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for larger version       Teen Entrepreneur Living Large Randy Sofia, a 17 year old Rockaway resident and CEO of Freehostin.com, started with zilch, zippo, nadda and turned his e-biz into a high profit money making machine. At the age of eight he was writing software on the infamous Commodore 64 and by the time he was 13 he wrote his first corporate database-tracking program for the Chamber of Commerce. Although a master programmer at such a young age, his interests don’t stop there. He started his first profitable business at the beach, $5 for a Polaroid picture with the celebrity cut out of your choice. Randy has always been a fully pledge entrepreneur, even as a young child. "As an entrepreneur I would come up with business ideas for almost every situation, whether it be tourists at the beach or cheap web hosting solutions on the net." Randy enjoys kayaking at the beach and weight lifting during his free time. However his Internet business and constantly trying to keep up with the net keeps him pretty occupied. With 20 or more new customers every day in a business started six months ago, Randy works hard to make sure everyone’s happy and does a heck of a job doing it! "Making two six figure salaries alone doesn’t come easy," says Randy. "It takes a lot of hard work and patience." Learning from past failures, Randy is able to determine what’s productive and what’s not. He started a company Magichost.com during freshman year of high school. With only a few customers to keep things level Randy needed something new. He wrote his own server software to help lower the cost of web hosting and decided to pass the savings onto his customers. Charging a one-time setup fee for web hosting on his new business Freehostin.com, Randy attracted more than 700 new customers and since January 2000 its been growing rapidly. "Failing only made me stronger. I always had trouble marketing my businesses, not anymore!" "I’ve got a ton of business ideas but there’s only 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week," says Randy. Randy’s future plans are to finish college and continue his life as an entrepreneur. Since recently selling this company to a larger web hosting firm, his plans are to start something completely new that utilize all of his skills to the highest. Maybe start up a couple of businesses here and there, or one huge one, and then finally sit back, relax and enjoy life. "I don’t want to quit college, there’s just to much I want to learn." Besides from computers and business, Randy has fun with his friends, kayaks at the beach, lifts weights, practices martial arts, chats online, and builds and invents new electronic devices such as a talking security alarm system for his room and a bike security system that he is working on now. "I have a constant craving to learn, when I see something new I have to know how it works. I usually even make things better or come up with new devices, there are some inventions I’d like to market, however I’m lacking the time to do so." An interview conducted with Randy Sofia: Q. When [how] did you get interested in business? A. I was always an entrepreneur, even before I started an Internet business. I live near a beach, so when I was 11 or 12 I bought a bunch of card board cut outs of popular celebrities, invested in a Polaroid camera and charged $5 for a picture with a celebrity at the beach. Even before that I use to setup candy and lemonade stands outside for fun. However the business I am most proud of (when I was young) was a computer programming business...I wrote a database-tracking program for the Chamber Of Commerce and some other local businesses during the 8th grade. Q. When [how] did you get interested in computers and the Internet? A. Now this is a long story, but I’ll try to make it short. My grandfather had bought me a commodore 64 computer when I was maybe three or four. When I was eight I was writing games and programming on it… He had passed away and never was able to see how good I got at computers. When I got my first real computer (486dx-66mhz) I started a scanning business… I charged $5 to scan a set of pictures and place them on disk or send them via e-mail. This was before scanners became so popular in the home. This is where I setup my first web page. I believe you can still find it if you search in yahoo for my name, it’s a lame excuse for a web site but I taught myself HTML in about five minutes. I was probably still in the eighth grade at this time. Q. How did you come up with the idea for an e-commerce business? A. Another long story! I’ll make it short again. I’m always coming up with new ideas for businesses, however in freshman year of high school I started a web hosting company. I was really just a re-seller but it was fun having my own domain name. I had a few customers every once in a while, including my school however the business really failed, I came out short overall and at the end of junior year in high school I was starting to run out of money. I didn’t want to loose my domain name so I needed to find a way to lower expenses for my web hosting company… I ended up writing software for the NT server I was hosting on that allowed me to host several domain names on a single account. This saved me maybe $500 and revenue was evening out with expenses, however I still wasn’t breaking a profit. I decided to start a new business using the software I wrote. I called it Freehostin.com and it was to charge a one time $50 fee for domain name hosting. Q. What problems did you encounter along the way? How did you solve them? A. Learning from my past failure, I knew you couldn’t just start a business and expect to make money, you needed to tell people, a way to get people to your site… So I started a free voice chat site http://www.virtualcb.com and posted my advertisement on it. Within two or three month I had close to 20 web hosting customers and my NT web host was yelling at me for going over my allowed bandwidth and that I was crashing the server. At this point I had to get my own dedicated server, and for a change I chose Linux. I also needed a lot more customers if I was going to pay for the server; the 20 customers I had would only pay for maybe a month or two. So I increased the features allowed and came up with more ways to advertise for free. Before I knew it I was getting two to three new satisfied customers a day and then even faster customers were referring other customers and business was booming… In about a month or two the dedicated server I was using couldn’t support all sites and things started slowing down dramatically. This was a pretty stressful problem, so I had to quickly find a solution… I decided to setup my own section in a Data Center in New Jersey, the data center had a few Oc48 backbones (blazing fast). I had to get new servers and had to move each client over by hand, it took me maybe 24 hours straight… Then I made a stupid mistake and crashed a server, so I had to do it again. This was my first time without anyone available to help me fix my server problems for free, there was no one to act as my tech support, so if I made a mistake, had a problem, or broke something I was on my own! My technical skills came in handy and to pay for the new servers I had to provide more features and make it more attractive. Before I knew it I had five to six new customers daily which rapidly expanded to 10 to 15. As of July 23 I now have close to 700 international customers and growing. Q. How do you measure success? Who or what helped you most to become successful? A. I have always measured success not by how much money I was making or how many customers I had but how happy people were with the service I provided. Yes, although having a lot of customers is really exciting its even more exciting when they send you compliments and recommend you to all their friends. If someone wasn’t happy I always felt bad and stayed with them until their problem was resolved. I have even offered people who have chose competitors over me free tech support, this builds a strong personal relationship that you won’t find anywhere else. No one else is going to make you successful, you need to do it on your own. Q.What the best thing that has come from being a teen entrepreneur? A. Probably not having to work! As long as I enjoy what I’m doing I will never have to work a day in my life. Making my own hours is nice too, however there are disadvantages as well… Running a big business requires a lot of self discipline, if something goes wrong and your friends call you to go out you have stay in and resolve the problem. Sometimes it gets really stressful, but overall it’s very rewarding. Q. What is your advice to aspiring teen entrepreneurs? A. Success doesn’t come without hard work. Starting a successful business can happen over night but not without hard work. Also in my experience you’ll find yourself with a better idea if your not searching for one. A lot of people say, "Oh I’m an entrepreneur… does anyone have any good ideas for me to start a business?" That’s not being an entrepreneur! An entrepreneur will find an idea or solution out of a problem or on their own, not from a friend. If people laugh at your idea and you still think its good, go for it anyway. Most people don’t know what they are talking about, and when you succeed you’ll be the one laughing! Oh, and only tell your most trusted friends or only family members your ideas. You would be surprised how fast a friend can tell someone else about your idea and how fast that person can start it up on their own. Even though your friend isn’t going to steal your idea, you don’t know who he/she is going to tell.
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