College Humor
Zach Klein, Josh Abramson, Ricky Van Veen, and Jakob Lodwick
Brief Bio: Friends Since High School, They Started a Website as College Freshmen
The Payoff: All Four Are Millionaires (2006 company revenue of $9 million)
The Kicker: They are Wealthy From Sharing Stupid (yet undeniably funny) Jokes
Massively Successful: Their Website Gets More Visitors Than ComedyCentral.com
About Us (From Their Webpage)
CollegeHumor.com was founded in 1999 by two high school friends from Baltimore, Maryland who went to different colleges as a way to share all of the funny things floating around their college’s computer networks and has grown into a lot more.
If something’s funny on the Internet, it’s either on here or linked from here. We have the biggest collection of movies, pictures, jokes, and games that you’ll find just about anywhere. We also have a writing staff of people that are so funny, they’re not allowed to attend funerals! This website is bigger than TheBeatles.com. And since The Beatles were bigger than Jesus, that says a lot.
Ricky Van Veen (Co-Founder) Quoted in Kiplinger's Magazine:
"College is the perfect place to start a business.
If you fail, you just go back to being students."
From an Interview on FOX:If you fail, you just go back to being students."
They took the company to San Diego and then to New York. The company took off.
Abramson, Lodwick and Van Veen, (Klein still had another year left of school) decided since they could work from anywhere, they might as well work in a place with great weather. So they headed to San Diego for what they called “entrepreneur boot camp. "All we did the entire time in San Diego was work. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. … It was fun, actually,” Abramson said. “We weren’t making a huge amount of money, but we all agreed we’d rather make very little money and work for ourselves ... than make a little bit more money and work for someone else and not get to do what we want.”