They Become Millionaire With MyYearbook.com

Who: Catherine and Dave Cook
What: MyYearbook.com, a social networking site
Where: New Hope, Pennsylvania
When: Started in 2005

Move over, MySpace and Facebook--these young entrepreneurs have found a new way to capitalize on the social networking rage. Amazingly, Catherine Cook, 17, and her 18-year-old brother, Dave, were able to create MyYearbook.com while they were still in high school.

The 2 million-member, seven-figure-earning site, with 20 employees and ad revenue from corporations such as Disney and Procter & Gamble, got its start from an observation about yearbooks. Catherine says she and Dave were sitting around, flipping through their school yearbook and commenting on its poor quality. Their idea to turn a yearbook into a social website quickly became a reality when their oldest brother, Geoff, decided to come onboard as an investor. A Harvard graduate and a successful internet entrepreneur in his own right, Geoff gave Catherine and Dave $250,000 to start the company in 2005. With that, Catherine and Dave were on their way, working with outsourced developers in India to design a networking site that would meld the success of MySpace with the premise of a yearbook.

Pulling constant all-nighters and juggling schoolwork along with the business was "really daunting," says Catherine. Hoping to attract as many students as possible, the pair timed the launch to coincide with their return to school after spring break in April 2005. They turned heads by wearing promotional T-shirts to school, resulting in 200 people signing up in the first week. Word spread, and less than a year after opening up to all schools, the site had a million members. "At the start, [the success] was a joke," Catherine says. "We made fake press articles about us taking over the world and getting a million members. But then we actually got a million members, and we knew it was going to be big."

Catherine says the site owes its rapid growth to several factors: her appearance in CosmoGirl magazine, her and Dave's ability to gather feedback directly from the students at their school, and giveaways of free T-shirts and sandals to members who recommended at least five people to the site. "With high schoolers, something free is always good," Catherine says, adding that the site's optimal search and profile customization features have also fueled its success.

Catherine says she and Dave could not have done it without the help of Geoff, who runs the day-to-day operations of the company while she and Dave focus on schoolwork. "We're really close siblings," says Catherine. "We have the same sense of humor, and it [is] easy to work with Geoff."

So what's next for two kids who've already started their own company? College, of course. While she hasn't chosen a school yet, Catherine plans to attend a university starting this fall, and Dave is currently enrolled at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
More at:http://www.myyearbook.com/
Via-Entrepreneur Mag