Dot-Commitment

Young Entrepreneur Learns Ups and Downs of Building a Web Start-Up

By the time he arrived at Virginia Tech in January 2004, Fahad Hassan still was not over his first business failure. He had poured his heart into a computer support business in his final year of high school, but after a promising few months the customers dried up and the expenses ballooned.

At Virginia Tech, he didn't feel invested in classes and even got rejected as a business major. He was so stressed that he took a term off.

Then, in the summer after his junior year, inspiration struck. The Gaithersburg student pulled out a notebook -- a brown diary where he'd write personal notes and paste motivational messages -- and started to sketch a Web site.

He imagined a social networking place, featuring the friend-linked-to-friend aspects of such popular destinations as Facebook and MySpace. But his site would include calendar and contact features, and mix in course management software favored by schools and colleges.

Last year that idea became a company called Daylert, with Hassan as its 21-year-old chief executive.

Regardless of a business person's age, getting a start-up off the ground is a risky proposition. Researchers at the University of Maryland recently examined the fate of venture capital-seeking Internet companies started at the height of the technology boom in the late 1990s. Only half existed five years later.

Yet young entrepreneurs like Hassan persist, and they've become an enduring dot-com archetype. In the Washington area, two of the best-known Web start-ups -- Freewebs and Clearspring -- are led by people in their mid-20s.

Since Hassan launched his company, he's had to work tirelessly to solicit venture capital money and to manage employees who are old enough to be his parents.

Hassan "reminded me of the early days of the Internet where it was digital natives: the people who grew up with technology who saw the future," said April Young, a prominent local technology banker who has tried to help Hassan build his company. "The challenge that he and other early entrepreneurs face is: How much control are they willing to give up both financially and intellectually?"

Hassan was just 6 when he and his family left their home of Bangladesh. They arrived in the United States on a Pakistan International Airlines jet in February 1991. His father became a waiter and his mother cared for Hassan and his younger sister.

It didn't take long for Hassan to nurture an entrepreneurial sense. While attending Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg, he worked part-time for a software firm in Rockville, forging a bond with the owner, Bill Schafer.

His decision to create Daylert was spur of the moment, inspired by "Pay It Forward," a movie about a young boy who starts a social philanthropic movement.