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I Was a Teenage Entrepreneur: Weina Scott and Jake Fisher

Weina Scott and Jake Fisher’s Story: Even among startups with cut-to-the-bone budgets, the creation and launch of Weina Scott’s and Jake Fisher’s podcast hosting company was a remarkable exercise in minimalism.

Weina wrote the programming code for Miami-based Switchpod.com on Microsoft Notepad. Then she and Jake, her marketing guy, built a Web site, started posting on message boards to get word out about their service, and blew through their ad budget - $50 – for online promotion.

Now considered one of the top five podcast hosting companies in the industry, Switchpod, launched in 2005, averages 1 million downloads a month and enjoys a 20 percent monthly growth rate in listener downloads. It recently was acquired by Wizzard Software for $200,000 in stock.

Oh, yes - both entrepreneurs are high school students.

Switchpod has developed a strong “podcaster friendly” reputation and is known for offering its users unmetered bandwidth, fast speeds, detailed statistics and strong promotional and branding opportunities. It provides both free and premium accounts to users who create audio and video podcasts using the latest technologies.

The micro-company’s success attracted the attention of Pittsburgh-based Wizzard Software, a leader in speech technology application development, which wanted to use Switchpod’s network for its patented voice-to-text technology to create transcripts of podcasts and make them more searchable for advertisers.

When Wizzard acquired Switchpod, it hired the founders to continue day-to-day operations.

Weina, who lives in Miami Beach, Fla., and Jake, of Rochester, Minn., met on a message board and started to IM each other about podcasting, finally deciding to launch their own hosting company.

“I was interested in podcasting, and being a teenager I couldn’t afford it,” says Jake, 17. “That’s why I wanted to start a free service for people like me.”

At 17, Weina was already an Internet veteran - she launched a Web design company at age 13, when she bought a book and taught herself how to program.

That experience served her well when she sat down to create the software for Switchpod. Once that was done, she and Jake spread the good word on such podcasting message boards as PodcastAlley.com. “We just posted information about our site and how great it was,” Weina says.

Jake handled the marketing, buying a $50 ad on RedBarRadio.com. He handles customer relations, while Weina works behind the scenes to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Customers can upload their podcasts to the site at no cost if they allow ad placement at the beginning of the podcast. Switchpod also has fee-based services. Depending on the amount of space needed for hosting, prices range from $5 to $30.

Chris Spencer, Wizzard Software’s president and CEO, was researching podcasting when he clicked on a link to Switchpod.com. “I had been receiving inquiries from people about how they could transform their blogs into podcasts when I happened upon the site,” he says. “Their technology meshed well with Wizzard, and we wanted to be incorporated into the Switchpod network.”

Spencer was especially fascinated by free podcasting. “I saw a large market for advertisers and potential for a new medium where people could access information – especially since the popularity of iPods,” he says. “It was a tremendous emerging market.”

When Weina and Jake looked at their e-mail and found a note from Spencer saying he wanted to invest in or acquire Switchpod, “I thought it was a joke,” Weina says. Jake didn’t believe the offer was legitimate either, he says, “But after I talked to Chris, I knew Wizzard was a company I wanted to be a part of.”

Spencer was surprised to learn that Switchpod was started by kids, “But I quickly found out they were professionals and knew their business.”

The teens told their parents about the offer: $200,000 in Wizzard stock and $40,000 in annual salary. “My dad didn’t believe we were selling the company,” Weina says. “He thought it was too incredulous. When he received the contract, he finally believed it.”

Jake and Weina still hold their co-founder titles and continue to run the business with Wizzard employees in support. “I still do the programming,” says Weina, who recently moved operations to a new server to improve customer service. Business is good. Switchpod has more than 6,000 users and logged 1.25 million downloads in September.

“It just keeps growing and that’s a lot of pressure,” says Weina, who balances work with a full load of Advance Placement classes while applying to colleges. “But it helps me grow, too. I learned a lot in terms of programming.”

Jake and Weina each work about 20 hours a week on the site. “Ten years from now, I still hope to be working at Switchpod,” says Jake, a high school junior who wants to attend the University of West Virginia – Spencer’s alma mater – to study business.

Weina has her sights set on Yale to pursue degrees in medicine and computer science. But the entrepreneurial spirit is in her blood. “One day,” she says, “I want to start another company.”