Jobs, Gates and, now, Furdyk: Ukrainian Canadian is teenage entrepreneur (06/20/99)

Jobs, Gates and, now, Furdyk: Ukrainian Canadian is teenage entrepreneur

by Christopher Guly
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

HULL, Quebec - He might not be Bill Gates (yet), but Michael Furdyk is well on his way to becoming a heavyweight in the high-tech industry. In mid-May, a Ukrainian Canadian resident of Etobicoke, a Toronto suburb, and two colleagues sold their Internet-based venture of six websites and six e-mail newsletters called MyDesktop.com to one of the pioneers of the online publishing industry, internet.com LLC of Westport, Conn.

The deal was worth more than $1 million U.S.

Mr. Furdyk is 16, but already he talks like a seasoned Silicon Valley executive. He says other companies expressed interest in investing in MyDesktop.com. One was willing to help the three partners - Mr. Furdyk, Michael Hayman, 18, and Albert Lai, 20 - take their venture public.

"We decided this was the best deal," said Mr. Furdyk of the decision to go with Internet.com's offer. "They were giving us the most flexibility."

Indeed, the gangly six-foot-one teenager has more flexibility than any of his peers have.

While Mr. Furdyk isn't allowed to reveal the value of the deal with internet.com - publishers of Internet World magazine - he admits he will earn a six-digit salary as a consultant to the company and has stock options.

Is he a millionaire? "I guess so," Mr. Furdyk says cautiously. He and his fellow cyber-young guns are also mighty popular these days, appearing in national print and television, and meeting with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in Ottawa on June 9.

Mr. Furdyk added that he and his partners received a letter of congratulations from pro-business Ontario Conservative Premier Mike Harris - a man, the new business titan surmises, who "really rocks." Unfortunately, Mr. Furdyk was two years too young to vote for the premier's party, which he said he "definitely" supports, in the June 3 provincial election. He turns 17 July 4.

Mr. Furdyk, the eldest of three children of Paul and Marcia Furdyk, seems to have quickly matured into a savvy executive with a downtown Toronto office, but he's eager to enjoy the life of a 16-year-old.

"I don't work 24 hours a day," Mr. Furdyk says. "My friends make me do tons of stuff with them, especially on weekends." His best friend also doubles as a regular squash partner. Sometimes, Mr. Furdyk fits in a game of pool after school. Girlfriend? "I'm not really interested right now," he said.

But movies are a big thing for him. And Mr. Furdyk has the choice of going to see them at a cinema, rent a video or watch the flick on his computer. A copy of Keanu Reeves' current box-office cyber-thriller "The Matrix," downloaded from the Web, occupies space on his desktop that can accommodate 16.7 billion bytes of data. "That's about 25 or 30 CDs full of stuff on my hard drive," he explained.

While Mr. Furdyk recently leased a $45,000 ($30,000 U.S.) 1999 Infiniti QX4 sport-utility vehicle, he can drive it only with a parent until he successfully passes a driver's test following his forthcoming birthday.

The young man is a hit with his two "Babas" (grandmothers), Vera Evanetz and Katherine Furdyk, and their friends, and his years of attending the Lesia Ukrainka School of Ukrainian Studies on Saturday mornings in Etobicoke are paying off: Mr. Furdyk can understand them when they fuss about their "velykyi" (great) success.

He is certainly an overnight financial success. However, the Grade 11 student in Martingrove High School's gifted program didn't happen upon that success by luck. Mr. Furdyk worked hard to get to where he is. Three years ago he created an online tutorial called "The Internet Exposed," which essentially taught people, at no cost, how to develop their own websites.

While surfing on the net, Mr. Furdyk met Mr. Hayman, an Australian, online and the two agreed to concoct MyDesktop.com in 1997. Fellow Canadian Mr. Lai, a veteran in forming three companies as a teenager, later joined the duo and became the venture's business-legal engine. Last August they established a central office in Toronto. And the rest, as they say, is history.

But while the high-tech path Mr. Furdyk is following may fashion him into a young Bill Gates, he warms more to Apple Computer's founder, Steve Jobs, a man Mr. Furdyk considers "awesome," and lionizes for popularizing the "think different" concept behind using Macintosh computers.

The world's richest man, Mr. Gates, meanwhile, "just got lucky," in Mr. Furdyk's opinion. "There is a certain point where you wonder if he has enough," Mr. Furdyk says. "It seems like he wants more and more and more."

Mr. Furdyk says his hunger is not insatiable - though he admits his salary is higher than the income his father pulls in as an executive at cash register-maker NCR Canada Ltd.

"What I've got now would be enough to retire on but I'm definitely not interested in doing something like that," he said. Still, Mr. Furdyk doesn't plan on playing the high-stakes, high-tech game all his life.

Just as selling off MyDesktop.com (www.mydesktop.com), which attracts some 6 million page views a month and earned revenues in the six digits last year, revealed impressive business acumen on the part of three partners, the service had largely served its purpose, noted Mr. Furdyk. It was time to move on to other things - namely a new venture he founded called BuyBuddy.com (www.buybuddy.com), with which the trio is now actively involved.

The online service is essentially an electronic commerce search engine that helps a user find the best price for computer hardware and software, books, music and videos - and tells you where to find it - at no cost. "BuyBuddy is already worth multiples of what MyDesktop is worth because of the media attention and interested investors what they've offered us," Mr. Furdyk explained. "So the evaluation for BuyBuddy has exponentially grown during the last month. We're hoping to take it public now that we have the resources."

Other goals? Getting his high school diploma is a plan, as is attending a university with some friends "just to have a good time" learning.

Considering he could probably teach an M.B.A. course, Mr. Furdyk has his academic sights set on, perhaps metaphorically, the stars. "I'm very interested in astronomy," he says, then pauses. "Astronomy isn't the same as astrology, right? Astrology is like the whole weird gypsy thing, right?"

Mr. Furdyk added: "And the great thing will be that I won't have to worry about the marks. I'll be able to just enjoy it and learn. So that'll be cool."

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