Young entrepreneur gets some recognition and some help for college

DENVER, Pa. - Zachary Gosling, 18, will begin majoring in business at Drexel University next month but is already quite the businessman.

In first grade, he sold rocks from his driveway to unwitting classmates, claiming that he had spiffed them up in a "rock cleaner."

At age 8, he opened his first Scottrade account.

But his real coup came at 13, when he launched an online auction website from his bedroom in rural Denver, Pa., near Lancaster, supported by advertising and sponsorships rather than the fees charged by giant auction sites. The site got as many as five million page views per quarter just two years later. Had it not been sabotaged by hackers, its exponential rise might have given eBay pause.

Gosling and his entrepreneurial venture, GozBay.com, recently won honors from the National Association for the Self-Employed, which awarded him its top scholarship of $24,000. He'll use the money to attend his dream school, Drexel.

"I want to learn more about the business side of everything. I have the technical side of it," Gosling said.

He got the idea for the website when, at 13, he began to help local antique dealers sell cars on eBay. Luring buyers from around the country and overseas, he secured a greater profit than the dealers could get locally. But he became frustrated with eBay's fees, which he said at the time amounted to as much as 15 percent.

"I figured I can make a site that I can sell my cars on," he recalled.

So instead of spending his time playing video games like other teens, he went to work: "I wanted to do something that I was going to make money on," he said.

It took hundreds of hours - he estimates 40 a week during start-up, then 20 to 30 per week after that.

At its height, the site recorded five million page views for three consecutive quarters. His main strategy was to attract "power sellers" who would bring in thousands of auction items and a strong customer base.

Then Gosling suffered his first business heartbreak.

On Halloween in 2008, hackers infiltrated the website and all but destroyed it. Gosling got the news in a call from the server manager at 2 a.m. He signed on to his three-screen computer station and watched useful data being turned into gibberish. The culprits had killed 78,000 auctions and damaged the hard drives.

"I found out everything I had worked for for the past years had been lost, pretty much just like that," he recalled.

With the help of Chris Wilson, owner of Sidium Solutions, an IT company in Stevens, Lancaster County; two lawyers; and other partners, Gosling rebuilt the site and relaunched on June 1, 2009, his 17th birthday.

His resilience impressed the national self-employed association. It receives hundreds of applications each year for the scholarship, awarded to the offspring of one of its 200,000 members who is pursuing entrepreneurialism in college. Applicants had to interview and provide letters of recommendation, their GPA, and a business plan.

"He's such a go-getter and Internet wiz," said Kristin Oberlander, a spokesperson.

Gosling's website has not yet recovered all the ground it lost, but he hopes some day it will turn profitable. In the meantime, he has broadened his work to build websites for other companies, including Bellco Federal Credit Union in Reading, where his father, Tom, serves as chief executive. Gosling charges $75 an hour.

"He was half the price of any competitor, and we probably got twice as much stuff," Tom Gosling said.

He said his son's business acumen was almost innate: "He always valued money."

This summer, the teen bought a 20-foot boat for water skiing for a couple of thousand dollars, used it for a couple of months with his friends, then sold it at a profit.

"He's not afraid to take a risk," Tom Gosling said.

But it was a rocky start.

"I got a pretty good number of kids to buy my rocks," the teen said, recalling his earliest venture. "Then one night a parent called my mom. They were pretty mad that their kid was spending their lunch money on my rocks."

His mother, Lisa, a systems analyst at Armstrong World Industries in Lancaster, put a stop to it. "They kind of shut me down," Gosling said with a smile.

At age 7, he and his brother began cutting up firewood near a local campground and selling it for $5 a pack. One July Fourth, they sold 30 stacks: "That's big money for a little kid."

By 8, he had delved into computers, thanks to his father, who was running a computer-service business at the time. Zachary became adept at taking them apart and putting them back together, so much so that he fixed his teachers' computers in middle school.

By eighth grade, he had his own eBay store. And he even helped his parents solve a backyard mole problem by garnering a trap via his store.

"I can get one of anything I want for free," Gosling told his father when the mole kit arrived in a box on the front doorstep. "All I have to do is say I'm interested in selling it in my store."

In high school, Gosling served as president of the Pennsylvania branch of Future Business Leaders of America. His website also took second place in the national FBLA's E-Business competition.

After graduating from Cocalico High School with a 3.6 GPA, Gosling is eager to start at Drexel. To apply to his $48,000 annual tuition and room-and-board cost, he will receive $12,000 from the national association the first year and $4,000 each year after that if he meets academic standards.

As for his career aspirations, "I want one of these companies I started to take off and become a huge company, like Microsoft," he said. "That's my dream."

But does he see himself as the next Bill Gates?

"I don't like to think of myself as a geek," said Gosling, a motorcycle rider and former starting tackle for the varsity football team. "I like to talk of myself as a business professional."