How awesome is Diane Keng? She just launched her third start-up... and she's still in high school. The Wall Street Journal recnently wrote a profile on Diane, who is a senior at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino: Teenage Entrepreneurs.
In March, Keng launched MyWeboo.com to help teens manage their digital lives and social-network identities in one place. She is now pitching the company to venture capitalists, and earlier this week presented at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. And this is just her latest venture:
Ms. Keng launched her first venture at age 15, when she started a T-shirt screen-printing business and later began a teen marketing-consulting firm. She says she ended up dropping the T-shirt company because it wasn't making enough money, and the second business because she felt she was spreading herself too thin amid activities, and needed to devote time to prepare for the ACT.Impressive. Of course, it helps to have a venture capitalist dad giving you $100,000 in seed money. Still, how the hell were you spending your time in high school? Hanging out at 7-11? The article notes that Diane is just one among many teen entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley -- ten at her high school alone. Damn.
With MyWeboo.com, it helps that Ms. Keng's school encourages entrepreneurial activity and makes allowances for an enterprise's demands. Fiercely competitive Monta Vista offers business classes that include marketing and finance, and brings groups like the Silicon Valley Private Equity Roundtable to workshops on how to write a business plan. Teachers allow Ms. Keng to miss class and make up tests as needed.
(This is a good time to tell you that went to high school in Silicon Valley too, and I certainly wasn't presenting at any Web 2.0 Expos -- never mind that there was no such thing as Web 2.0 back then).
