Most entrepreneurs hate their competition. Many of my friends would come up with a brilliant business idea, only to decide not to pursue it because someone else has already begun doing it. But if anything, they should be happy, because competition means two things: validation of a business idea, and pressure to innovate. If someone else is in your market, at least you know it's something worth solving. And if someone else is in your market, it means you have to create something truly useful. But investors don't always see this perspective... if anything, the first question I get asked is "how are you going to deal with Intuit as competition?" It's a reasonable question that I've put a lot of thought into.

The first thing to keep in mind is that for most internet companies, competition is irrelevant. As our friends at Zoho.com say, "... if there's anything I've learned from my years in the tech world is that companies don't get killed by competition, they usually find creative ways to commit suicide." Zoho is right, and we remind ourselves of that everyday here at Indinero. Chances are that your web startup will run out of funding, a co-founder will leave, or your inability to create a useful product will lead to the destruction of your own enterprise. And if you're able to get past those first barriers to entry, then I'll allow you to think a little about your competitors.

Now lets say that your company has an infinite cash runway, your company is capable of building a product, and you know that it won't commit suicide anytime soon. Even then, competition shouldn't be your primary concern. If you created a list of all of your competitors, 90% of them could probably be crossed off your list of concern because of their inability to innovate quickly. And of the remaining 10%, plot them on two axes: who is innovating, and who are you losing potential business to. You'll find that more often than not, no competitor is on the top right of the graph. It's often a big company (in our case, Intuit) that we're losing business to, and we know that they're not innovating at the pace that we are. More nimble startups, on the other hand, often make for good inspiration! Their mere existence, even if they have a better product than you do, does not mean that they'll be the reason for your failure. Keep in mind that your company will probably commit suicide in a creative way, and you'll never have the opportunity to evade the startup competitors you fear.

One valuable lesson I learned back in my middle school days was that having lots of competition was a good thing: I was in the web hosting space, which was and still is notorious for having terrible service providers. The rules I listed above applied to web hosting 5 years ago in that 90% of the competition was irrelevant, and many of the big players weren't doing anything particularly creative. There was an obvious pressure to do more than just provide diskspace and bandwidth to clients, which means that companies that couldn't keep up were able to fail earlier in the process. If anything, these failed companies should thank the competition for having saved them time!

So the next time you think of a business idea, embrace your competition and build your offering around unique things that your "big rival" isn't doing, and will likely never do. And if a friend or investor asks about your competition, you'll know precisely how to respond.

It's almost sad that I'm proud of this, but my internet company Indinero.com is finally post-revenue. In other words, people are using the product, people are paying to use it, and this marks the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship between me and the company I helped start. I've been rather discreet about my entrepreneurial progress, but I'll bring you up to date with my progress:

For a little background, I founded Indinero back in March with co-founder Andy Su. In a nutshell, it's software that helps entrepreneurs manage their finances easily. (Indinero is the Mint.com for Businesses) Our original mission was to make it easy for entrepreneurs to not only keep tabs on their expenses, but also to help them intuitively understand their finances. We got our first big break in April, when Lightspeed Venture Partners wrote us our first check. Getting the money wasn't as "lucky" as I enjoy making it seem... it was a planned process, and we spent many hours trying to convince Lightspeed Venture Partners that we were worth funding for the summer. This included building a product, sending them our first screenshots, and having my connections reach out to lightspeed partners to give recommendations. I'll repeat the most important thing again - they gave us money because we had built a functional prototype.

Fast forward a few months. In July, Indinero was chugging along with many alpha testers and promising feedback. Building a product for small businesses isn't easy, and we knew that raising more money would help us grow. With the goal of more funding in mind, we decided that the smartest thing we could do to convince people of our worth was to sign up of our first paying users, with the goal of relaunching a paid product on August 1st. We missed the deadline by a few days (programming's a bitch), but today we finally signed up several paying customers.

Having paid customers does way more than just prove investors that you're onto something: It forces you to think about building a product that people will actually pay for. As a programmer, you're forced to leave the confines of your comfy office to talk to prospective customers. You figure out what they want, what their pain points are, and you make it work. Something else changed, too: When we told people that we were planning on charging for our service (and that "free" wasn't on the menu), we were taken more seriously. People treated us like a legitimate business, and it further pushed us to make something useful.

Working towards building an internet service with revenue is like an endless spiral of goodness: it makes you build a good product, which makes you money, which makes people treat you more seriously, which makes you want to work harder, which makes you build a better product. I highly recommend that more people try it.

In my selfish ploy to get your feedback on Indinero, I'm giving out 50% discounts to the first 100 entrepreneurs who are willing to be guinea pigs for new ideas and features. More info here.

"Jessica, honey, baby, you're a smart girl, but your business idea is total shit, and none of your friends are going to be honest like your mommy is."

Hearing that hurt more than having teeth pulled, but it was for the good of humanity. It made me realize that most people refrain themselves from giving you negative feedback because they want to support you. If you have any relationship with the person you're asking feedback from, they'll find good things to say about your business idea, even if it's a lard of crap. As an entrepreneur, it's your job to get them out of this comfort zone, telling you the brutal truth.

Not only are people too nice when it comes to getting feedback on our business ideas, but many of us sub-consciously seek out "constructive advice" from people who we know are going to give us positive feedback. When someone compliments our idea, it's tempting to move onto getting more "constructive feedback" from other friends who we know will pat us on the back.

When starting a new company, you have the entire entrepreneurial community on your side. "Your idea is fantastic, and you should ignore all of the naysayers!" But I'm going to suggest something different: Instead of ignoring them, talk to as many of them as possible, and figure out why your business could potentially fail. By doing so, you'll be able to anticipate pitfalls that you can then account for. Not to mention, you'll be better able to sway the minds of people who would otherwise be skeptical of you and your idea.

People are too nice. Friends and colleagues will praise you for your entrepreneurial ambition, even if they sub-consiously think your idea sucks. I speak from experience -- when a good friend of mine pitches a business idea to me, I'm tempted to think only about the positives. It's my friend, so I want to uplift his or her sprits! But upon greater thought, I realize how flawed the business is, and I wish my entrepreneur friend knew what I thought.

I've been working on a stupid business idea for the past few weeks, and I've been so pumped about it after getting positive feedback from most of the people I talk to. But just this week, I pitched the idea to my mom. As a successful entrepreneur, I thought she'd be able to give good constructive feedback. And "constructive feedback" she gave. Within 10 seconds, she was able to give me a dozen reasons for why my business idea is flawed, and for why I lack needed experience to see it through.

I thought three things: 1) "Wow, my idea sucks", 2) "Wow, I'm a failure for an entrepreneur", and 3) "Wow, my mom's doing a fricken good job at convincing me not to drop out of college". I cried my brains out from thoughts of being a failure, then recovered with newfound knowledge on how to actually improve on my business. And of course, with renewed motivation to prove naysayers (like my mom) wrong.

Nobody wants to hear how much their idea sucks, and that's because most naysayers are shitty at providing constructive criticism. The last time my mom criticized my entrepreneurial abilities, we were driving to the airport. I remember wanting to jump out of the car rather than to hear her tear apart my dreams. I told my mom, "Why do you hate me so much?!" As an entrepreneur, you probably understand that having someone tell you that your idea sucks is analogous to being made fun of in middle school. You feel like you're hot shit, and then moments later, you realize that you're a loser who didn't know any better.

So suck it up. The best criticism acts like a slap in the face, and you realize that you're dreaming stupidity by thinking that you and your business is great. Maybe I'm a masochist, but I like it when my friends (and mom) tell me the fundamental flaws behind my business. As a smart entrepreneur, drag your friends to their feet and have them offer legitimate reasons for why your business could fail. With a sense of humor in all of this, you'll ultimately be a better entrepreneur, with answers for everyone who questions the purpose of your company's existence.

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.

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.

The following post was inspired by Jim Collins, author of best selling books Built to Last & From Good to Great

A big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) is something everybody and every organization should have because it creates a goal to aspire to. It creates meaning for yourself and your colleagues. It gives you a sense of purpose! Without a big hairy audacious goal, how does one motivate him or herself to do remarkable things in life?

When I was thirteen years old, my first BHAG was to setup a cool company. My last company thrived on the fact that it was run by 13/14/15 year olds. Once we had something going, we reset our BHAG to owning a rack full of servers. After that, we reset a BHAG to getting an entire cage at multiple datacenters, and that's about when we died. It was good that there was a mental gap between our confidence, wisdom, and capability for taking risk. In other words, young kids are ignorant. Setting a BHAG is fun and motivating, regardless of how stupid or farfetched the goal may be. In fact, that's the point! If we had gone through the conventional planning of business, we wouldn't have started a company until graduating from college. I probably wouldn't have gotten into early college. I probably wouldn't have decided to start a blog that's based on my few experiences. I probably wouldn't have had the pleasure of meeting all of you!

Big hairy audacious goals don't have to be limited to business. Apply this to your personal life. Do the non conventional because it'll foster your motivation and success. The idea of going to college early sounded outlandish to my parents and my friends, but that was precisely the point. If they had supported me on making the change, it wouldn’t be a big hairy audacious goal, now would it?

Of course, if the goal is achieved, there no longer is a BHAG. Once achieved, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps this is the reason why entrepreneurs are "never satisfied," regardless of the success they previously achieved. So let's say I run a company called Powerset and my goal is to oust Google from the search market. Once I've succeeded in doing this, it's time to set a new goal -- perhaps, to oust the leader in online advetising -- and after that, to oust the leader in online entertainment… etc.

Of course, sometimes it's reckless to go for your big hairy audacious goal. A lot of the time, the critics are right in that the product you want to create will go nowhere, depending on the capabilities of your team. If I ever faced such an issue, I would turn to my "board of life." (click here if you don't know what the super important board of life is) I'd see what they thought about my BHAG, and I would ask what's needed in order to execute on my outlandish vision.

Once you've established what your BHAG is, YOU NEED TO COMMIT TO IT. Set milestones. Make sure your team meets those milestones. I set a BHAG to own my own datacenter within 3 years of starting the company. I invested 80% of the company's profits towards buying assets and renting DC space. Of course, we failed at achieving the BHAG, but at least we died trying. As I'll mention in another post, there are a few things a company can do: 1) grow, 2) fail, and 3) go nowhere. Going nowhere is by far the worst. Not growing is not an option for me. The opportunity cost in going nowhere exceeds any cost of failing. So we chose to sell out prematurely, thus failing. It was unfortunately the right choice to make based on the circumstances.

Committing to a BHAG is obviously 1000X harder than setting the BHAG. You're putting your money on the line. You're putting your business on the line. You're putting your personal well being on the line, and it's a tough commitment to make. Unfortunately, I don't know how to teach someone to feel content when committing to a BHAG. It just has to be done, and if it doesn't get done, you're going to find yourself paying a much heavier opportunity cost. True entrepreneurs are willing to make these commitments. If you’re not willing to make such a commitment, I suggest you join one of those multi-level-marketing schemes.

It's important that BHAGS take on a life of their own. They must be goals in themselves that your team members will always seek to achieve. The main question is, will the BHAG outlast the leader? This poses a problem for super charismatic leaders, or overly-demanding disciplinarians. At that point, the goal is to satisfy the leader -- not to reach the goal. Perhaps this is precisely why over-protective parents are ineffective in parenting. Children do what the parent says, but they don't understand the underlying goals and purposes for achieving those goals. Once the leader (or in this case the parent) is gone, there's no longer a sense of purpose.

If you don't currently have a BHAG in your life, set one now. Matter of fact, I won't let you leave this blog post until you've established at least a basic idea for what your BHAG for life may be. Think it through and remind yourself everyday how you might be a step closer towards achieving your goal.

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.

Over the past year, I've learned a lot about successful leaders and entrepreneurs. The remarkably successful ones aren't working 247 on their businesses because they were smart enough to recruit a brilliant team for both their personal and business lives. A fellow TEDster I met this weekend told me about ways he manages his life -- he recruits experts in all fields of knowledge to assist him with his financial life, his children, his home, his vacations, his appointments, his company's technology, his company's marketing, etc… To guide his decisions in life and business, he has what he calls a "board of life." In other words, a group of remarkable individuals who feel personally invested into his future.

Firstly, no entrepreneur should be expected to know everything about business, but s/he should be able to know enough in order to recruit help from remarkable individuals in their respective fields. And if the individual is anything short of remarkable, look for someone else. Remarkable entrepreneurs don't need to be baby geniuses, but they need to be able to network with the individuals who will influence their businesses for the better. If the entrepreneur manages to hire and manage a remarkable team, s/he will have more time to devote to a personal life.

While I ran my first (failed) company, I managed to do just that. I recruited incredibly smart techies to help manage all of the issues related to my dedicated server clients while I enjoyed time on the beaches of Puerto Rico. My team didn’t exist to assist ME -- their purpose was to serve the company, and my existence was to make sure that their ideals remained that way.

This unnamed TEDster proposed the idea of having a "board of life," which caters more to the individual entrepreneurs. This board should consist of accomplished entrepreneurs and experts who feel personally invested in one's future. They'll get you the connections you need, offer you limitless personal support, and encourage you to do amazing things. In a way, I see members on my board of life as being my aunts and uncles. While it takes time to build a relationship with them, you almost have an inherent instinct from the moment you meet them as to whether or not you can provide meaning to each other. They literally feel like family in that both you and your "mentor" would go out of the way to do anything for each other. I call them "mentors" because they're far more than mentors. The TEDster I met with made clear the distinction: while mentors are there to give you sound advice, members on your board of life have a family-like relationship to you.

The ideas of recruiting a dream team can also be applied to managing one's personal life. My parents employ multiple people fulltime to manage our family's finances, home, appointments, travel, etc… In fact, I'm the only person in my family who hasn't yet taken advantage of the ideas that I'm proposing to you as I write this. Why? Because I enjoy making my own appointments. I enjoy comparing the prices between a Jetblue and a Virgin flight. I prefer to email my blog readers than to have my publicist send generic replies. I still utilize my mom's accountant and secretary, but only because it makes more practical sense for me to do so. When it comes to emailing people and managing my own schedule, nobody can do it better than me.

In the end, you need to come to terms with the fact that you're not superman. You don't know everything and you don't have the experiences and perspectives of everyone on this planet. You're hopefully smart enough to realize this -- recruit the necessary help in whatever part of life you need. By surrounding yourself with accomplished people in their respective fields, you're more likely to see your own success.

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'm not sure if I believe in the saying, "all things happen for a reason." It seems as if people tend to say that in order to justify for a loss. However, it IS possible to justify for a loss by doing something about it. The time that you would have spent working on your now failed company can instead be used to learn about business, which in the long run will help you with a bigger and better company. While this seems to fit into the saying "all things happen for a reason," wouldn't that be somewhat misleading?

Instead, how about we think about a recent loss as a reason to do something else meaningful? Let's take Al Gore for example -- he lost the race to the White House. He could have sat like a couch potato doing nothing, but instead, he found himself a cause to invest himself into. If anything, his mental well being depended on his ability to find a cause for him to dive into. In this case, the better saying is, "losing the presidential race made Al Gore a better person because he did something that he couldn't otherwise do as the President." Without the burden of political bureaucracy, Al Gore has the capability to take on global warming in ways no President ever could. His failure didn't so much happen for a reason -- he instead took advantage of his failure because he didn't have a choice.

I'm against the idea of thinking of life as being self-guiding because it doesn't motivate individuals to take advantage of their loss. Instead, it provides temporary pain relief. If my mom died tomorrow from heart disease, I wouldn't say "all things happen for a reason." That would be careless and if anything, premature for me to say. Instead, I would probably invest myself into helping others with heart disease. I would invest my time, money, and maybe even my entrepreneurial ventures towards that cause. And only through the means of doing something would I be able to say "my mom's disease made the world a better place." It's a terrible thought for me to bring up, but it shows the mentality of taking a misfortune and having it act as a guiding force in one's life.

To be quite honest, my last company wasn't originally guided by my quest for leadership. I wasn't hungry for money. There was a cause in my personal life I felt committed to, and the profits of running a company could contribute to that. I decided to run a company because I felt that it would yield me the most return in the shortest amount of time. I decided to run a company because I felt driven by the idea of creating something out of nothing. They were simply means to achieve a goal, but without an end result in mind.

So the company I was working on died. As I've mentioned many times before, it was forced into selling because my team and I were limited on cash. To adults, I call it failure. To kids, it can be seen as an "ambitious effort." The company died, but I didn't think it was appropriate to label this failure as something that happened because "all things happen for a reason." That'd be stupid and un-jessica-mah-like. However, in the following few months, I was able to land myself in college. I devoted all of my time towards finding a way to skip two years of meaningless high school, which I wouldn't have been able to do while running a company. I took advantage of what otherwise would be opportunity cost. I devoted myself towards getting me into college because without that cause to strive towards, I wouldn't be able to cope.

In hindsight, it would be safe to say that if I hadn't sold out, I'd be stuck in high school. However, that was never my intention. My intention was to do whatever I possibly could while ignoring previous failures. With the examples I've listed above, maybe the concept of previous failure makes more sense. Maybe there's a reason why those who've failed find new success in the future. Just try to apply the above examples to your personal life and it might just guide your future in ways you've never thought of before.

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.

Hey All,

I decided to try something unique -- As you probably know, I'm speaking at the next web conference in Amsterdam! I'm working on my presentation and I'll hopefully finish by the end of this weekend, but I'm looking for some advice from you guys. To clear up any misconceptions, I am not looking for people to do my presentation for me. I am only seeking your ideas and inputs as to what you'd like me to mention in regards to a presentation of what the future of the web will look like.

I created a rough outline for my presentation, but I need to flesh out exactly what I'm going to say, as well as a title and overlying theme. I have lots of ideas that I'm prepared to use, but I'd firsts like to hear from you guys. If you help make a contribution, please let me know and I'd be more than happy to give you a shout out at the end of my presentation. Without further do, here's how to access the wiki and edit my outline:

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

1) Go to jessicamah.pbwiki.com to see the outline in it's current form. I've stripped it to its bare bones in order to encourage more participation.

2) Login as jessica@startupism.com with the password "imawesome"

3) Edit away! Just type your comments into the wiki by clicking on the edit tab. Click here for a direct link.

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

If for whatever reason you don't feel like logging into the wiki, feel free to comment below or email me any comments/question/ideas you may have. Again, all of you will get credit for having contributed in some way.

Some may call this un-orthodox, but I call this the future. The future involves mass collaboration and wikis, so I figured I'd take advantage of it. The best leaders don't always know what they're doing, but they understand the importance of recruiting experts to help.

I'm against mass-collaboration for editing college essays for obvious reasons, but for a presentation involving the future of web, it makes sense to know what kind of ideas and content you'd like me to explore. I'm not asking that you guys write the presentation. I'm just hoping to get some ideas from you guys. For example, one persron may type into the wiki, "Why don't you talk about X?" or "Why don't you mention Y?" That's all I'm looking for.

Any help is incredibly appreciated! Super thanks to my recent contributors, Drew Olanoff, Richard Derks, Jacob Locke, and Mazy. In the next 48 hours, I'm sure that I'll be adding plenty more to the list!

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.