Top guns
Participants this year can expect the help of mentors from the worlds of technology and venture capital -- many of them friends of Lynch. The mentors include Bud Colligan, a software entrepreneur who is now a partner at Accel Partners, the venture capital firm, and Meihong Xu, a principal at Softbank Ventures.
Lynch and his staff said they were heartened by the business knowledge displayed by their budding proteges last summer. But they added that the camp aims to teach much more than business. Equally important, they said, are life lessons in collaboration, relationships, goal-setting, responsibility and the integrity of creating something of value.
"We teach them that they can take risks and can be masters of their own destiny," said Dennis Campbell, the program director of the camp.
That is something that Lynch has learned over the years -- along with the value of perseverance. He spent 15 years as a computer center manager at various California universities and became familiar with Arpanet, the precursor of the Internet.
It was not until 1986, however, that he had his first business success -- Interop, a popular computer networking conference he started when the market for such technology was taking off.
After selling the conference to Ziff Davis Media, he became an "angel investor," helping to start several successful companies, including UUNet, an Internet networking company that was later bought by WorldCom and then by America Online; CyberCash, an online payment system that was bought by Verisign; and Infoseek, an early Internet search engine company that was acquired by the Walt Disney Co.
Despite his past successes, Lynch is not immune to the continuing steep decline in the value of technology companies. He initially intended to support the camp on his own, and has already spent US$7 million to set the camp into motion. But he needs to raise US$10 million more, he says -- perhaps from some of his venture capital friends -- to keep it going.
"I really like the idea of doing my own camp; I get to define what's going to happen," he said. "Part of the joy of being a start-up is that you are master of your own ship."
"It would have been much easier to write a check," he added. "Instead, I got in and wrestled with it as an operating business."
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