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Who is Mark Bao? Meet the 18-year old entrepreneur behind Threewords.me

108 points by dwynings 16y ago

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- peterzakin 16y ago
  young entrepreneur, impressive track record, prominent hn member...i could imagine some people caring.
  - citricsquid 16y ago
    I never understood the age thing. I guess in times long ago age might have mattered, but now with such ease of access to the internet for most there are people who are at 18 more experienced (like Mark) than some 30 year olds, so what Mark has achieved (while fantastic) could be more impressive if it was done by a 30 year old who had less access to the resources Mark has used... does that make sense?
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- chr15 16y ago
  I do. It's interesting to learn about the people behind their work, even if they achieve moderate success. You can learn a lot from them. I have lots of respect for Mark. He's able to just crank apps out and get things done. Edit: For anyone wondering, the comment basically said "who cares?"
- JoelSutherland 16y ago
  This comment is really mean spirited.
- jraines 16y ago
  Mark has been an active member of this community for 3 years. So while it might not be of interest to someone who wandered in from Techcrunch two months ago, some people are interested in a story about someone they've seen on HN for a long time.
Aetius 16y ago
Amy Chua would be proud ;). Congrats Mark! I'm always happy to see young entrepreneurs do well.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  There are people that like working on things the rest of the world views as "accomplishments" even without parental pressure, y'know...
iag 16y ago
Gotta give credit where credit is due. Mark, congrats on successfully selling off Threewords.me. Best of luck in your next startup.
axod 16y ago
Cool to see a writeup on a success :) Doesn't say what everyone wants to know though - how much it sold for. Also this is funny and sums up the domain name business for me: > "He finally sold to Kevin Ham, an Internet entrepreneur who owns 300 million in domain names including God.com and Satan.com." god.com gets no traffic satan.com fares even worse Just because you have a one word english name .com domain, doesn't mean anything.
- citricsquid 16y ago
  > Just because you have a one word english name .com domain, doesn't mean anything. It means he has money ;-)
  - axod 16y ago
    or he was just the first person to think of registering them...
    - citricsquid 16y ago
      They're worth a lot of money, so my thinking was if he didn't have any money he'd sell them, although I guess maybe they're a super long term investment if he did just register them.
      - axod 16y ago
        My original point though, is that they're only worth money to people who think they're worth money - domain speculators and 'cherished name' buyers. To anyone else, if you think about it with a clear head, they're fairly worthless. What is god.com? It doesn't get any traffic, have any users or product. If you bought it, you'd still have to find a way to get people to go there. Yes, you could build a brand/product/service around it, but then you could just choose some other name for your brand/product/service. The web is literally full of domains like this. insure.com $16m Alexa 39,000 sex.com $12m Alexa 24,000 fund.com $10m Alexa 602,000 beer.com $7m Alexa 374,000 diamond.com $7.5m Alexa 103,000 So none of these get any real traffic, some are just holding pages asking for other silly people to buy them for millions.
markbao 16y ago
Thank you all so much for the awesome support. :) It's been a pretty insane roller coaster of a month, and I'm (unfortunately) starting college again in a few hours. The interesting part of all this is that it's actually helping me develop my next step. Not in terms of startups, but in terms of life. In other words, is college something I'm sticking with long-term? Or is time of the essence and the need (and my parents' need) for a degree less vital? Edit: also, how good is the startup community in NYC? I love the city, but not sure about the startup environment.
- hartror 16y ago
  There are many conflicting viewpoints on college especially on HN. I took the view that college was an opportunity that while not impossible to be taken at a later stage isn't easy to "go back to" later. College is what you make of it and assuming you've gotten into a half decent school for your vocation you can get a lot out of being embedded with a lot of like minded people for a few years. College won't exclude you following your entrepreneurial dreams at the same time and you can leverage a lot from the experience. Good luck!
  - kmfrk 16y ago
    People on Hacker News make a habit out of calling college a bubble, the Emperor's new clothes, and whatnot ad nauseam. Disregarding the price tag, everyone tends to agree that the social and networking potential of college is a unique opportunity.
- gsivil 16y ago
  Mark, good luck with college and your startups. You will have all your life to be full-time entrepreneur. There will be always opportunities for talented and hardworking people like yourself. What college is going to offer you right now is the view of a parallel world to the one of businesses. Having an additional perspective to things can only help you in the long term. Good luck with everything you do.
- daeken 16y ago
  I'm not really a part of the "startup community" here, but I've had some interaction with it and it seems to be pretty lively. If you're ever in town, shoot me an email/PM -- I'd love to grab lunch or somesuch.
lzell 16y ago
Mark, congratulations on the sale and good luck with your future businesses. In the video linked above, you say that you don't know for sure what caused threewords.me to go big after a few days of little activity. Do you have any theories?
leon_ 16y ago
Hmm, a guy gets lucky and sells a really simple website and is now an entrepreneur/hacker genius? It's stuff like this that makes me wanna read HN less.
- bourbaki 16y ago
  First of all, forgive me for my english. I'm studying a lot for improve it. I don't know Mark Bao personally, I live in Europe, but I really know a lot about he. He is not Lucky. He is so young, and have already created a some tech-company. 3words.me is only one of those, and was selled in few months. And nobody cares about how simple is an idea. The idea are worthless, the execution and the sociological effect are all, in a simple idea like this. Perfect execution, incredible effect on a lot of people. So, he is a good entrepreneur, and he will improve day by day.
  - eswat 16y ago
    You’ve explained what I was going to say clearly. Mark has worked on more than just threewords.me for the past couple of years. He’s not some guy that just got lucky with a simple idea and cashed in.
- JoshSherrill 16y ago
  You didn't read the article did you? It mentions several other projects he worked on prior to threewords.me.

108 points by dwynings 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

peterzakin 16y ago
young entrepreneur, impressive track record, prominent hn member...i could imagine some people caring.
- citricsquid 16y ago
  I never understood the age thing. I guess in times long ago age might have mattered, but now with such ease of access to the internet for most there are people who are at 18 more experienced (like Mark) than some 30 year olds, so what Mark has achieved (while fantastic) could be more impressive if it was done by a 30 year old who had less access to the resources Mark has used... does that make sense?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
chr15 16y ago
I do. It's interesting to learn about the people behind their work, even if they achieve moderate success. You can learn a lot from them. I have lots of respect for Mark. He's able to just crank apps out and get things done. Edit: For anyone wondering, the comment basically said "who cares?"
JoelSutherland 16y ago
This comment is really mean spirited.
jraines 16y ago
Mark has been an active member of this community for 3 years. So while it might not be of interest to someone who wandered in from Techcrunch two months ago, some people are interested in a story about someone they've seen on HN for a long time.

Aetius 16y ago

Amy Chua would be proud ;). Congrats Mark! I'm always happy to see young entrepreneurs do well.

nostrademons 16y ago
There are people that like working on things the rest of the world views as "accomplishments" even without parental pressure, y'know...

iag 16y ago

Gotta give credit where credit is due. Mark, congrats on successfully selling off Threewords.me. Best of luck in your next startup.

axod 16y ago

Cool to see a writeup on a success :) Doesn't say what everyone wants to know though - how much it sold for. Also this is funny and sums up the domain name business for me: > "He finally sold to Kevin Ham, an Internet entrepreneur who owns 300 million in domain names including God.com and Satan.com." god.com gets no traffic satan.com fares even worse Just because you have a one word english name .com domain, doesn't mean anything.

citricsquid 16y ago
> Just because you have a one word english name .com domain, doesn't mean anything. It means he has money ;-)
- axod 16y ago
  or he was just the first person to think of registering them...
  - citricsquid 16y ago
    They're worth a lot of money, so my thinking was if he didn't have any money he'd sell them, although I guess maybe they're a super long term investment if he did just register them.
    - axod 16y ago
      My original point though, is that they're only worth money to people who think they're worth money - domain speculators and 'cherished name' buyers. To anyone else, if you think about it with a clear head, they're fairly worthless. What is god.com? It doesn't get any traffic, have any users or product. If you bought it, you'd still have to find a way to get people to go there. Yes, you could build a brand/product/service around it, but then you could just choose some other name for your brand/product/service. The web is literally full of domains like this. insure.com $16m Alexa 39,000 sex.com $12m Alexa 24,000 fund.com $10m Alexa 602,000 beer.com $7m Alexa 374,000 diamond.com $7.5m Alexa 103,000 So none of these get any real traffic, some are just holding pages asking for other silly people to buy them for millions.

markbao 16y ago

Thank you all so much for the awesome support. :) It's been a pretty insane roller coaster of a month, and I'm (unfortunately) starting college again in a few hours. The interesting part of all this is that it's actually helping me develop my next step. Not in terms of startups, but in terms of life. In other words, is college something I'm sticking with long-term? Or is time of the essence and the need (and my parents' need) for a degree less vital? Edit: also, how good is the startup community in NYC? I love the city, but not sure about the startup environment.

hartror 16y ago
There are many conflicting viewpoints on college especially on HN. I took the view that college was an opportunity that while not impossible to be taken at a later stage isn't easy to "go back to" later. College is what you make of it and assuming you've gotten into a half decent school for your vocation you can get a lot out of being embedded with a lot of like minded people for a few years. College won't exclude you following your entrepreneurial dreams at the same time and you can leverage a lot from the experience. Good luck!
- kmfrk 16y ago
  People on Hacker News make a habit out of calling college a bubble, the Emperor's new clothes, and whatnot ad nauseam. Disregarding the price tag, everyone tends to agree that the social and networking potential of college is a unique opportunity.
gsivil 16y ago
Mark, good luck with college and your startups. You will have all your life to be full-time entrepreneur. There will be always opportunities for talented and hardworking people like yourself. What college is going to offer you right now is the view of a parallel world to the one of businesses. Having an additional perspective to things can only help you in the long term. Good luck with everything you do.
daeken 16y ago
I'm not really a part of the "startup community" here, but I've had some interaction with it and it seems to be pretty lively. If you're ever in town, shoot me an email/PM -- I'd love to grab lunch or somesuch.

lzell 16y ago

Mark, congratulations on the sale and good luck with your future businesses. In the video linked above, you say that you don't know for sure what caused threewords.me to go big after a few days of little activity. Do you have any theories?

leon_ 16y ago

Hmm, a guy gets lucky and sells a really simple website and is now an entrepreneur/hacker genius? It's stuff like this that makes me wanna read HN less.

bourbaki 16y ago
First of all, forgive me for my english. I'm studying a lot for improve it. I don't know Mark Bao personally, I live in Europe, but I really know a lot about he. He is not Lucky. He is so young, and have already created a some tech-company. 3words.me is only one of those, and was selled in few months. And nobody cares about how simple is an idea. The idea are worthless, the execution and the sociological effect are all, in a simple idea like this. Perfect execution, incredible effect on a lot of people. So, he is a good entrepreneur, and he will improve day by day.
- eswat 16y ago
  You’ve explained what I was going to say clearly. Mark has worked on more than just threewords.me for the past couple of years. He’s not some guy that just got lucky with a simple idea and cashed in.
JoshSherrill 16y ago
You didn't read the article did you? It mentions several other projects he worked on prior to threewords.me.