The New York Times

September 29, 2002, Sunday

L.I. @ WORK; Business Founder at 14, Old Hand at 20

By WARREN STRUGATCH (NYT) 1280 words

RON LAZAR remembers meeting Gregory Galant three years ago at a Chamber of Commerce dinner in Huntington. Mr. Lazar, a commercial broker in Melville who graduated from Dartmouth College in 1953, didn't realize he was chatting with a poised if precocious member of Huntington High School's class of 2001. Mr. Lazar invited him to attend the next meeting of the chamber committee he chairs on economic development. windows 7 download beta

Gregory Galant, now 20 and a sophomore at Emory University, began his own Web company while a student at Huntington High School.

A longtime member of the Huntington chamber, whom Mr. Lazar declined to identify, witnessed their conversation. ''He says to me, 'Don't you know you were talking to a high school kid!' '' Mr. Lazar recalled. ''I guess he meant, 'Don't waste your time.' I ignored him. High school kid or not, Greg was already a businessman. I knew I wasn't wasting my time.''

Mr. Lazar's opinion was borne out when Mr. Galant (pronounced GAL-ant) showed up at the next committee meeting and volunteered to write a business plan for the group, a task long deferred by the members. Mr. Lazar gave him a shot at it. A week later Mr Galant handed over a thick document explaining the committee's mission and suggesting a detailed plan of action.

Mr. Lazar was impressed.

Mr. Galant turned 20 on Sept. 10 and earlier this month started his sophomore year at Emory University in Atlanta. He shows no sign of allowing his status as an undergraduate to slow down the growth of his Web development business on Long Island. The business is called Halenet, after the Halesite neighborhood of Huntington where he grew up and where his family still lives. He also remains active in the Huntington chamber, where he continues to meet potential customers and chat up people who may be decades older but who may also need a new Web site. We need detailed Goldmine support here.

Age has never been an issue with Mr. Galant, who started his business when he was 14. Over the phone, he is as poised and confident as someone twice his age. In person, he appears years older. Older people sometimes use his youth as an excuse to bargain harder, he said, and peers don't always understand his entrepreneurial drive. It still rankles that his freshman classmates nicknamed him Bill Gates and that clients sometimes balked at signing contracts with a minor. bonus casino gambling online

''I don't think age is important,'' he said. ''What matters is that you understand business. I've been doing Web sites about as long as anybody else. Of course, Web sites haven't been around all that long.''

Mr. Galant said that joining the chamber was a wise decision. He sent his check in by mail, so chamber officials did not know the organization had just enrolled the first high school student in its history.

Somehow, in spite of college classwork and the hours spent building some 30 Web sites last year, Mr. Galant found time to form a new group at the chamber, the Young Professionals Chamber of Commerce, aimed at encouraging youthful entrepreneurship.

The group's name is something of a misnomer, since the members are high school and college students. ''The thing is, they all aspire to become professionals, and the group is there to help them do that,'' said Linda Mitchell, a former third-grade teacher and former corporate trainer who now works for the chamber.

This year, for the second consecutive year, Mr. Galant helped William Barrett, a retired executive who is a mentor to many young entrepreneurs on the North Shore, run a series of workshops for the chamber, classes that teach entrepreneurial fundamentals to young people.

The workshops' reputation has now blossomed beyond the adolescent set. Among the participants this year were David Engasser, a 30-year-old aspiring graphic artist, and Donna Inocco, an experienced high school business teacher who wanted to pick up some ideas for her own classes.

''How old am I? I'm 19! '' Ms. Inocco said, smiling broadly.

Throughout the eight workshop sessions, Mr. Galant and Mr. Barrett, who is 75, took turns offering suggestions, asking questions and as often as possible assuring the participants that they were making good progress.

The students included Maddie Warlan and Tessa Coneys, both 13, who made scented soap by hand and sold it through Sensations, a gift shop on Main Street in Huntington. Another was William Palumbo, 17, who buys and sells used cars. Matthew Moore and Kevin Rausro, both 16, developed a plan for a business that would provide entertainment at golf tournaments. Eddie Marcucci, 14, helps out at his father's auto detailing business. Derek Schacker, 16, created customized lawn decorations sold through his mother's landscape design business.

Alex Zelenka, 19, who runs his own landscaping business, spoke at one of Mr. Galant's summer workshops for young entrepreneurs. Photographs by Maxine Hicks for the New York Times

One July evening, at one of the last of the workshops, a graduate from last year, Alex Zelenka, returned to share tales of entrepreneurial success. ''Like Mr. Barrett says, you can't sit there and hope it happens -- you've got to take action to make it happen,'' said Mr. Zelenka, 19, who was describing how he creates demand for his landscaping business, now in its second year.

Mr. Galant did not offer himself as an example of teenage entrepreneurship, but he could have. His first paying client was a detective agency in Ramsey, N.J. More business followed. Mr. Galant found himself designing Web sites for government agencies, small local businesses and some nonprofit groups. In 2000 he joined the Long Island Web Developers Guild, submitted one of his Web sites and won an award for it.

He estimates that he will earn $30,000 this year designing Web sites. While paltry by the dot-com standards of several years ago, the amount is hardly insignificant, considering Mr. Galant works part time as a site developer and full time as a student some 700 miles away. The amount, in fact, is probably more than some professional Web developers will make this year.

The field has thinned out lately, but Mr. Galant said that he, for one, was not lacking for business. He does an increasing amount of what's called back-end work, that is, improving the way a Web site processes information. For this, most of his clients are other Web developers who lack the necessary computer programming skills.

Mr. Galant believes a Web developer's No. 1 task is to create a site that works efficiently. ''Many sites fail because they aren't useful,'' he said. ''You take one look and say, 'A designer did this site,' or 'A programmer did this site.' The design is beautiful but serves no purpose. Or the site is filled with movement but gives you no information and doesn't let you really do anything.''

Mr. Galant said he focused on the purpose of a given Web site and tried to organize the site around his client's business needs. ''A lot of it is common sense,'' he said.

Aside from the preoccupations with his business, Mr. Galant is sorting out whether to major in business or liberal arts at Emory. He is leaning toward a business major, but his friends at the Chamber of Commerce, including Mr. Lazar, are urging him toward liberal arts.

''He can always return for a master's degree in business later on,'' Mr. Lazar said.

Of course, when you're 20, ''later on'' may seem an eternity away.

''I don't know where I'll be in 10 years, let alone 5,'' Mr. Galant said. ''But I'm certain whatever it is will involve technology and that I'll be in business for myself.''

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company