|
 |
MESSAGE BOARD
|
|
|
|
|
|
Are you in school and working on an idea for an online venture of your own like James Gutierrez's MagicBeanStalk.com? Or do more traditional career paths appeal to you? Tell us about your dreams of careers to come.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
UpStart
among startups
James and his MagicBeanStalk.com
October 12, 2000
Web posted at: 10:54 a.m. EDT (1454 GMT)
By Larry Keller
CNN.com/career Senior Writer
(CNN) -- "It's a young new culture that's emerging, the e-culture."
We're not sure this fellow's name isn't really Jack.
Last year, at an age when some guys are preoccupied with such critical matters as sampling all the beers of the world or devising strategies for winning at air hockey, James Gutierrez was creating his own company.
And this year? Well, even as the dot-com forest of startups is tossed and blown -- even as the giant shudder in the stock market sent the price of such big trees as Yahoo! crashing down Thursday to $56.38, less than half its early-September price -- Gutierrez is packing. One month from today, he hits the road on a trip to 25 universities. And at each campus, he'll be getting students together with startup companies searching for Internet-savvy talent.
Honchos of TheStreet.com have been known to ride along with Gutierrez on these forays in the past. Thursday, TheStreet.com Internet Sector index was more than 34 percent below where it was on September 1.
What, Gutierrez worry? Apparently not. His UpStart 101 university bus is ready to roll. And you have to wonder, even in this scary market week, if this might not be that wisdom of the young we all have at one point. Or maybe it's just youthful recklessness. Most of us understand that one, too.
At 23, Guteirrez is founder and president of MagicBeanStalk.com, a company that facilitates the marriage of job-hungry college students and worker-starved Internet companies. Less than a year after its birth, MagicBeanStalk has offices in two states and has extended its reach to South America.
"We're creating this center for companies to go faster," Gutierrez says. "The name of our company embodies the whole metaphor for growth and acceleration and the magic behind a lot of the startup companies."
He said "magic." You read it here.
Much good magic, as you may know, is made. Here's how Gutierrez created a niche for his company.
|
"It's a real rush to work for a startup. You're doing everything at 100 miles per hour every day. It's an intense environment. It's a fun environment. If you're a young person, you have a lot of opportunity to contribute and to take ownership in a lot of different things."
|
|
— James Gutierrez, MagicBeanStalk.com
|
At 16 universities in the 1999-2000 school year -- Yale, Harvard, Stanford and Northwestern among them -- MagicBeanStalk presented a two- to three-hour program called UpStart 101. At bottom, it's on-campus recruiting. Through this program, small companies, according to Gutierrez, can get as good a shot at attracting new talent as the Fortune 500 outfits do.
"No full-time staff of college recruiters," says his MagicBeanStalk literature. "No campus career centers. No hassles. Just high-quality accesss."
In turn, the students who attend an UpStart 101 session (it's free to them, paid for by its corporate sponsors) get to hear from high-profile Internet business leaders about Net-side careers and opportunities -- how life works.
There's a new wrinkle in the pitch this year. Some 250 interns are being deployed to generate advance buzz on targeted campuses. MagicBeanStalk has plants -- pardon the pun -- in each student body this fall, using spring-break raffles and digital-camera giveaways to advertise the coming program.
| NET-WARD BOUND |
|
In November 1999, MagicBeanStalk.com asked 387 Yale graduate and undergraduate students about their plans. Of those students, 57 percent said they were looking for work in the Internet industry. Seventeen percent said they were planning to start Internet companies of their own.
|
|
Last year, the company says, more than 160,000 students got "the MagicBeanStalk message." And that was before the new plan to deploy interns. The goal this year is a total audience of 300,000 students at the 25 universities on the list.
"It's a crash course on the Internet economy," says Gutierrez. He speaks quickly and confidently, but without a hint of arrogance.
Executives from Internet companies participate in panel discussions, then meet one-on-one with students at these forums, Gutierrez says. Students learn about the fledgling companies and whether they might be places they want to work.
Among the speakers participating in last year's UpStart 101 sessions were TheStreet.com editor-in-chief David Kansas; DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan; govWorks CEO and founder Kaleil D. Isaza Tuzman; Max Keiser, co-founder of Hollywood Stock Exchange; and InfoRocket co-founder and business-development director Matthew Cassin.
Those speakers are there to enlighten. They're also headhunting. Their companies, plus Vault.com, Business 2.0, StarMedia, Small World and Blink, are among the United States sponsors of Gutierrez's program.
|
"I've always had the entrepreneurial bug. My senior year I had this revelation that I didn't want to work for one of those big companies. I wanted to work for a startup."
|
|
— James Gutierrez, MagicBeanStalk.com
|
"It's a real rush to work for a startup," says Gutierrez, who grew up in Southern California, and now divides his time between Cupertino and Brooklyn, New York.
"You're doing everything at 100 miles per hour every day. It's an intense environment. It's a fun environment. If you're a young person, you have a lot of opportunity to contribute and to take ownership in a lot of different things. It's a new industry, so you can re-create and reinvent every day."
Companies benefit from UpStart 101 too, Gutierrez says. "Human capital is something everyone wants. Right now, there's a big inequity between the supply of demand and labor."
Gutierrez got the idea for this employer-student matchmaking service during his senior year at Yale University, from which he graduated with a degree in economics. He had completed a couple of summer internships with J.P. Morgan and one with Merrill Lynch, later receiving and declining a full-time job offer from Goldman Sachs.
| |
James Gutierrez works with his MagicBeanStalk.com associates on preparations for this year's UpStart 101 program.
| |
|
"I've always had the entrepreneurial bug," Gutierrez says. "My senior year I had this revelation that I didn't want to work for one of those big companies. I wanted to work for a startup.
"I was scouring the Internet for information on companies and I couldn't find opportunities out there. A network didn't exist in this area. We started MagicBeanStalk to solve that problem.
"The focus was to bring together the community of startup companies and give them the tools to compete with the bigger players on campuses in terms of recruiting.
"Startups want just as many smart, talented people as Goldman Sachs. They're competing with the top companies that spend tons of money on recruiting on college campuses. It's really hard for them to level the playing field because they don't have those kinds of resources."
Now Gutierrez is taking UpStart 101 to Brazil and Argentina. The South American connection started last year when UpStart 101 went to four universities in Sao Paulo. Some 4,000 students were exposed there to Gutierrez's Internet gospel.
In South America, Gutierrez's sponsors include Yahoo! Brasil, Oracle, estumundo.com, Andersen Consulting, fulano, mercadoLivra.com, Patagon.com, StarMedia, ecard and dgolpe.com.
Longer range, Gutierrez says he hopes his program will enable companies to find accounting services and legal work at the best possible rates.
In the tradition of many dot-com companies, MagicBeanStalk didn't turn a profit last year. But the goal is to be profitable by fall of 2001, Gutierrez says.
"The Internet is not going away," he says. "We're just closing the first inning of a nine-inning game."
|
"This is a very demanding environment. Most people just hear stories of young people doing really well. But that's after a few years of intense sacrifices."
|
|
— James Gutierrez, MagicBeanStalk.com
|
Although he's head honcho of a youth-oriented company, Gutierrez says he's one of the youngest employees of MagicBeanStalk. The company hired a 55-year-old COO, and it tickles Gutierrez that a fellow Yalie who applied for a position with him graduated from the Ivy League school the year Gutierrez was born.
Big plans require a big investment of time, and Gutierrez says he and his colleagues aren't daunted by the challenge. He says he works seven days weekly, a total 120 hours. He's not complaining.
"This is a very demanding environment," Gutierrez says. "Most people just hear stories of young people doing really well. But that's after a few years of intense sacrifices.
"A lot of times it means broken relationships. Basically your personal life is always in disarray. You're always on the go and it all moves so fast."
"But that's what you love about it."
We love suspense, too. So we'll let you know if this MagicBeanStalk.com story has a happy ending. Keep watering your dreams.
|
BACK TO SCHOOL WITH MAGICBEANSTALK.COM
|
|
|
|
| 
![[CNN Money]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/images/main/fn.logo.newsnet.gif){kind=logo}
![[SI.com]](http://i.cnn.net/cnn/images/main/si.logo.gif){kind=logo}
(
