Derek Young

Derek Young visited us March 1st and gave a brief background of his experience. He worked at REI for about 10 years and left to get his MBA. He started small niche companies and bootstrapped every business which I thought was pretty cool. Derek talked about a couple web-based companies which he started like Exit 133, Suite 133 and Seasonal Views.

He ran Exit 133 for about 5 years. Suite 133 was started 3 years ago and it is where start-up weekend was held. Derek’s advice for Suite 133 was to learn how to make money before going to the Suite as they charge money and if you don’t have enough income coming in, going to the Suite would be a waste of money. His latest niche tech company is Seasonal View. The primary source of income for this company is through advertisements and this web-site is also his own primary source of income. He was saying that most of his clients found him through Google as they were getting a lot of hits. Spreading the word is important as they didn’t go out to advertise their company but people found them. What I liked about Seasonal View was that they don’t disclose their client’s information. Rather, they have code names for each client so the employees can openly talk about different information.

Derek’s presentation bored me a little. However, it gave me ideas about how I can fund my company through ads on my web page. I came up with a couple questions which were asked by my peers before I could raise my hand. Unfortunately, his presentation was cut short due to a fire drill. However, lucky for students as it was a nice day :)