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Friday, March 6, 2009
Whiz Kids
Scvngr CEO Seth Priebatsch launched first startup at 13
By Brendan Lynch
NECN: Scvngr tours explore cities, campuses by cell phone
Seth Priebatsch’s first web startup failed successfully — he was in the eighth grade, and he learned from the experience that outsourcing software work was more trouble than it’s worth.
Priebatsch considers the company, a comparison shopping website whose domain and technology he sold, a learning experience that continues to form his management style as CEO of Scvngr Inc., which makes a game engine that runs mobile phone-based scavenger hunts. These days, Priebatsch makes sure he reads the documentation on the core technology he’s using, and makes sure he hires a strong team that he can trust — and see.
“I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he said.
Now 20, Priebatsch is the youngest person in the Scvngr office by about five years. Experience, confidence and a year at Princeton University have helped bring legitimacy, he said — he doesn’t get as many funny looks in business meetings, or when he tells people he runs a company. People judge Scvngr on the merits, while his age often factored into their impressions during his earlier ventures.
“I (used to get) that feeling of, ‘Why am I talking to this kid?’” he said, although even when he was younger, he worked around his age by using e-mail, chat and Skype. “Over the web, no one knows you’re 13,” he said.
Priebatsch’s other, earlier company, PostcardTech, makes CD-ROMs — mailed as postcards — that play interactive marketing tours. Using chat, he outsourced the manufacturing of the physical product to a plant in Hong Kong when he was 18.
Priebatsch goes for a run every morning before biking a six- to eight-minute commute from the Back Bay to Scvngr’s South End office. He also spends time on the Charles River windsurfing and community boating.
“It’s cool to be able to windsurf on a river in front of this amazing city skyline,” he said.
Priebatsch takes after his father, also an entrepreneur, though outside of tech. His mother is an investment banker. Priebatsch said his parents have been extremely patient and supportive of his ventures, even putting people up in their Back Bay house for up to six weeks while he was putting his current company together.
“My parents’ house has become hotel Scvngr,” he said.
Priebatsch took a leave of absence from Princeton after his freshman year. He called leaving a tough decision and said he plans to return at some point. He credited his English teacher at Nobles and Greenough with teaching him to express himself, a key skill for an entrepreneur. He also said French turned out to be an important class for his career.
“They let me drop French to devote the time to PostcardTech as a senior project,” he said.
Editors Note: Whiz Kids is an ongoing series of entrepreneurial profiles. The Whiz Kids looks at tech executives under 30 making a name for themselves at an early age.
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