So, we thought it would be fun to interview young entrepreneurs to find out what its like to, well,… be an entrepreneur. We all know the stories about their businesses but we know less about their lives and what attracts them to be entrepreneurs. So, we have decided to send out a cosmo/glamour celebrity like survey to interesting entrepreneurs so that we can compare and contrast them and their personalities. By using simple questions, we aim to provide a fast, vivid “picture” of a variety of people who fall into the entrepreneur category.

Our first guinea pig on this topic, and we are thankful to him, is 15 year old Mark Bao. He has created facebook applications, started his own company and more! We sent him the following questions and he replied with this:

1.) What do you do? I’m Mark Bao (formerly known as Steven Bao) - I’m a 15 year old entrepreneur that owns Avecora, a web venture, consulting, new media and advertising business. I have written and sold a few Facebook applications, as well as DebateNet, an online debate event registration and management web application, and lastly Cadmium, a targeted social application ad network. I’m working on developing enterprise web software.

2.) Who do you look up to? I look up to any of the technology business owners and evangelists - Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Guy Kawasaki, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, as well as people like Jason Calicanis, Max Levchin, Ben Casnocha, Ryan Allis, and others.

3.) Who do you want to look up to you? Any entrepreneurs.

4.) What the first thing you do when you wake up? Look at the events and appointments that are going on today, and detest the fact that 8 hours is pretty much going to be wasted for school.

5.) What’s the last thing you do before you sleep? Check my laptop for events, appointments and tasks for tomorrow, and detest the fact that another 8 hours is to be wasted the next day.

6.) What is one piece of advice you would give to young entrepreneurs? It’s been widely repeated, but rightly so: don’t give up. Perseverance is absolutely key.

7.) What is one piece of advice you wish you had never received? Never received? Do well in school - get into a good college - go to graduate school - work in a stable job with good benefits for a boss.

8.) What do you consider your best characteristics? I’ve been said to have extremely high work ethic and efficiency, outside of school.

9.) What do you consider your worst characteristics? Age - the age that I would most ideally prefer would be over at least 20, preferably over 25. I have this strange feeling that everything that I’ve come up with the past five years will already be developed, or in development, by the time I’m old enough to start a ‘real’ business with funding.

10.) What is your greatest accomplishment? I’ve had a few accomplishments that I’m especially proud of: the success I have had with my co-founder with DebateWare, being featured on the front page of the Boston Globe on an article about young entrepreneurs as Steven Bao, thanks to Carolyn Johnson and friends of mine, leading the organization of a few Facebook developer meetups in Boston, such as a 130-attendee event sponsored by Facebook and Molecular, and many other smaller things.

11.) What idea do you wish you had come up with first? Why? Mobile devices, since they are very prevalent in our current society, especially with smartphones and mobile application platforms such as the iPhone or Symbian SDK.

12.) What are your five favorite words? “I will,” passion, perseverance, mensch, and freedom.

13.) What are your five least favorite words? “I can’t,” failure, giving up, get-rich-quick, wasting time.

14.) What do you value most? I value teamwork, perseverance, and most importantly, being passionate for what you do.

15.) Who is the most promising young entrepreneur (30 and under) who you’ve come across? I’ve heard about Ben Casnocha and Ryan Allis, and have read their books - both very impressive people and they are a great inspiration to me.

16.) What would you do if you weren’t an entrepreneur? Investing and investment banking.

If you would like to be featured in this column or know of someone who should be, please send me an email: kristina@pfidc.org

Tags: , Ben Casnocha, Global Entrepreneurship Week, Guy Kawaski, Mark Bao, Ryan Allis

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Innovators. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.