Whiz kids
Washington Business Journal - by Thomas C. Hall Staff Reporter
Evan Burfield, 22, is too busy starting high-tech companies to go to college.
And why should he? Burfield, president of QED Innovations in Fairfax, is recruiting college professors for his board of directors, rather than listening to their lectures in class.
QED just inked a breakthrough deal with Legg Mason, a Baltimore-based brokerage that bought QED's proprietary financial management software.
Burfield is one of a growing number of youthful small business "whiz kids" who are striking deals with bigger companies that are all too happy to rob the cradle. Many of the youthful entrepreneurs come from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria.
"It's surprising the number of companies that want to work with our students," said Don Hyatt, Jefferson's computer lab director.
More than 30 high-tech companies have internship programs with Jefferson, which is proving to be quite an incubator for the short-handed high-tech industry. Local companies hunting for young talent include UUNet, Mitre and Wang Federal.
"Microsoft has been hiring a tremendous number of our students -- there's a whole pocket of TJ students in Redmond, Wash.," Hyatt said. "Bill Gates ought to just set up a dormitory for them here."
Burfield now is on his fourth deferral of admission to Dartmouth, and he's beginning to wonder if he really has time to dawdle around campus for four years.
"I haven't found that a college degree really means anything in the technology industry," Burfield said. "People care more about what you can do, or have done."
Closing the credibility gap
The Tower Club in Tysons Corner offers the most prestigious power-lunch opportunity in local high-tech circles. Its two youngest members are Ari Jacoby, 23, and Elie Ashery, 24, who have started their own company, Newsletters.com, in College Park.
"They won't be the youngest for long," Burfield said. "I'm coming after them."
At an age when many of their contemporaries are asking, "Do you want fries with that?" these whiz kids are seeking venture capital -- and getting it.
Burfield founded QED Innovations, his second company, with $900,000 secured from an angel investor. He chose Chuck Stein, a co-founder of Netrix, as his chairman, and recruited board members from the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business.
Knowing the value of cheap, motivated labor, Burfield uses high school students as interns. He describes the townhouse headquarters of his eight-employee firm as "a frat house with computers."
Legg Mason, QED's first customer, will use QED's decision-support software to train brokers. So will banks and insurance companies that are beginning to offer financial planning and portfolio management services to clients.
"As it turns out, there is no viable software system out there for brokers to use," Burfield said. "This is a tremendous period of change for the financial services industry."
Burfield hires experts to provide technical data, as well as to lend an air of sophistication. Credibility can be a problem for a company founded by entrepreneurs who are too young to drink.
"Yeah, credibility can be a problem, but you just have to know what you're doing," said Brent Metz, 19, a freshman at Virginia Tech and founder of Transcending, which provides Web site design services.
Metz landed his first client, Technical Resources International, a Vienna-based headhunting firm, by beating the competition. After getting a bland offer from a well-known Internet service provider to create a Web site, TRI talked to Metz.
"We could offer them more than just a rinky-dink Web page: We created a database and made their site interactive," Metz said.
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