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.

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.

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.

I am totally addicted to blogging. I've asked hundreds of people if they have a blog, and about half of the people who say no tell me that they tried starting a blog and weren't able to remain disciplined. They'd blog once or twice a month because they "couldn't find time." Personally, I interpret this as "I couldn't find the time for sex." In other words, once you try doing it, you love doing it. Once you get into the habit of doing it, you're addicted. And no, I do not plan talking about my sex life via my blog.

First addictions

With honesty, my blog didn't start because I believed in the idea of meeting and engaging my readers through emails and AIM. I read Richard Yoo's blog, I loved hearing about his travels, and I thought that by blogging I'd be able to influence people in the same way that he influenced me. I don't know him very well, but as a result of having known him and his blog, I've decided to start my own. I decided to apply to TED and now I'm going next year! Hopefully my blogging can and has influenced you in some positive way.

Schedule time to blog

Blogging doesn't take a very long time. You just need to sit down and do it. Schedule a time for yourself, whether it be over your lunch break or right before you sleep. If anything, it should be something you look forward to in your day! If anything, the biggest time waster of my day is talking to people I met from my blog. Last night alone, I spent close to four hours speaking to many different people who I met through blogging. Trust me, it's worthwhile!

Stockpile on rainy days

In the rare event that you have nothing better to do with your time, stock up. I've blogged as many as five times in a given day, publishing each post on a different day. You won't always find time to blog, so write your thoughts down when you have time.

Ignore the money and stats

True bloggers don't need money or crazy statistics to influence them to blog. If I ever had ads or sponsors, the money made would go directly towards funding the trips and conferences I frequently attend. I often get emails from people asking how to attract more readers. Well, firstly, write good content! Secondly, write content that Techcrunch.com won't write about! And thirdly, blog for the sake of blogging. Ignore the statistics until you can fully understand the importance of ignoring them. I looked at my statistics yesterday, but I don't care if I'm getting 30,000 page views a month or 100,000 page views a month. I'd even be happy with 100 page views a month!

And as always, extend a helping hand. Encourage readers to email you, and you'll meet so many amazing people. I get so many, but I try to reply to everyone! So on a final note, I love to hear from you, so feel free to email me about anything - whether it be about tech, business, or even your personal life. :)

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.

As you might have already read, BlogNation really got dicked over today when the US editor Oliver Starr posted a public letter of resignation on the front page of the blog he was resigning from. It talked about how the CEO of BlogNation, Sam Sethi, wasn't paying his people anything.

The validity of his claims are irrelevant. He's gone, the world now thinks that Sam Sethi is a terrible CEO and shady person to do business with. What's Sam Sethi to do?

1) First off, Mr. CEO needs to take a stand. He needs to openly discuss the situation at hand and either make a full blown apology that discusses in detail why he hasn't paid, or deny it in its entirety and possibly provide proof that he did in fact pay and that Oliver Starr is just trying to screw him over. Either way, Mr. CEO needs to say something to the world, or else people will take his silence as a guilty confession.

2) Mr. CEO needs to make sure the other editors are happy. Discuss openly with the other editors what happened and how to assure that such a thing won't happen again. If they too start posting open letters of resignation, BlogNation might as well just pull the plug.

3) Or the best of the solutions... PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES AS YOU PROMISED!!!

On another note, after TechCrunch posted Oliver Starr's letter, an editor from BlogNation China posted a comment:

Ladies and gentlemen –

1. We express our concern about Oliver deciding to air his own concerns on blognation.

2. Readers may wish to note that reports about blognation on TechCrunch may contain bias. It most certainly is not the “neutral point of view” that we expect from the Wikipedia.

3. As part of the blognation team we are experiencing difficultings in launching and in being with a new startup. Our determination to establish the brand and to aim for victory after victory, however, remains unchanged and will remain unchanged.

4. Quite a bit of content on blognation (and blognation China at that) are unique, as we have good roots in our community. We grow with the community.

5. Please rest assured that blognation (and in particular blognation China) will continue to provide you with news every day of the week like we have been doing for the past two months.

I do realize that some of you have different opinions. We will respect each other’s opinions knowing that responsible freedom of speech is a good thing.

Your support is appreciated.

Best regards,
David Feng
Editor, blognation China
http://cn.blognation.com

I'm sure you've already found some flaws in the above comment. This David Feng is giving the absolute lamest excuses for Mr. CEO's problems. TechCrunch readers are definitely biased, but the post itself didn't have so much. Just cause you're a startup doesn't excuse you from paying employees you've promised to pay. If they were under an equity agreement or barter, that's different.

Unfortunately for Oliver, I'm not sure if there's much legal recourse for him. He didn't sign a contract with his employee which leaves him utterly screwed. I'm sure he'll learn for next time. as for Mr. CEO, best of luck.

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.

A friend of mine and fellow JessicaMah.com reader sent me a question the other day - he and pretty much most adults I sit down for coffee with always come to asking me about my post college plans. What do I plan on doing once I'm out of college? Of course, I answer by saying that I'd like to continue being an entrepreneur. Well, I'm sort of doing it already and I know it's what drives me.

Then there's the question of what I plan to do after Google acquires my company for a bagillion dollars? Well, even now... I don't need to work if I didn't want to. I could just sit on my ass all day and not care about the world, but why would I want to do that? I'm an entrepreneur, and for me, it's about the drive. There's just an amazing feeling that goes along with seeing nothing turn into something. Seeing a company exit achieves a few tiny things for me:

1) It proves to my peers, my partners, and my parents that I'm capable of doing business. (aka, doing something meaningful with my life)

2) It satisfies my over enlarged ego.

3) My children will have trust funds waiting for them. (no, I don't believe in that stuff. Let those kids earn their keep)

And once I have all of the above satisfied, I'll probably want more. It's just human nature for me at least to have a goal in mind. If I don't have a goal and a reach goal to reach, there's no point in living. There's so much personal variation to this. For many, multi million dollar exits may lead an entrepreneur to taking time off and just relaxing on the beach. There's absolutely no problem with that. Unlike others, I don't think that type of mentality makes someone a *fake* entrepreneur. They simply have different life goals, and what suits them should be accepted.

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.

From Valleywag: How is it that major retailers aren't prepared for black friday and cyber monday? Sears.com went down after having "high volume," but that's just sad, considering that this weekend was huge for sales.

Not only should they be prepared for a huge traffic spike, but they definitely should embrace internet sales more. Brian Solis suggested that internet retailers make huge sales that happen from midnight until 5AM on "Cyber Monday" - only problem being, major retailers are scared that it'll take away from their retail sales. While the excuse is to be expected and somewhat understandable, there are plenty of people like me (and Brian) who wouldn't bother waiting on line at such an early time Friday morning just to save some money. If we could buy from the comfort of our own homes, that would be amazing. Not to mention, I'm much more compelled to add things to my shopping cart if all I need to do is click.

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.