.

In the last century, Bill Gates left school during his third year of university to start a business and succeeded, attracting countless envious looks. His success can be described with the classic question: "Who will be the next Bill Gates?" The aforementioned Zuckerberg can be considered the Bill Gates of the social networking world. Mark Zuckerberg created the globally renowned social networking site Facebook in his dormitory and became the youngest Time Magazine Person of the Year.

Numerous examples tell us that success is not limited by age. Whether you're a 15-year-old high school student or an almost 80-year-old elder, the god of success will bestow favor. Moreover, we live in a lucky era because in this era there is a stage where we can easily stand - the Internet.

According to the China Internet Network Information Center's report released on January 19, 2011 in Beijing, by the end of December 2010, China's internet user population reached 457 million, an increase of 73.3 million people compared to the end of 2009; mobile internet users reached 303 million; most notably, the number of online shopping users grew by 48.6%, making it the fastest-growing application, signaling that more economic activities are entering the internet era.

Moreover, we are "standing on the shoulders of giants." With pioneers like Bill Gates and Zuckerberg, the technical threshold for the internet has been greatly reduced. There are various ways to start a business such as e-commerce, online communities, online advertising, and online games. Most importantly, the cost of starting a business on the internet is not high. The internet is at the forefront of the times, and working in this industry means moving forward with the times.

Of course, this does not mean that starting a business on the internet is easy to succeed. Every industry has its own difficulties. Industry insiders pointed out that the five most common and core problems in internet entrepreneurship are lack of technology, poor product quality, inadequate management, insufficient personnel, and insufficient funds. At the same time, the professional pointed out that these are issues that are generally present in the internet industry, and internal personnel need to work hard to achieve better technology, products, management, personnel, and funds.

China's well-known e-commerce expert, China Now Network, pointed out that the key to starting a business on the internet is innovation, which is the most valuable wealth of this era. It is also necessary to correctly analyze the market and seize every opportunity. Unyielding perseverance and unity within the company are the foundation of entrepreneurship.

In addition, China Now Network reminded entrepreneurs that when building website information, they should choose service providers based on professionalism, stability, scalability, security, and high configuration.

Life requires effort and struggle, and more importantly, choosing the right stage. Starting a business should be done early, and you might just be the next Bill Gates.