(7/17/98) North Haven Post

Kevin Colleran: an Internet tycoon at 17

By Tristram DeRoma

If you attended the New Haven International Volvo and Pilot Pen tennis tournaments between
1991 and 1996, you probably saw blonde-haired Kevin Colleran around selling the programs.

In fact, it is more than likely you bought a program from the fresh-faced 9-year-old who was
always one of the top salespeople during the years he was involved with the tournament.

Colleran humbly recalls his sales achievement, chalking it up to no more than being just a mere
shaver compared to the older program sellers there.

"I think all they [the buyers] saw was this little 9-year-old with a cute face..." Colleran said,
joking about how easy it was for him to make a sale.

To see where he is today, however, proves Colleran was more than just a pretty face. In fact,
now, at the ripe old age of 17, his resume already reads like a page out of a book by Horatio
Alger, a fiction writer who wrote about the successful American business tycoons who started
with nothing.

"Ever since I was very little, the idea of selling and marketing always intrigued me," Colleran
said.

His first sales were made at a lemonade stand at the end of his driveway. Hardly anybody
would drive by on the quiet road, but that didn't seem to discourage him, it only seemed to
make him more determined.

His next venture turned out a little better, selling baseball cards out of one of his parent's
unoccupied storefronts for a couple of months during the summer when he was just 12.

Around that time, he started tooling around with his parent's computer.

Today, if you log onto the Internet and type his name into any search engine, his web-based
businesses that he is a part of or created will most likely show up on the first search. That can
be anything from LiveService.com, (www.liveservice.com) a 24-hour customer help line and
relations company he is currently vice-president of; "Neato," an East Haven-based labeling
company that relies heavily on Colleran's Internet marketing services as their special projects
coordinator; and Robb Peck McCooey, (www.robbpeck.com) a specialty investment firm that
has hired Colleran to do their Internet marketing campaign as well.

All this summer, every Wednesday and Friday, Colleran is also working right on the floor of
the New York Stock Exchange, helping the firm file the transactions they make that day.
Rumor has it that at the age of 17, he's the youngest person to do so in a long time.

Then, of course, there's Colleran's own baby, Cyber Marketing Solutions
International,(www.cmsinternet.com) a company specializing in launching other businesses
into Cyberspace. CMSI's lineage can be traced back to 1993, when Colleran was 12.

As he puts it, he was simply trying to find a better way to trade and sell baseball cards when he
suddenly had a brainstorm. Way back then, in order for Colleran to maintain his presence on
America Online's bulletin board, and thus keep selling his cards, he had to log on every now
and then to create a new ad. His previous ads would inevitably be crowded out by other
people's ads placed on the same bulletin board.

Knowing the very people he was competing with faced the same problem, Colleran said why
not make some money by offering to do the same tedious task for them? And so Cyber
Solutions was born, the harbinger to Cyber Marketing Solutions International, and basically
everything else he's done as a "netrepeneur."

What CMS International actually does is bring its clientele together with companies that can
help them with everything the CMS International client needs to build a successful presence on
the web, from site design to consultation on how to advertise it. Although Colleran does do a
little site-building himself, he sees himself as mainly a sales and marketing consultant.

"In the future, I see myself involved in business administration, sales and marketing
somehow," Colleran said. "Hopefully tied in with computers. I really didn't get into the
Internet because I'm a technically-minded person, but did so because it was a necessity."

In other words, he adds, as a 12-year-old youngster who didn't have a car, let alone a driver's
license, the Internet provided him with the perfect opportunity to do what he said he does best,
market and sell.

"It's even better than that," he said. "The Internet allowed me to make contacts with people not
just in my local area, but all over the world."

On top of all that, Colleran will be a junior at Hopkins School next year. He also maintains an
online guide called Cyber Digest, an Internet site he also founded to help Hopkins faculty and
students learn how to use the Internet to their best advantage.

Colleran said juggling all he does is relatively easy since most of his business can be transacted
over the Internet whenever he chooses to log on, taking just a few hours of a day or night, at
whatever time he chooses.

"I probably work the same amount hours that my friends are this summer," Colleran said,
adding he also does the usual teenage stuff, such as going to movies, playing varsity sports
and hanging out with friends.

Although he's currently enjoying the media's fascination with him as a teenage business
tycoon, whether as a guest on worldwide radio broadcasts, (www.radionet.com), or being the
subject of many stories in national and worldwide news publications, he seems to really enjoy
what he's doing, rather than who he is. He said starting up these businesses and being a part of
others gives him a chance to try different things while he's young and doesn't have a lot to
lose.

He also adds that most anybody can start up their own cyber-based business, the most difficult
part is coming up with a product or a service that will sell.

"It can be all of what you put into it," he said. "The harder you work, the better your rewards
will be."

You can reach Colleran at www.cmsinternet.com, or you can call him at 867-1666.