myYearbook: The $100 Million Startup Name You Need To Know

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An unknown person once said that high school is the mouse race to prepare you for the rat race. For the next generation of million dollar milennials, that race is off to an early start.

It was a simple and irresistibly practical idea from siblings Catherine and David Cook. In 2005, the 15- and 16-year-old duo decided to trade the paper version of the regular high school yearbook for the digital one. myYearbook was born, a social networking website that the brother and sister team worked with throughout high school. The founder of the site would be Geoff Cook, the other sibling to Catherine and David, who would work to hire over 100 employees with the company. myYearbook exploded in popularity and in just six years it could proudly boast $17 million raised in financing, over 20 million members, 1.2 billion monthly page views, and $20 million in revenue as reported by both MSNBC and Business Insider.

The site met with its fair share of early investors interested in buying the company, but with only a few thousand dollars as one interested party’s offer, the Cook’s decided to wait on the offer. The wait was worth it as last Wednesday publicly traded Latino social network Quepasa purchased myYearbook for $100 million. $82 million would be in Quepasa common stock while David, Geoff, and Catherine would pick up the remaining $18 million for themselves. The money won’t change the business though- Geoff will still continue to remain the company CEO and the staff of myYearbook will all keep their jobs and remain headquartered in New Hope with a letter Geoff wrote to the employees stating that this isn’t, “…an exit or the end. I consider it the end of the beginning… we have a lot more innovative products to create.”

And how. MyYearbook specializes in allowing users to meet new people on the site instead of relying on the Facebook formula of befriending just the people you already know in certain networks. The additional perk of social flash games available on the site boosts myYearbook up in the social platforming arena. While the three certainly have the opportunity to retire early, I doubt they will. More likely, it’s time for them to spark new ideas, test out potential social networking websites on the rise, and create more companies to join their already impressive resume. The age of the million dollar millennial is quickly on the rise.

The younger and younger the next big upstarts in startups get, the savvier they are in social media and looking to work within an industry that “gets” them. Alongside the article I recently wrote on the future of jobs in a stint-centered world, CNN recently reported that if you’re going to work with a millennial,  you need to make it engaging, innovative, and perk-friendly.

The 2010 Pew Research Center study on social trends reported that the millennials are to be one of the most educated generations in history and also accountable for half of the employees in the world. Hence the reason for the stint position. While Gen Y understands social media and networking trends like the custom playlists on their iPods and know how to find what’s missing and create a site out of it, they also have shorter attention spans, difficulty receiving negative critiques, and do not strive to stay within a company for 15+ years. The millennial mind is a wandering one which relies on taking time off from work and going on regular vacations. All par for the course of staying connected to contacts and creating new ones!

So how do you work with a millennial? It’s a popular theory to say that they are attempting to delay becoming adults or attempting to Peter Pan their lives away by enrolling in more post-college studies in graduate schools. It’s also popular, as mentioned by Gen-Y consultant Jason Dorsey, to hold within oneself a sense of entitlement or, “It’s showing up and just feeling like people owe you things.”

Not the case for all millennials though, particularly as we face the unemployment rate. Hiring and working with millennials, whether you yourself are one or not, is going to require schedules to get chucked out, time management on specific projects as well as specific examples of your expectations, and constructive feedback that really does help to be on the agenda. Blocking social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter won’t be helpful in getting the Gen Y’ers to focus on one thing and one alone. It’s a losing battle. Better to allow them to do what they do best- multitask at work if you’re looking for big results. Happiness is of utmost importance to the millennial with making a real difference also included in that list.

And their breath of fresh air may be just what a company needs to revitalize or break new ground.

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Reynolds Reno: Networked Out

A poll taken during the Reynolds Institute about teachers’ social networking habits and their plans for continuing to use those sites found a majority of teachers like social networking on their own terms.

The institute set-up a group on Facebook, encouraged use of a specific hashtag on Twitter, and created a specific networking site through Ning, an independent social network creation site.

Reno fellow Houtchens said she was concerned that her posts might be misinterpreted by fellows who attended in previous years.

“If a person doesn’t know me, and I don’t know them, they may take my comments out of context and be offended,” she said.

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