Another Teen “Entrepreneur” with a Useless “Startup” Gets TechCrunch Coverage

A few months ago, I pointed out that TechCrunch’s story on 15 year-old “entrepreneur” Daniel Brusilovsky’s new “startup” (which was based on an installation of the free WordPress MU software) was quite ridiculous.

TechCrunch is back again. Popular teen “entrepreneur” Jessica Mah, who apparently sold a small hosting company (like thousands of other people during the hosting consolidation era), is the subject of a TechCrunch post on her newest startup, InternshipIN.

InternshipIN in is, as you may have guessed, an internship listings website. You’d be able to look at it for yourself if the website was up (based on comments, it’s apparently been down since shortly after TechCrunch published its post).

TechCrunch reports on the revolutionary idea:

She started InternshipIN with two other students. It cost them less than $200 to get a prototype up, and another $300 to get the Web design sliced so that it would load faster. Says Mah:

The project is bootstrapped with a few hundred dollars to cover hosting. Part of my reasoning for starting internshipIN was to show my friends (and the world) that it doesn’t take more than a $200 to throw a website together. The manpower required to put together the site was absolutely minimal.

Of course, there are already existing services that do much the same thing – AfterCollege, Experience.com, and InternshipPrograms.com. The career centers at most universities also assist students in locating internship opportunities. Mah’s own school, UC Berkeley, like most universities, has its own internship listings and even offers a summer program that places students in internships. Perhaps Mah should have done a little bit more “market research.” A quick survey of the internship resources at her own school probably would have done the trick.

Throw in the fact that there is no shortage of existing job listing web applications that can be purchased for a song and a dance and one has to ask – just what opportunity does Mah really see here?

The bottom line is that there’s nothing newsworthy or impressive about the fact that an 18 year-old has launched a listings website for internships. She’s not doing anything unique, there’s no barrier to entry and Mah has blown her plug on TechCrunch by launching a website that clearly wasn’t ready to be launched.

But I suppose this won’t be of any concern to Mah since the real purpose of launching InternshipIN was to demonstrate that a “startup” can be launched for $500.

I don’t doubt that Mah is a bright young woman with a bright future but I suspect that all the back-patting she’s received from a tiny corner of the world known as the “tech blogosphere” has given her the impression that she’s “special.”

Note: the world does not need you to teach it that a website can be launched for $500. Lots of websites are launched everyday for less than that. Thanks for thinking of us, though.

I would point out that the word “website” does not equate to “startup.” You’d think that TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld would be acutely aware of the distinction.

Unless Mah has actually formed a business entity for InternshipIN (which, by the way, costs money) and is dedicating a reasonable level of resources to the ongoing development of InternshipIN (on both the technology and business development side), she has a side project – not a startup. And if she’s not paying herself for the time she’s invested (either with cash, equity, deferred compensation, etc.) it’s worth pointing out that this is really just a hobbyist exercise.

Let me provide more clarity for Schonfeld in the form of an easy-to-follow comparison.

I run a company. There’s a legal entity, a board of directors, shareholders, a corporate bank account, outside counsel, an accounting firm of record and, most importantly, the management of the company is involved with its operations on a daily basis. This could be classified as a “startup.”

I also have whole and partial interests in a number of disparate websites. In most cases, they “run themselves” and I don’t have to dedicate myself to them on a daily basis. Payments are made directly to me or my holdings company. These websites are not “startups,” they’re websites.

Further, let’s define the concept of “bootstrapping.” Bootstrapping does not mean that you spent a few weekends building a website because you wanted to show the world that you can build a website. It also does not mean “investing” a few hundred bucks on services and hosting.

Bootstrapping is quite simply the development of a company using internal/personal resources. Once again, unless Mah is treating InternshipIN like a “company” (i.e. pursuing it as legitimate business endeavor instead of a fun project that gets her attention when she has the time), InternshipIN is not “bootstrapped.”

TechCrunch doesn’t do real startups and real bootstrappers any favors by marginalizing the meaning of “startup” and “bootstrapping.”

In conclusion: if you’re reading this, don’t have a “startup” and have $500 burning a hole in your pocket, please do yourself a favor: spend your $500 on a nice dinner. TechCrunch might think that you’ve launched a “startup” with that $499 off-the-shelf script you purchased from HotScripts.com but unless you’re barely legal, don’t expect any coverage.