Aurora-area entrepreneurs hope web sites are their click-it to fame and fortune

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Wilbur You, Waubonsee Valley grad, NIU student and founder of Dweebs Nest.

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Updated: November 10, 2011 2:25PM

They are young, smart, creative — and able to re-invent themselves as frequently as us old-timers touch up our roots or trim our nose hairs.

I met two of Kane County’s future millionaires when they came seeking a little publicity — one last fall, the second in April — for their similar but very different fledgling online ventures.

Alex Broches — who had lived with his grandparents in North Aurora for a while and now resides in Sycamore — had started CollegeJunkee.com, a social site for students to share information about classes at Northern Illinois University, where he was a senior.

The site, complete with its classified ads, grew to more than 5,000 users at NIU. And he had started expanding to places such as the University of Illinois, Illinois State, Aurora University, and Waubonsee and Elgin Community colleges.

A few months later, I got a call from another entrepreneur: Wilbur You, a Waubonsie Valley High School grad from Aurora, had started a Groupon-like site called Youchers that seemed to be going gung-ho. In fact, You even landed a national account with LA Tan on the same day he and I chatted.

That was then. And today? Well, both young men are moving fast and furiously — only in different directions.

Evolving focus

Broches called recently to tell me College Junkee — which mostly focused on academics — morphed into a college dating site that allows users to instantly create profiles by logging in to their Facebook accounts.

“It’s fast and easy,” said NIU student Jack High, who’s been a College Junkee fan since the site was launched several months ago. College Junkee took this turn after Broches’ story caught the attention of Sam Yagan, the Chicago founder of OKCupid.com, who spent a day mentoring the young entrepreneur and helping him “start all over” with this new focus.

In just two weeks, Broches — who in May earned a geography degree that he admits will probably never be used — says CollegeJunkee.com garnered more than 100,000 page views — and he’s even been in contact with Dallas Mavericks owner and business magnate Mark Cuban. He also has another exciting project in the works that will significantly raise the profile of College Junkee, although it can’t be made public just yet.

Wilbur You’s publicity, on the other hand, landed him a sweet job offer, as online marketing coordinator for American Invsco Realty in Chicago, a large condo developer currently of renovating 200 N. Dearborn.

And he’s doing all this corporate stuff Monday, Wednesday and Friday — while continuing to take classes for his junior year at NIU on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Did I also mention You is starting up another venture? The Youchers thing didn’t work out, he says, because he didn’t have the manpower or the software to keep up with demand. But while working for Invsco, he saw another need — for a tech repair company that can fix and tune up computers a whole lot more cheaply, he says, than Geek Squad. His newly formed Dweebs Nest, he insists, won’t just stop with repairs. He and a group of other investors hope to open up a state-of-the-art store that will provide the “coolest and newest gadgets out there, while giving the customers honest reviews on them.”

‘Never give up’

Who knows where all this will take these young men? Possibly in whole different directions yet again.

But that’s OK with both. Start-up companies fail all the time. Just ask Apple’s Steve Jobs. What these two have in common — besides incredible smarts and creativity — is the confidence to keep doing the research and plugging ahead.

“You can’t succeed without failing first,” says You. “You keep your head up and move forward — and never give up.”