Image: SMN
When people think of students, many of them place the Great Unwashed in one of two places – either raving at wild parties, or sitting in their living room watching day-time TV. However, a growing number of those pursuing further education are not solely concentrating on their studies or their social lives, but on starting businesses.
While there are an innumerable amount of successful student entrepreneurs, and many more failed ones, included below are four student-founded companies that have, in their most successful years, not only earned their founders more than the entire gross domestic product of Bermuda, but also made themselves household names, with some of them being the most visited websites on the internet.
1. Microsoft
Image: Robert Scoble
William Henry Gates the Third, or Bill, the world’s richest man, began the groundwork for his goliath company during his tenure at Harvard University. Such is Microsoft’s success that over 90% of computers use their Windows operating system, and around 70% their web browser Internet Explorer. While Gates himself is not the best influence on students, dropping out from his law degree (a degree with excellent career prospects) to pursue other interests, it is almost certain that he made the right choice.
2. Google
Image: manfrys
Another example of university students who get easily distracted: a couple of eager beavers named Larry Page and Sergey Brin suspended their PhD studies to start up a little site called Google, in a rented garage. Now the 26th richest men in the world, they have since created the world’s most visited website, with over 844 million unique visitors in June, while their servers handle hundreds of millions of search requests everyday. They also purchased YouTube, a web-favourite amongst students, and now deliver just under 40% of online videos viewed on the internet.
3. Yahoo!
Image: Dan Spisak
Unlike the aforementioned entrepreneurs, Yahoo!’s founder Jerry Yang actually finished his Master of Science qualification at Stanford University, at the same time as creating “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” – eventually renamed Yahoo! Alongside co-founder Daniel Filo, the pair have seen the company rise to become the third most popular site on the internet, and to be the subject of a $47.5 billion dollar takeover bid (which was promptly rejected by Yang). Yang currently holds the position of “Chief Yahoo” at the company.
4. Last.fm
Image: via Last.fm
Purchased for a meagre £140 million in 2007, the technology powering Last.fm was created by university student Richard Jones, as a part of a computer science project. Using ‘audioscrobbling’ technology, or a music recommender application, a profile is built of each user’s musical preferences, which is then displayed on the user’s personal profile page, much like many of the other popular social networking sites. You can share your choice of music with friends, recommend new tunes, and post reviews online. The music then moves up and down the Last.fm charts, fuelled by the users.
5. Facebook
Image: Megandavid
Mark Zuckerberg, the most recent dotcom pin-up, is the inverse of the other entrepreneurs. While they all stopped their studies part-way through to concentrate on the development of their business (Yahoo!’s Yang stopped midway through his doctorate), Zuckerburg’s university was not only the inspiration for his successful website, but also nearly terminated his studies for him, with accusations of “breaching security, violating copyrights and violating individual privacy”+ with his creation of FaceMash, a Facebook precursor based on the popular hotornot.com website. Luckily for Zuckerberg, he escaped punishment and left Harvard with both a degree in computer science and a multi-million dollar business, and unlike most students, no student loan.
6. Apple
Although Steve Jobs did not officially start Apple (or his lesser-known computer business, NeXT Computer) while at college – it would be have been difficult as he only spent one semester officially enrolled, he did lay the foundations for the business that provides computers for over 10% of us. It was also at Reed College where he learnt calligraphy and one of the key features that separated Apple from its contemporaries – multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts.
Businesses With Potential:
While not aiming to displace the above monoliths of the modern age, there are three new UK-based companies that are trying to carve out a space for themselves on the internet, and all formed by university students. YouGo, championed by British university application administrators UCAS, is a social network aimed at connecting potential students. According to their own research, YouGo now transforms 25% of all university applicants in the UK into active users of its service.
Another business focussed on connecting people is GroupSpaces. Formed by students at Oxford University, the aim of GroupSpaces is to be an easy-to-use way of managing student-ran clubs and societies – all 25,000 in Britain. The owners hope to be the number one way of communication between the groups, encouraging users to ditch the confusing multitude of communication systems that are currently used (Facebook pages, Yahoo groups, message boards and wikis) for their simple system, gaining them a million users in the process.
Finally, there is Freewire TV. Using the internet connection that runs throughout British universities (JANET), Freewire plan on delivering television to students computers. Alongside this, they also plan on promoting specialist student-orientated channels to really engage their audience, and keep them tuned in – potentially, two million of them.
