A few days ago, me and my friends (business women who inspired me to become an entrepreneur) set out to meet a guy, Mark, from a company that specializes in Social Marketing. Mark had contacted me about an application that could enable e-commerce for Urban Pari and I decided to give this a hearing. I was looking forward to the meeting and I was also going to make a day out of it with my two friends. Business mixed with some pleasure.
Mark gave us directions to his office, which took us here and there, before we finally landed outside a three-story building facing a huge dump site. There was no elevator to take us to the second floor and we din't know what his company was called. But, aided by Mark's voice on the phone, we took the stairs to the second floor. We were met by Mark at the stair case.
Mark was a young guy dressed casually in a shirt and trouser. He looked like most IT employees I'd met. He was friendly and led us quickly to a conference room, one more floor up. This office was full of unoccupied cubicles and looked liked a start-up that hadn't started up. My friends looked at me and I grinned and shrugged as if to say, "I don't know what's going to happen. I just got you to meet someone who said he had a great application that could make you a millionaire." We settled down at the conference room and let him start talking about himself and his company.
He said, "I am the CEO of the company and I'll be walking you through what our company is about".
I said, "What?".
He said, "I am the CEO".
I said, "CEO?".
He said, "Yes, mam."
I smirked (inwardly) at that and decided to listen to him. He spoke with confidence and wasted no time in telling us about his company and what they did. After a while, my friend asked him, "What else do you do?" and he said, "I'm a college drop-out and this is what I do." She didn't really mean to ask him what else he did on his spare time. But, only meant to ask him what else his company did. But, that was his quick and secure response. Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised because we had listened to him for only a few minutes and he sounded confident, experienced and nothing at all like a hustler or a drop-out. I asked him, "How old are you? You look young." He said, "I'm 20 years old". I said, "Congratulations to you". And I meant it.
Mark is not his real name but I'm calling him that because he may be another Mark Zuckerberg (Founder & CEO of Facebook) who started young but made it big with his ideas. We were enraptured while Mark spoke about his company's accomplishments and what they were capable of doing for businesses like us. He is the first under-age CEO I have met and I am delighted to have met him. All of us are.
So, I'm writing this blog to share this meeting with you and to remind myself to 'never judge a book by its cover'.
Mark & Mark, way to go!
