EnTrends

Ruchit Shah and his Vice President,
Richard Hecker, are two high school
students who are big players in the
Internet advertising arena. Shah is
only seventeen years old but he and
Hecker already run an Internet
company called Clickzen.com.

The company, which acts as a broker
bringing together buyers and sellers of
Internet media, had sales of over $1.5
million in 2000. Clickzen makes its
revenues through commissions from
each sale.

There are two basic groups that
Clickzen.com deals with. The first is
publishers and the second is
advertisers. When dealing with
publishers, Clickzen looks at how
many page views they have, how
many unique monthly visitors, what
their reach is, and their demographics.

When dealing with advertisers,
Clickzen manages a campaign that
will benefit both the company and the
publisher. The technology they have
allows them to do this automatically.

The two high school students have
managed an advertising network that,
until recently, served around 2 billion
monthly advertising impressions.
Since signing big companies like
Lycos and Excite, their monthly
impressions have swelled to over 12
billion.

Ruchit Shah received his first
computer in 1992, when he was in
fourth grade. In eighth grade, his
father hired a tutor to work with him
on computer programming. At the age
of 16, Shah was running an Internet
site called Stock DJ that gave stock
market advice to investors.

He began looking for people to join
him with his endeavor, so he sent out
an e-mail to potential investors. The
first response Shah received was from
15 year old from Richard Hecker of
Brooklyn, New York.

The two began working cooperatively
on Stock DJ. Through advertising
networks, they began to make revenue
by placing ads on their site. The
amount of effort involved and the
revenues coming in were not enough
to warrant continuing with that site.

The two then borrowed $800 from
their parents and invested $280 of
their own money to begin
Clickzen.com. Within two weeks, they
had made enough money to repay
their loan.

Clickzen's first publisher client was
NewMP3.com, run by a 17 year old
in Bulgaria. They began selling
advertising for the Bulgarian company
and signed their first advertiser on
May 2nd.

Clickzen.com currently does work for
companies like Mastercard,
Advertising.com, and other successful
companies. Clickzen has a staff of
nineteen that works remotely from
their homes. They will be opening their
first office in New York next month.
Shah and Hecker plan on managing
their company from their own home
areas and hiring others to work from
the office.

Shah says that because he and his
partner are so young, they have an
advantage over their competition when
it comes to creativity. They constantly
have new ideas to promote companies
and products. However, Shah says
that he and his partner still struggle
with the prejudices that many people
have against youngsters in business.

Shah is currently a senior at Charlotte
Latin School in Charlotte, North
Carolina. He is involved in extra
curricular activities such as being the
news editor for his school's video
magazine, being on the debate team
and involved with theater. After
school, Shah usually relaxes for a bit,
eats dinner, and then gets to work.
Between 5 and 5:20P.M, he makes
the last calls to his East Coast
employees, and around 6P.M., he
makes calls to his West Coast and
Midwest employees.

EnTrends asked Shah what his
schoolmates have to say about him
being a high school entrepreneur.
Shah said that he remains humble
about his endeavors and does not
bring it up with schoolmates unless
they ask. "There are so many people
at my school who are talented in
academics, music, art, and athletics.
Everyone has their own niche."

Finally, EnTrends asked Shah about
his lifestyle now that he is successful.
Shah said that he and his partner
invest their earnings and do not spend
much. Shah does not even have a car.
In fact, he has not even taken Driver's
Education yet. He has been so busy
that he has not had time to. Shah said,
"What we've hit on is something that
everyone should have hit on a long
time ago, which is to make more
money than you spend. It's very
simple, but I am amazed at how many
people cannot do that."

Shah's future plans are to have
Clickzen.com go public by his
Birthday in August of 2003. "If and
when we do go public, I am not
worried about losing too much
control. I am just happy to see
Clickzen.com grow."

As for advice Shah would give to
other entrepreneurs starting out, he
said, "It's two-fold. The first is to
believe in yourself. The second is not
to believe in yourself so much that you
ignore other people's advice. You live
and you learn. When you do make a
mistake, own up to it and make fun of
yourself for it. Even if you do not do
well at first, have faith in your idea and
you will succeed."