The following post was inspired by a breakfast conversation I recently had with a successful entrepreneur:

If there's a single thing you should take away from business school, it is to ignore sunk costs If your company is going nowhere, cut your losses and move on.

There are three things that could happen to your company: 1) It can succeed by going IPO, getting acquired, or by making a modest profit. 2) It can fail. 3) It could go nowhere. The absolute worst thing that can happen to for it to go nowhere. Few thoughts:

Firstly, it's widely agreed that entrepreneurship is best while young. You're the most ripe for doing business from the second you finish school up until your mid-late 30s because you have less to lose. At a younger age, you're more connected to what's going on in the industries you're associated with. If you start a company in your early 20s and the company drags on for more than a few years, you're wasting precious time. If you don't see lots and lots of growth or if your company's not bringing in cash, cut your losses within a few months of starting the company and move on to the next opportunity.

If your company lacks a business model, yet it continues to grow, you should have the option to sell out. Matter of fact, you should probably think long and hard about selling such a business after two to three years of working on it. If you had a serious business model that proved to be effective, this would be different. Given that the company is (supposedly) growing, you'll probably be getting acquisition offers left and right. What's important is that you always have the option to sell. The discussion of selling a company will vary from person to person. There is no correct way to do this, because while some entrepreneurs prefer to exit early, others prefer to create businesses for the long term.

Remember when Mark Zuckerberg was offered billions by Yahoo to sell Facebook? Many of us critiqued him for not selling, because the future of Facebook was unknown. Most of us would kill to sell our company for even a few million! But his reasons for not selling probably weren't monetary related. If Zuck had $2B VS $20B, the course of his life wouldn't change all that much. He wants to build a true business for the long run, and selling out to yahoo would be premature. As long as Facebook continues to grow, he has the option to exit.

For other companies that either aren't growing or aren't finding a way to exit, cut your losses sooner rather than later. If you start a company and within three months, you realize that you don't click with your co-founder, get out. He or she is wasting your irreplaceable time and energy.

Even if you know that it's time to get out, it can be incredibly difficult to sell. After all, you've been growing your business as if you were raising a child. Sending your child to college is always difficult -- sending your child to college years before the average child goes is even more difficult. I see selling businesses in a very similar light. It's different from person to person, and when the time is right, you'll know when to exit.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Lately, I've been getting a lot of requests to be added on Linkedin or Facebook. From now on, I've decided to take my insider network a bit more seriously. Unless I know who you are, I do not feel comfortable adding you on either network. Matter of fact, if I have no more than a superficial relationship with the people on either of these networks, I'll begin to remove them.

Some may see this as cruel, but I see it as being practical because I care about who has access to my connections. I care about who I associate with, whether they be friends or business partners. My mentors have suggested that I never add anyone who only wants me in their linkedin network just for the sake of having me on their linkedin network -- there's no way for me to tell if the person is taking advantage of the superficial relationship or is just obsessed with numbers.

As for Facebook, I've begun to realize that adding people for the sake of just adding people creates noise. When I log into Facebook, I don't care if Joe and Jane broke up or if Jake changed his interests or status because I'm not actually friends with them. Why should I have to sort through their notifications when all I care about is what my friend Scoble is up to?

For those who don't personally know me but would like to follow me in some way, add me on Twitter. Enough said!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Here's a random email I got from Spark, a silly Facebook application.

------------------------

Spark: People think these friends of yours should hook up:

1. Justine Ezarik and Robert Scoble

------------------------ If you're a geek, you'd know what the above meant :)

To the rest of you, I'll write something of value tomorrow.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

I left the South by Southwest Conference today thinking about how some of the best companies we know create products make life easier for those who could afford this luxury. A few quick examples: Apple, Rackspace, and NetJets. They're each companies valued in the billions, and that all comes down to their basic philosophy: make life less stressful. The big question is would you like to solve the stressful problems of the rich and famous or would you rather provide tools to a greater number of "cheap" clientele?

Apple: They've always competed against major players, but they're so popular because they make things easier and reduce stress. Macs don’t get viruses. PCs do. Last time I checked, Macs cost a million times more than PCs and with good reason.

Rackspace: Hosting frequently goes down. When you're guaranteed nearly perfect uptime, the customer's stress goes away. Sure, Rackspace has had their fair share of problems, but they still have a reputation for reducing the stress of companies and people who need 100% website uptime. They charge around 500% more than the average dedicated server provider for this assurance. While they cost a lot, it's probably more worthwhile than running your own datacenter operations.

NetJets: Flying is stressful. As you've probably seen, I hate flying commercial! NetJets reduces the stress of having to own your own jet by offering fractional jet ownership. They get you where you need to go without the stress of going through security or waiting in the airport. They cost around $500,000 to own 1/16th of a jet, which gives about 50 hours of flight time per year. I see the company as being similar to Rackspace because both cost a lot, but they give you grade A assurance for a fraction the price of owning your own jet. Not too bad if you ask me. Clients include Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Tiger Woods, and my family. (haha, I wish)

I guess there's one major similarity among the above companies: they took a while to get to where they are now and spent millions to build their products as such. You can reduce stress at a much lower level and still make millions. Take for example Craigslist. It reduces the stress of having to go apartment hunting. eBay reduces the stress of buyers who can't find a product anywhere else. Simpler companies work too.

It needs to be understood that you don't necessarily have to start a company that "reduces stress" for the wealthy. As I've mentioned before, you have two types of companies: Companies that have mass usage and companies that go on the direct sale model. Rackspace has to manually sell its services, customer by customer. Facebook, on the other hand, has an automatic signup form. The company has very little two way interaction with its users. It seems as if "mass usage" companies can throw their products into the world without spending as much time and money. The direct sale companies require a much greater investment, but often yield much greater returns. This isn't always the case. Restaurants live by a direct sale model, but they don't prevent stress for the rich and powerful. There's a distinct difference. The best direct sale companies target the wealthy and only the wealthy.

I'll write a more thorough article on the different type of companies, what each type requires, and how to choose between the different types. In a nutshell, if you have very little time and money, it probably makes sense to throw a product out in the public under the "mass usage" model. If you have the funds (and obvious smarts,) make life easier for the rich and famous and you'll find yourself sitting on a pile of cash.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star. (and traveling to random cities and checking into hotels while being underage)

Over the recent months, I've found my inbox flooded by annoying Linkedin.com invitations to connect. Few thoughts for you current and prospective linkedin members:

1) Stop sending me linkedin invitations to connect if we haven't yet chatted! There seem to be a few type of linkedin users: One being the recruiter type, trying to connect with everyone possible. Another being the type of who only accepts friends, and lastly, me: the type who accepts acquaintances.

I make my decision to accept/reject after asking myself two simple questions… "Do I feel comfortable enough to ask for an introduction to a 2nd degree connection through this person?" and "Do I feel comfortable forwarding intros from this person to someone else I know?" If the answer is no to either one of these questions, I'll reject the invitation.

2) Currently, I only have 271 connections. (which is nothing compared to many others I know) On Facebook, I have 77 friends in the San Francisco network and 38 friends in the Silicon Valley network. After business related networking events, I often come home with 15-25 business cards. I'll immediately add people who I felt super comfortable speaking to. For the remaining 80% of the new business cards, I'll look up every person, check out his/her websites/blogs, and send an email. If there's a mesh, I may send a linkedin invite their way. If not, no big deal. At the end of the day, I archive 2/3 of the business cards I collect.

An interesting thing I noticed… when people I contacted looked at my blog, they were more likely to show interest in befriending me. When I check out the personal blog of a new acquaintance's business card, I'm more likely to continue a conversation by email.

3) There's a distinction between Facebook and Linkedin for most people. Over the summer, I was getting lots of random Facebook friend requests, so I beefed up my security settings. (then my close friends complained about not being able to search my name)

I make a huge emphasis on separating my personal life with my professional life, and Facebook security settings allow for that. This isn't to say that business connections can't be my Facebook friends, but I'm not going to add business connections to my Facebook unless I really felt comfortable sharing my personal details with that person.

So is there really a competition between Facebook and Linkedin? I'm definitely feeling some competitive vibe, but the two have different purposes to them. They're different, that's all. That's why I have both! I favor Facebook over Linkedin, but that's because Facebook holds all of my close relationships. On Facebook, I can see all the new things my friends are up to. Linkedin seems more like a digitized way of managing resumes and emails.

4) How practical is Linkedin? A lot of my friends complain about its uselessness. They basically view it as a way of showing off how many business connections you have. That's just a waste of time. Linkedin, like many amazing things in life, is only as good as one makes it.

When I first got my account, I used my first few contacts to get introductions to other cool people. My first contact was Frederik Hermann, the director of global marketing at Jajah.com. After that, I proceeded to get in touch with plenty of other entrepreneurs/execs, including Marc Benioff, CEO at Salesforce.com. (and I was somehow getting replies! )

If you'd like to add me to your linkedin, sure! Please just send me an email, ring me on g-talk, or something... It just doesn't make sense for me to call complete strangers "business connections."

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor.