Millenial Entrepreneurs--Gotta Have 'em!

The focus of my talk in T-Town was how to grow more entrepreneurs in our small towns, seeing it as a paradigm shift in economic development. The more that I’ve researched it and seen examples from around the country, the more excited I get about the future of the USA. Our brightest days lay in the future.

I’ve found about a dozen examples of young people, under the age of 22, who have started significant new businesses in small towns. There are going to be many more examples and if you have any in your town please send them to me.

This next generation, called Gen-Y or the Millennial Generation, is going to be the most entrepreneurial in the history of the USA. They are already being compared to the generation of the 1880s which transformed our country into an economic world power.

One of my favorite examples is David Orr, a young man in my hometown, who has started a deal-a-day website called fruper.com. Each day David offers his fruper-duper-deal-of-the-day! On the day of my talk he was offering a T-Phone for $150 that is very similar to the I-Phone but at $500.

In less than a year fruper has become one of the top three deal of the day websites. David just launched world-wide shipping and is in negotiations with Dell to sell some of their products because of the web hits he is generating.

I first met David about six months ago when he was shipping product into our public warehousing operation because he had outgrown his parent’s garage and basement. His biggest problem at the time was not being old enough to drive.

Two weeks ago I met with him on a new idea he has for a second website and learned that he turned 16 on September 15th. After meeting with him I went down to see the Range Rover he had bought with his own money generated from fruper, which he bought online!

On Monday I saw him at the best restaurant in town. His mother told me proudly, “David is treating me to lunch and took me for a drive in his new car.” David let me know that he had already traded in his Range Rover for a BMW. Also bought online! I’ll have to get a new picture.

I’m convinced that you are going to be reading about David in Business Week, Forbes or Fortune in the near future. He is a comer and has an incredibly bright future.