A few months ago, I wrote an article on how to come up with business ideas. I basically said to look at the world with a critical eye, and to keep track of everything that seems to suck. I still maintain that philosophy, and I recently discovered something about my "passions" in life: Everything I aspire to do is directly related to something that I dislike. I hate education, and I always have. School has never been a fun place for me. In elementary school, I was bored out of my mind. My 5th grade teacher discouraged me from my entrepreneurial pursuits. High school was more about dealing with girl drama than it was about learning meaningful things. By having spent more than 80% of my life suffering through these traumatic experiences, I've become interested in something that I've forever dreaded. While I'm yet to do anything super innovative to help the world of education, my past project internshipIN.com was a start in that direction. I realized that most of my learning came from working at a company, and so I spent my limited free time on helping students find real world internships. More recently, I decided that I hated accounting, I hated finance, and I hated money (although I enjoy the idea of having it). Managing finances is the one thing I despise most in building a company, and nothing stresses me out more than thinking about money. It's the root of all evil, it causes people to kill, it leads to people going to jail (think Madoff), and yet it's the biggest driving force behind every person's life aspirations. So I built a startup, Indinero.com, around the idea of making money suck less for businesses. It's something I plan on dedicating my career to. One of my friends in the investment world recently asked me why I'm building Indinero. After all, why would any young college student want to work on a finance startup? I think about my life as doing two primary things: Minimizing my risk, and minimizing my dissatisfaction with the world. This is an odd way to think about things, because most people think about their life in the opposite way. But I've come to realize that minus the shitty things that happen in life, I'm an optimally happy person. If I can remove the things that crush my soul, I'd be a happier person, and the world would theoretically be a better place. What would you rather do: Make the world a better place, or prevent it from sucking as bad as it does? I'd pick the latter, because it embraces the fact that the world is far from its optimal state. As my friend Manu told me, "make sure you're creating a painkiller instead of a vitamin." As I write this article, I'm suffering from the worst cold I've had in years. I'd pay anything to make this go away, and no cold medication has worked. So thinking about life from my current unhappy perspective, I see the world as a crappy place to live, and I'd be 10X happier if I simply wasn't unhappy. What a seemingly simple idea! Because think about it: during the happiest moments of your life, you probably didn't have anything special or unique that made you happy. But in each and every one of these happiest moments, you lacked the things that would otherwise drive you mad. This past summer was the happiest time of my life. I lived on ramen (literally), I shared a tiny Berkeley home with my team members at Indinero, and I was at the peak of my happiness despite my having zero material assets and close to zero fulfillment in my career. But I didn't have the two things that stress me out most: 1) school and 2) money issues. Between being on summer break and having $35k in the bank (and a startup that creates software that helped cure my finance concerns), I couldn't be happier. Or in more meaningful terms, I couldn't be happier with my life. I'm going to suggest the inverse of what Tony Hsieh from Zappos.com preaches. He's big on figuring out what makes you happy, and it was inspiring for me to see. But being honest with myself, I felt that it wasn't very satisfying because it just seemed too idealistic for even my liking. If you gave someone a week to think about what makes them happy, they still won't be able to give you the correct answer. People are generally bad at thinking of what makes them happy, so instead of focusing on happiness, I think it's much more practical to focus on unhappiness because it's much easier for us to identify and eliminate. Identifying sources of unhappiness is the easy part. Eliminating them is the difficult part. but it's what makes life seem more interesting. I think entrepreneurs are so fascinating because they first eliminate that point of dissatisfaction in their own life, then dedicate their remaining time to helping others eliminate it too. My mom is a prime example: growing up in a poor family, she had no choice but to wear her older brother's hand-me-downs. There's nothing more depressing than a teenage girl wearing her older brother's ugly clothing. So as a 13 year old, my mom designed and sewed her own clothing. Soon later, she started doing this for others. Fast forward a few decades, and it's the driving force behind her career and the jobs of hundreds of people. As pessimistic as it sounds, I think that identifying your sources of unhappiness is the most effective and honest way for you to live a better life. (and find ideas for your next company) What do you hate? How can you turn it into helping yourself and ultimately helping others? And that's the key to happiness.

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, (and graduate of U.C. Berkeley) gave this fantastic commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon University yesterday. My favorite quote:

“You cannot plan innovation. You cannot plan invention. All you can do is try very hard to be at the right place and be ready.”

This goes back to what I wrote about a few days ago. People try to carve out their perfect path to success, but there's only so much that one could do. Lead a fulfilling and exciting life, and amazing opportunities will come your way.

It's been an incredibly exciting year! With today being my 19th birthday and the end of my first year studying at Berkeley, I felt that it was time to glance over the great things that have happened in the past 12 months. I've been incredibly lucky for all the great things that have happened, and wanted to give thanks to the people who made it happen, as well as my naive sense of how best to live life.

Back in the fall, I was talking to Cal Newport about an upcoming book he's writing, and came to realize that the exciting things from my life came my mere desire to do fun things; not from my "selfish" attempt to actually further my career. As a student, I felt that my job was to do anything and everything to grow as an individual, and attending class was far from efficient in achieving that task.

I don't usually enjoy blogging about my "personal life", but I thought it'd be nice to do something different. Many of you have asked me to give a more personal touch to my blog, so here it is: a short list of some cool things that happened to me this year, and the incredible people I have to thank:

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- Just a year ago on May 17, I graduated from Simon's Rock, the Early College, with my Associates Degree. I first went to Simon's Rock to leave the boredom of high school, and to get a jump start on my career. If it wasn't for my freshman-year roommate insisting on going to Berkeley one day, I'm not sure if I'd follow in her footsteps.

- Over the summer, I landed a gig at PBwiki (now PBworks.com) as a summer web developer, and had the time of my life. The founder, David Weekly, has since become a close friend and adviser for my current company. If it wasn't for a referral from a blog reader, I wouldn't have landed that incredible opportunity.

- In my first week as a student at Berkeley, and in the first Discrete Mathematics class, I met a cool guy named Andy. We were the only first-year students, and the TA told us that we'd better make friends if we planned on surviving the class. Fast forward a few months, and he'd eventually become my best friend and co-founder for internshipIN and our latest company, Indinero. If it wasn't for the blunt TA, I'd still be looking for that perfect partner.

- In February, I went to my first TED Conference in Long Beach, CA. In the 5 days I spent there, I grew more as a person that I ever have before. If it wasn't for meeting a random TEDster on the beaches of Jamaica, I'd never have gotten an invitation to go.

- In April, my company landed a $35k grant from Lightspeed Venture Partners. If it wasn't for a random emailing from Berkeley Alumni who told us (and other students here) about the summer program, we'd still be looking for money.

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This past year has been filled with incredible serendipity, and the excitement in my life is more-or-less fueled by it. None of these fantastic things happened by directly looking for them, but rather by putting myself in the the right place to be exposed to the right people. Most of the great things on my list stem from having gone to Simon's Rock, and by living as exciting a life as I possibly could. And If it wasn't for high school being so crappy, I wouldn't have had the motivation to apply to college early.

Human life is so dynamic that there's no good way to plan for good things. People ask me all the time, "how did you get invited to the TED Conference?" And the only honest answer I could give is "by living the most exciting life that I possibly can." People are always focused on achieving the next logical step in their education or career, but that often prevents them from doing exciting things that would indirectly get them closer to achieving eventual success.

For example -- As a high school student, if I actually cared about going to college, I'd focus day and night on my school work. But by following my philosophy of "living the most exciting life possible," schoolwork failed to meet my criteria. So I did the most exciting thing I possibly could do, and that was to start a company. One year later, I got into college. And the admissions people looked specifically at my botched attempt to run a company while attending school, and accepted me half way through my 2nd year of high school.

Sure, my theory of life doesn't always work to further your career, but at least it promises you this: You'll grow tremendously as an individual, and live an exhilarating life. And if you have just that, I can guarantee you eventual success.

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about why 99% of entrepreneurs fail. But before you have the potential to be a failed entrepreneur, you need an idea. And many aspiring entrepreneurs don't know where to start.

Why are good ideas so hard to come by? Because most people try to think of them in either the wrong venue, or from the wrong-perspective. You need to stop thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur when you're thinking of an idea. You need to experience life as the world's victim, experiencing the flaws of the human life, and figuring out ways to improve on it.

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How can I be the person with billions of great business ideas?

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1) You're born with the ability to see the world in an abstract way, and can immediately come up with ideas on how to rid the world of its problems. You look at the world around you, and ideas are popping out as fast as babies from teenage girls. In other words, you're lucky.

2) And then there's everyone else who can't think of any good ideas. For the other 99% of the entrepreneurs in the world, including me, you struggle in the pursuit for ideas. You either need to retrain to be an idea person, or steal an idea from someone else. Or do both. So how did I do it? How did I go from having no ideas for a business/nonprofit to having more ideas than I could possibly work on? I followed the following "idea life-cycle":

It isn't simple, but I'm going to suggest that you change your perspective on the world in one select way: It's as retarded as it gets, but be a picky bitch who can identify everything wrong in the world, and not be scared to share it with others. Everyday, you experience minor inconveniences in your life that are waiting to get solved. But after learning to become "mature adults," you've conditioned yourself to be happy with what you have, leaving the flaws in life untouched.

If you want to expose yourself to more ideas, you need to train yourself, and in every obscure way possible. Don't settle for anything that you're not content with. Experience the world for what it is, and be absolutely freaking honest with your feelings and frustrations in life, and come up with ways to fix them. Let's take one "simple" exercise that I remember doing in elementary school, and analyze it. Here was the thought process of my 6 year old mind:

I'd go to a restaurant with my Daddy. The wait is 15 minutes long and I hate waiting. Why can't I order my food NOW, and have it ready for me when a table is ready? Why do I have to wait on a line before I can even order? Why is it annoying to flip each page in the menu? What have my friends tried and liked? Why do waiters take so long to come take my order when I know what I want to order? Why is the portion so massive... couldn't they give me something I could finish? Why does it take so long to pay? ... And Daddy, why are you staring at the waitress?

I could go on and on with this story for pages, describing everything sucky about the way restaurants work. As you could probably assume, I was a very picky, impatient (and curious) child. I'd often share these thoughts with my parents, and they'd tell me to shut up and be appreciative with what I have. Fortunate for them, I've since become a jolly human being.

But unfortunately, I've lost this incredible ability! Think about the possibilities -- If you and I were able to experience the world like 6 year old Jessica Mah, then we'd have hundreds of potential business ideas each day. Sure, you'd probably be a life hater and that lonely kid on the playground who didn't have any friends. (which I was) - but at least you'd have lots of ideas, and perhaps even one fantastic idea for a company you could start.

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Train yourself to be a child who sees more bad than good in the world.

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If you fit into the second category of entrepreneurs that I listed above, (not being born an idea-person) then it's imperative that you train yourself to be the snobby 6 year old girl who has no problem complaining about the flaws in this world, then asking her daddy to fix them. For every flaw you see in this world, write it down in a journal. Be as general as possible. For example, based on my thought-process in a restaurant, I'd be able to come up with these ideas:

- Waiting on lines sucks - Waiting for servers sucks - Having people not know your preferences sucks - Comparing dozens of options with each other sucks - Life in general sucks

Now bring those general ideas back home with you, and get out of your 6 year old la-la land. Start thinking of ways the world sucks in all of those above ways, and ways to fix them. I hated waiting to get seated at a restaurant, so how can I improve that? Since the problem was so general, ("waiting on lines sucks") how could I apply this to waiting for anything in life? This simple example applies to waiting at theme parks, airports, traffic, waiting on new mail, and I'm sure dozens of other things that are totally not worth waiting on.

And for each of those ideas, we can break it down further into dozens of potential solutions. The airport example is being fixed in a lot of great ways that you can see: Online check-in and the Clear Pass, just to name a few. Commercial flight has been around for decades, yet nobody has thought of the above ideas until just a few years ago. This suggests that fantastic ideas are all around you, just waiting to get found.

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So to recap on the lifecycle of finding ideas

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As they say, the best ideas come from entrepreneurs who are fixing a problem that they saw in the world; not from any profit incentive or selfish motive. And there's no better way to do this than to see as many flaws in the world possible. Think of as many ways that life sucks. Every context you're in provides new opportunity to think of ways to improve on the world. Most of the ideas you come up with will suck, but many will hold great opportunity if you don't dismiss them so fast.
Then, apply these flaws to everything else in life. I'm serious -- keep a journal with all of the flaws in the world. Then in the bathtub, start brainstorming creative solutions to those problems. When you have a list of problems to solve, you have a framework from which you can think of brilliant business ideas.

With that said, go experience the world starting now, and be honest with your true feelings on why your life sucks. (even if it doesn't.) Then, transfer those ideas into entrepreneurial concepts. As a good idea-person, you're capable of finding every minuscule flaw in human life. Just try not to bring this to the business... and especially not to the bedroom.

Update: I've received over a dozen emails and phone calls from companies who want me as an intern this summer. I'm inching towards the final phases of my search, and plan on making a final decision by the evening of May 1st. Thanks for all of your support and encouragement!

The past few days have been intense! In a nutshell, I've been looking at an internship -- yes, a JOB with a real COMPANY. It's come to my stark realization that I never thought about working for a company not so much because I thought corporations were dumb, but because there are few places that would allow me to explore my own projects. In other words, I would only work for a company that allowed me to be an entrepreneur within the company. While there aren't many companies with such a culture, I've started to look at a few companies that prosper on having creative and fast moving "intra-preneurs." My partial list includes Ning, Six Apart, PBWiki, and Ustream.

Of course, being that I'm bratty Jessica Mah, I'm super picky with the companies I would want to deal with. Here are my thoughts and reasoning behind the companies I've talked with so far:

1) I'm picky with the companies I interview with, and I immediately look for a culture fit. If anything, culture fit is the FIRST thing I look for in a company. If I'm not going to be happy there, it's not even worth a legit interview. What does culture mean? That deserves a blog post on its own, but it's so crucial for a startup to be fast-moving, communicative, open-minded, friendly, and enthusiastic. If the company has high-walled cubicles and segregated "departments," I have no interest in spending my summer there.

2) I don't accept offers from companies who don't thoroughly interview me. Sure, I think I'm a moderately smart person. However, I want to work for a company where people are brilliant. If the company doesn't bother to test my knowledge and skills, it shows that they don't take hiring seriously. With that said, if I get a job or internship offer from a company that doesn't spend the time needed to test me for culture and knowledge fit, I don't see the company as being good enough for me. Lesson: I only work for startups that make it difficult for me to get in. The next time you interview a "rockstar" prospective employee, keep this in mind.

3) Companies and employees need to give and take equally from each other. In my search for a summer internship, I'm not looking for a big name brand. I want to work for a company that lets me play around with my product management, business, and coding skills. I want to work for a company that wants me as much as I want them. One of the companies on my list offered to fly me out for a visit -- that shows a lot of dedication. It proves to me that the company wants me as bad as I want it.

4) Do programming ninjas talk to the business people? In other words, do the complaints and desires of the users get seen by the people working on the product? Sounds like a silly question, but so many companies (United Airlines among them,) don't have any connect between the customer support people and the executives who implement the changes. With that said, I like seeing companies where coders and business people are in everyday dialogue with each other. I love how Ning's customer advocate team also works in product management -- since they talk to customers everyday, they are more likely to know what changes should be made.

5) Money!!! As you've probably read before, compensation is not my #1 priority. However, it's not something that can be ignored. Living in the Bay Area this summer costs a LOT of money. I'll be paying $2000+ / month in various living costs that include food, apartment, transportation. Then I somehow need to pay off the $5,000 summer tuition bill that Stanford University is soon to send me. The startup scene is competitive -- In most cases, I want these companies just as much as they want me. If they want me to join on board, a competitive offer is definitely in order.

6) Networking, colleagues, and mentors. Last, but not least, I look for any potential to grow my network. I'm looking for executives who are well connected in Silicon Valley and beyond. I'm looking for colleagues who are open and willing to help me just as much as I'm willing to help them. With all of the companies I've applied to so far, I've either personally met an executive there or had one of my friends refer me. Never underestimate the power of a personal network!

With that said, I'll keep you updated with my internship hunt. Now you know the supposedly secret thoughts on what a self proclaimed teen entrepreneur looks for in an internship! Having this summer internship won't slow me down from being an entrepreneur. It's simply a way for me to further my learning -- a way for me to figure out how fast-moving companies survive and grow.

By the time I graduate with my Bachelor's degree in two years, I'll be fully prepared to take on the world with a company of my own.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard 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.

Disclaimer: I am by no means saying that college dropouts or students with poor grades are dumb -- I'm simply defending the hiring practices of Google and why their practices hold rational meaning to them.

There are so many little things about a prospective employee that can tell you, as the entrepreneur or hiring manager, whether or not the candidate is capable of being a reliable, long term, team player. For example, if I'm hiring a person, I'm going to look at how many schools this person went to and whether or not s/he graduated. I'm going to look at his/her smoking habits. I'm going to look at how long this person remained at his or her last few jobs. If I'm hiring manager for a company like Google, which receives thousands of resumes daily, I'll quickly eliminate people who didn't get a college degree, who smoke on a daily basis, and who weren't able to keep a job for more than two years because each show a lack of commitment and/or a preference for short term over long term goals. There are so many brilliant people who don’t have college degrees, but it takes much longer to screen these people for commitment. I don't think companies like Google care about what you learned in college so much as they care about your desire to stay with a company for more than a few months. They want employees who are able to work on projects that they aren't necessarily in love with.

Many people critique Google for looking at college transcripts, but I'm going to defend them on this for several reasons:

1) High GPAs show the ability to do everything (besides business/computer science), and this is often a good measure for what happens in the workplace. This isn't to say that dropouts are unable to prosper at a company like Google, but it's an easier way to weed out the definite slackers.

2) A transcript allows Google to see what kind of courses you took. Did you only take computer science classes? Did you stick with your Jazz Ensemble for all four years, or did you join in and out depending on the semester? Are there any independent studies? All of these gives clues as to who the person is and what their commitment to their studies are. Maybe you took a class in philosophy which you had absolutely no interest in whatsoever, but were you able to get at least a B?

3) I hate to say it, but looking at college transcripts is an easy way to weed people out. If you're running an amazing company, you'll get thousands upon thousands of transcripts, and you can't possibly take everyone. By weeding out college dropouts and those with poor grades, it's much easier to focus on those who are likely to succeed in a large company.

As Seth Godin often says on his blog that resumes give a reason for companies to reject you, which is exactly why Google asks for them in the first place. It makes the hiring process much better for them! For those of you who don't have a college degree or resume, find people to hire you based on something you did. Through keeping this blog, I've received many recruitment emails from technology companies. Although I'm yet to receive my college diploma, I'd feel reluctant to hire someone without a college diploma unless s/he has solid work experience to compensate. Even a college diploma is no longer enough to hire somebody. I'll take this even further to say, if I receive an offer to work for a company without an interview and review of my past experiences, I would feel reluctant to join because it shows something about how smart my colleagues in this company may be.

The moral of this story: If you think rationally about it, Google has a reason to recruit people in the way that they do. Fewer people leave the company not just because they offer amazing job benefits, but because they attract people who are more likely to stick it out and see the good in whatever they're working on. Most of the people I know at Yahoo are high school or college dropouts, and most of them are seriously contemplating leaving their job. While Yahoo is yet to better their job benefits, hiring committed people from the onset is often a significant part of the battle.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard 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.

Since childhood, I've associated computer science with geeky and socially inept little boys, and for rational reason: because all of the computer geeks I knew were in fact geeky and socially inept little boys! But as I mentioned in my previous post about computer camp, I've wanted to go into tech from an early age -- before the idea of entrepreneurship ever occurred to me. However, as I became less socially inept, I began associating myself with the non-geeks. The jocks! The cheerleaders!

People often ask me if I feel as if I'm being taken advantaged of, or if being a girl makes things more difficult. No and yes -- I don't feel as if guys are mean to girls in computer science. If anything, guys are more willing to help a cute girl debug her code for obvious reason. But is it more difficult? From a social standpoint, definitely. Most girls in tech are podcasters or videobloggers -- Veronica Belmont, Julia Allison, and Alana Taylor among them. They're all great people, amazing at what they do, but that leaves few girls who are hardcore geeks. There aren't many girls starting their own companies. It's almost expected that I go into community or marketing, but I've since decided to go against these societal expectations.

I'm now at a crossroads in my educational career because I need to decide my major. Do I major in computer science, economics, international relations, or what? As a friend of mine mentioned, what if I'm terrible at computer science or what if I'm terrible at economics? The educational path I choose will determine the people I associate with in my classes. The computer science program at Simon's Rock attracts the uber geeks, whereas the economics program attracts the more popular kids. Why does this matter so much? Because I see education as being more than what's learned in the classroom -- it's the independent projects that I would start with my classmates. It affects my social life, which matters more than you might think for girls. Regardless as to what major I choose, I'll plan on surrounding myself with both econ and comp sci people.

As time goes by, the negative image of computer science and geeks will fade away. With more "socially capable" individuals in computer science, people like myself will feel more inclined to choose a math or science related subject as a major. I met Leah Culver at a dinner in Amsterdam, and her story is inspiring. She went to school thinking that she'd go into art or graphic design, and left with a degree in computer science. She did what she felt passionate about, and others like myself will follow in a similar path. Just last week, I met a girl through my blog named Cassie Wallender, who also began college at age 16 and took up programming and business from an early age. In the coming few years, we'll hopefully see more and more girls flooding the halls of science departments!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard 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.

The following post was inspired by a random flash-back I just had. I'll look for old photos and post them if and when I find them!

Oh, the days of computer camp! I attended a computer camp from 2002-2006 and watched it transform from small intimate startup into a big nasty corporation. There was a huge influx of campers and counselors, and the management staff became uptight and nasty authoritarians. Here's the story from the eyes of 13 year old Jessica Mah:

I remember going to a summer camp fair, where dozens of summer camps showcased their pictures and activities in their booths. I walked around, and most of the camps were sports related. Being the young, geeky, unattractive 13 year old Jessica Mah that I was, I immediately picked up the brochures for the only computer camp there. My engineer dad was pushing me to go, and of course, I did! That summer, I was sent off to computer camp and experienced the best two weeks of my life. What's better than eating pizza while tinkering with C++ and playing counter-strike at 3AM? Nothing can top that!

So why were these two weeks at computer camp so significant to my growth as a geek and eventually an entrepreneur? As always, it's about the people. In my first hour at computer camp, I had already befriended four other 12/13 year old tech geeks -- at which point, I had an amazing revelation. I realized that I wasn't alone in this world! Yes, as lame as that sounds, I realized that I wasn't as nerdy weird as I had always thought I was. I FINALLY found a place where I was the "coolest" of the pack. Within 24 hours, I was tooling around with Apache server and dual booting with Fedora Linux on my 800mhz Compaq laptop thanks to camp friends.

Summer after summer, I continued going to computer camp, and I continued to love it... that is, until things got strict. There was bureaucracy. The counselors and directors took advantage of their power. Counter-strike was banned. 1/3 of our time was re-allocated to being required outdoor recreation time. Hundreds of more kids came, counselors were abusing their power, internet was banned from the dorms, and boys couldn't hang out in girls' rooms. All of a sudden, senior campers found themselves lost in a major corporation that decided to fire the founders and hire Harvard M.B.A. types. All of the new rules in place were to appease the "investors" (parents) at the expense of "customers" (campers). And to this day, my fellow camper friends and I chat on AIM about how the summer camp lost its touch and became just like every other major organization.

I think it's time that a new startuppy computer camp takes foot-hold in Silicon Valley -- except it should be WAY more than just a geeky computer camp: it should teach the fundamentals of running a startup and being entrepreneurial. How to attract users, how to co-create products with customer input, revenue models, etc... Such a summer camp would be for smart and motivated geeks 13-18 years old. There's an application process to get admitted into the summer camp, but that would insure that the campers are only of top caliber. Bureaucracy and rules exist to manage incompetent employees -- same applies to children. For recreational activity, we'll offer DDR and counter-strike themed laser tag. Together, we can re-create the geeky teenage summer camp that will always maintain its small start-up culture. In other words, we would be creating the "Rackspace of Computer Camps" or a TechStars targeted to teens. Sounds like a plan!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard 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.

This post was inspired by a discussion in my psychology class about how money doesn't buy happiness

Few of us are born entrepreneurial. We're geeks! We're engineers. We love computers, we love programming, and we've known this from an incredibly early age. Many people ask me when did I get into this geeky entrepreneur stuff. Well, easy! I remember tinkering with my Windows 3.1 desktop since kindergarten days. Daddy would teach me how to use the control panel, how to install/uninstall my kindergarten computer games, and I got hooked. I went to computer camp starting in 5th grade and started coding in C and C++. I didn't know that I'd one day call myself an entrepreneur. Ask the Google guys or Bill Gates what they were doing in elementary school and they'd probably reply with something quite similar. All of them stumbled on doing their entrepreneurial ventures not so much for the purpose of getting rich, but rather because they truly wanted to pursue their own projects and interests. The money is great, but the means are even greater.

This precisely answers why multi-level-marketers are NOT entrepreneurs: they don't care about what they're doing or what they're selling. They're obsessed with the idea of getting rich, and the means of getting there doesn't matter. They aren't invested in the process of creating a business and few of them are capable of it anyway. To start a company based on the idea of getting rich is probably not in your best interest for two reasons:

1) High expectations = high likelihood of being disappointed. Chances are, your business is going to fail. I know plenty of successful entrepreneurs who start new companies that fail, but with low expectations, they're able to get on their feet and start anew. If my expectations for starting a company are to have a good learning experience, there's no way that I can fail.

2) Money seeking entrepreneurs often fail because they over-plan, over-expect, over-demand, etc.. For small web/tech startups, it makes most sense to get a startup off the ground without much planning. If it fails, great. If it doesn't, even better! Plans are good for thinking things out, but they're often irrelevant because your company is likely to go in different directions from originally planned.

Entrepreneurs in business solely for money will hate their jobs. They'll get bored and impatient until they cash out their millions. Because of their disinterest in the means, these money seeking "entrepreneurs" prioritize short term gain over long term benefits. The term "money doesn't buy happiness" has some truth to it -- sure, money is what all entrepreneurs inevitably want, but it comes down to whether or not they're interested in the process of creating a project and turning it into a business in order to better pursue their interests.

Real life example: For the project that I just announced I was starting, one of my partners was thinking about planning things out and revenue models and all of that jazz - but personally, neither me nor my cousin are interested in that. We just want to make something new and awesome. I'll take care of the business development and revenue, but only because that's something I have A LOT of fun doing.

The point is, we didn't start or end as "entrepreneurs." True entrepreneurs always had a love for doing what they do, and they decided to be entrepreneurial because it gave them more opportunities to explore their interests and to create cool things. They care about money, but wealth isn't a requirement for entrepreneurs to want to start companies. Keep this in mind before you start your next company.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early college, Bard 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.

It's great that geeks in the San Francisco Bay Area are proud to be geeks. In high school, many were bullied and sat at the loser tables in the school cafeteria, but now they're the ones running multi million/billion dollar companies. But I'm going to bring up something else -- because geeks felt suppressed in high school, many would even put down other geeks or prospective geeks in the process to make themselves feel better. In my freshman year of high school, I was part of the A/V club, where pretty much everybody in the group was an asshole. Why did I join? Because I was a loser and utter failure in the social world.

The geek culture I knew in high school was very different from the one I see now. There was a clear social hierarchy -- the seniors were the bosses, had first dibs on anything, and enjoyed making fun of us freshmen. There were no second chances: Every student had to do some A/V chores in order to stay in the club, and I missed an assignment because I was sick. The consequence? The geeks were total meanies to me. They were joking about how I'm not sure if they were just being mean or if they were being serious, but either way, they didn't make the members feel welcome.

In Silicon Valley, we believe in constructive criticism. In high school, the geeks believed in non-constructive insults. "Your business sucks. Your code looks like dog crap. Your computer hardware sucks like my grandma." It was just all around nasty and cruel. So here were the upperclassmen, who had extreme power to do and critique as they wished, but in the cafeteria and in the sports fields, they were bullied. They were the ones who sat on the sidelines, bullied by the hot athletic guys. I felt bad for the geeks, but I understood that the social hierarchy existed in order for them to compensate for the interactions they had outside of the A/V club.

Within a few months of joining the A/V club, I left. I was frustrated by the authoritative power the seniors took on, and soon after, most of the club members left too. It all came down to incompetent leadership and seniors who didn't know how to collaborate and keep the clubs most valued members. People join clubs and companies mostly to be with other great people. The problem of mean and grumpy leadership is a problem inherent in so many companies today -- I've spoken to at least a dozen people who said they work or worked at Oracle, but they hate the culture. They feel as if they're nobodies, so their stays at the company are always short lived. The moral of the story? Don't bully your employees. Keep them happy. Encourage them and give them constructive input. They're happy to have your company, club, or organization as a new home. Let's keep it that way.

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.