Dan Lynch knows that he is one of the fortunate ones. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor, he helped start, and later sold, a string of successful high-technology companies long before the dotcom bubble burst.
Remember Cybercash and Infoseek?
Now he spends most of his free time in his 1,000-acre vineyard in the Napa Valley, leisurely making wine under the "Lynch Valley" and "Napa Dan" labels. But he is hardly resting.
"When my ship came in, it became obvious to me that I wanted to do my part to help give back to society," Lynch, 60, said in a recent interview.
Next weekend, he and his wife, Karen, will officially open Camp Venture Creek in the hills of Nevada City, California, near Sacramento. It is a nonprofit operation where children ages 8 to 14 can hike, swim, work on arts and crafts, and, through a daily 90-minute program called KidBiz, learn how to become successful entrepreneurs.
Plenty of specialized camps are available, and some focus on business or entrepreneurship. But how many have a mentor list that includes top executives from Sun Microsystems, Accel Partners, Akamai Technologies, Softbank and Bowman Capital?
Camp Venture Creek costs US$1,800 for a two-week session. But tuition can be sharply discounted, based on household income, and scholarships are available. A child from a family with an annual income of less than US$60,000 may pay as little as US$100.
From passions to profits
One goal of the camp, Lynch said, is to help children, particularly those from low-income families, turn their passions into profits.
"We teach kids the concept of marketing: Who are you trying to reach? What do they need?" he said. "And if that is something you love to do, you win."
Lynch bought the 60-acre camp, a fixer-upper, two years ago. Last summer, he recruited 255 low-income children from California and Washington, for a pilot program there. For many of the campers, he said, it meant three square meals a day for the first time.
The business part of the Camp Venture Creek pilot program begins with an introduction to basic business concepts, like supply and demand and marketing. The children in the pilot program were asked to make two lists -- of things they are passionate about and things they do well.
Then they were told to come up with a business idea based on the two that would serve the camp market. By the third day, the children were drawing up simple business plans with help from camp counselors.
The ventures they created were as diverse as the children themselves and spawned a thriving camp economy, complete with its own currency.
Four 12-year-old girls developed a post-card business, figuring that other campers would want to write home.
Two of the more artistically inclined girls designed them, while the other two focused on the business side.
A group of three boys started an advertising firm to help the other children promote their ventures.
But if there were a Most Likely to Succeed in Silicon Valley Award, it might have gone to an 11-year-old boy from Oakland, California. He appointed himself the landlord for the camp and began charging "rent" to the other campers. With the "money" he took in, he set up a bank, granting loans to those who needed capital to expand their ventures. He did not stop there: when some of the ventures went bankrupt, he bought them and set about turning them into money-making ventures.
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