Intro – Ben Welton

The summer before  college I decided I needed a little extra spending money to fill my pocket with. It all started with me and two of my friends in a cabin up in northern Vermont one night. We got talking and wanted to create something. Something that uses a new type of technology and could make us money. This happened to keep us well up into the night as we shot ideas off of each other. Before we knew it, we had a concrete idea that we were hoping someone would see potential in.

We wanted to reach out to kids in our generation but knew we would need a grant of some sort to get off the ground. After many attempts and runs at selling this stone cold idea, not one person bit. We were all tarnished. We didn’t know where to look or who to go to. 

But suddenly, it was like our luck was looking up and the light was shining through. I received a anonymous call from a blocked number claiming that they wanted to set up a meeting. At first I felt a large feeling of suspicion and nervous. But letting my 2 copartners in on the call and a ‘Goonies never say die’ mentality; we decided to make the trip.

The mysterious man had us meet him in Central park at 8:00 am on a monday morning. It was gloomy out and to be honest we had no way of contacting him or finding him for that matter. We waited and waited. It was about 9:30 am when we were thinking about leaving, Until a tall figure approached us. We were intrigued by the 6”5 man with a drench coat and top hat. He went by Steve.

He had heard about us through a online forum and wanted to hear our idea. We presented him our plan to make the revolutionary type of online student networking. We wanted to be used by Universities across the country.

..A year later we got a call from Steve. He had programmed the website called “FirstClass” and we then received a check for $500,000,000 dollars. First class took off and we didn’t need to attended school any longer.