Skip to main content

Young Internet Millionaires : Catherine Cook

At 15, Catherine Cook and her brother Dave, 17, were flipping through their high school yearbook and came up with the idea to develop a free interactive version online. In 2005, the two convinced their older brother Geoff, a budding Web entrepreneur himself, to invest $250,000 and his time to help them launch MyYearbook.com, a social-networking site, based in Skillman, N.J.


Soon after, the Cooks merged with Zenhex.com, an ad-supported site where users post a variety of homemade quizzes, more than doubling the number of eyeballs taking in their site. But when they tried to expand even further, they hit some snags. Potential investors wanted to move the company's headquarters to New York (the Cooks wanted to stay put); they also wanted to have ads appear on users' personal profile pages (the Cooks didn't).
Good thing the Cooks stuck to their vision. By 2006, MyYearbook had raised $4.1 million from the likes of U.S. Venture Partners and First Round Capital. That same year, Nielsen NetRatings ranked MyYearbook.com one of the top sites for kids between 12 and 17. Also in 2006, MyYearbook.com signed a contract with CliffsNotes to begin providing the study guide aids free for all members.
The business, now with 45 employees, has attracted advertisers such as Neutrogena, Disney and ABC; has grown to 3 million members worldwide; and rakes in annual sales in the "seven figures," says Catherine. How to compete in an industry dominated by MySpace and Facebook? Mine a niche. "[Our site is] specifically for high school students, and we really listen to the suggestions of our members," she says.
While the Cooks decline to discuss the value of their stake in the business, one MyYearbook investor (who agreed to speak only if unidentified) claims the Cooks' chunk is worth "well over $1 million."
Link Via Forbes

Young Internet Millionaires 
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
If u aspire to be a network millionaire:
Http://www.emillionaire.weebly.com
December 1, 2012 at 9:16 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Young Millionaire : Rob Small | Miniclip CEO

MOST entrepreneurial success stories involve years of struggle against long odds. Not so for Robert Small, a young internet games entrepreneur who created an almost instant winner with his business straight after finishing university. His venture stemmed from a childhood love of computer games. “When I was a boy I was absolutely obsessed with early games like Jetpack on the ZX Spectrum,” he said. “They seemed so exciting and well made. Looking back I think my imagination made those blocks of pixels seem better than they were, but I was hooked. “I was attracted by the fact that this was entertainment that was interactive rather than passive. It probably helped that my parents didn’t have a television set until I was 10 years old. We lived in the country in a fairly remote area so I was used to amusing myself from a young age rather than just sitting in front of the TV,” he said.
22 comments
Read more

Allen Wong Makes Millions With A Police Scanner App

MEET ALLEN WONG. A YOUNG AND SUCCESSFUL APP DEVELOPER WHO WAS KIND ENOUGH TO SHARE HIS STORY WITH THE RIDICULOUS TEAM AND ALL OF READERS. THIS FEATURE WILL GIVE YOU A LITTLE PEAK INTO THE WORLD OF ALLEN WONG AND HIS ENTREPRENEURIAL MINDSET. WE WANT TO THANK ALLEN FOR HIS TIME AND IF YOU WANT TO READ MORE ABOUT ALLEN, BE SURE TO CHECK OUT HIS BOOK… Tell us a little about your story…How did the Allen Wong we all know today come to be?
1 comment
Read more

Sean Belnick: Internet Millionaire Selling Chairs Online

At 14, Sean Belnick took $500 and started selling office chairs online. Today, he's running a $24 million furniture company whose customers include Microsoft, Google, and the Pentagon. Like so many successful entrepreneurs, Sean Belnick came up with his great big idea after watching what other companies were doing wrong. The only difference is, in his case, this eureka moment happened to come at the age of 14.
Post a Comment
Read more