Young millionaires

Entrepreneur, Nov, 1998 by Debra Phillips, G. David Doran, Elaine W. Teague, Laura Tiffany

John Chuang, 33

Company: MacTemps Inc.

Year Started: 1986

Start-Up Costs: $5,000

1998 Projections: $130 million

Best Advice: "Commit to the business - don't just do it on the side. If you have a vision and really believe in it, you should commit to it wholeheartedly."

While they were attending Harvard Business School in Boston, John Chuang and his two partners started a Macintosh-equipped desktop publishing business in their dorm room. Although they started the business to make a little money on the side, these fledgling entrepreneurs quickly learned that there was a huge untapped market out there.

In 1986, having outgrown the dorm, the trio opened a nearby storefront location with a $5,000 bank loan. The business quickly became popular with students and local business owners, many of whom didn't own Macs themselves. This knowledge gap presented Chuang and company with an interesting business opportunity: There were plenty of people who knew how to use IBM-compatible PCs, but only a handful were familiar with Macs. So in 1987, the team shifted gears: They converted the company to a temporary employment agency specializing in Mac-trained personnel and renamed it MacTemps. By 1988, MacTemps also had locations in New York City and San Francisco.

But there was still a worm in the apple. The untested nature of the business made banks reluctant to approve loans. "Our first loan of $5,000 took months of hard negotiating," says Chuang. "We were essentially kids seeking a commercial loan, and we had to do a great deal of convincing that we would pay it back before they gave in." The company now has offices in 35 cities in seven countries and has since expanded its staffing and placement services to include creative, Web-authoring and PC-trained personnel. It seems success may be anything but temporary.

Andre Taylor, 38

Company: Interactive Sports Inc.

Year Started: 1990

Start-Up Costs: $1,000

1998 Projections: $5 million

Best Advice: "The less money you have, the more creative you have to be. Focus less on going out and getting a lot of money and more on understanding your business and working at it aggressively."

Like many entrepreneurs, Andre Taylor (below, left) didn't have much money when he started out. But instead of letting it hinder him, he turned his lack of funds into an asset for Interactive Sports, the New York City company he founded to develop sports programming for the Web, TV and radio.

"Because we didn't have money, we didn't have the ability to develop the software [the company needed]," recalls Taylor, whose programming includes the Urban Sports Network and the Women's Sports Channel. "We knocked on the doors of technology companies and invited them to participate based on the potential rewards - on royalties rather than equity in the company."

As a result of his persistence and openness to bartering, Interactive Sports formed a strategic partnership with Sprint, which wanted to get into the sports market. Out of that partnership, Taylor's company gained office space and the use of Sprint's technology support team; in return, Interactive Sports promoted Sprint products. Sounds like a fair trade-off.

Stacey Kanzler, 39

Company: Sandbagger Corp.

Year Started: 1993

Start-Up Costs: $250,000

1998 Projections: $2 million

Best Advice: "Perseverance pays off."

One person really can make a difference. As trite as this statement is, it's genuinely true in the case of Stacey Kanzler, founder of Wauconda, Illinois-based Sandbagger. Why? Because through the sheer force of her imagination, Kanzler has contributed to the saving of not only people's homes, but conceivably their lives as well.

It started pretty simply, ironically enough. While watching TV coverage of Midwestern floods in 1993, Kanzler was shocked to see military personnel filling sandbags by hand. "I couldn't believe we didn't have a machine that sewed multiple sandbags simultaneously," she recollects. "In this day and age? C'mon!"

Drawing on her experience working at her husband's earth-moving business - and, yes, a fertile imagination - Kanzler quickly dreamed up an automated sandbagging machine. "In two weeks," she says, "we had the National Guard testing some prototypes."

It's estimated that the Sandbagger does the work of 40 people - and the subsequent, motorized Sandbagger beats this performance by 500 percent. "Many times we're credited with helping save communities," says Kanzler, whose machines are sold worldwide. Yet even as her company keeps growing, an overloaded-on-natural-disasters Kanzler admits to changing her TV-viewing habits: She no longer watches weather reports.

Dave Klimkiewicz, 27; Dennis Telfer, 29; & Steve Lake, 30

Company: Sector 9 Inc.

Year Started: 1993

Start-Up Costs: $30,000

1998 Projections: $4 million

Best Advice: "Look for something missing in a given market." - Dennis Telfer

Taking the skateboard path less traveled was what propelled Dave Klimkiewicz, Dennis Telfer and Steve Lake into the entrepreneurial big time. "It was something that was really different," says Telfer, explaining why he and pals Lake and Klimkiewicz, who are all skateboarders, decided to start a skateboard manufacturing company that specialized not in today's downscaled models, but in the longboards reminiscent of the 1970s. "[Other manufacturers] pretty much laughed at us."