正文
美国高中生21岁前赚取250万美元 一年内败光
A web entrepreneur who had it all by the time he was 21 managed to blow his staggering $2.5million fortune in just 12 months.
美国互联网企业家安德鲁·费申在自己21岁时一度拥有高达250万美元的巨款,然而他却在一年之内就将其挥霍一空。
Andrew Fashion dropped out of high school to live the high life - his monthly $100,000 pay packet seeing him buy a plush Los Angeles house and several top-of-the-range sports cars.
在赚得巨资后,安德鲁·费申申请从高中辍学,开始过上了高档奢侈的生活。他每月10万美元的收入让他得以在洛杉矶买下一栋豪宅,外加数量顶级跑车。
He played high-stakes poker in Las Vegas, jetted away on a whim to London, Florida and Hawaii, and bought all the latest gadgets going.
他去拉斯维加斯玩高赌注的扑克,一有兴致就在伦敦、佛罗里达和夏威夷之间来回飞,购买各式各样最新推出的产品。
But within just one year his websites, which gave users the tools to 'design' their MySpace pages, fell out of favour and the cash dried up.
费申创业成功是通过建立网站,给网友提供各种工具来美化他们的MySpace页面,但是这些网站在一年间突然失宠,而他的资金也已挥霍一空。
Bankrupt and suffering from depression, he admitted: 'I was young and stupid. The money was coming in so strongly, but it went out just as fast. A lot of the money just disappeared.'
在宣告破产后,费申患上了抑郁症,他承认:“我当时太年轻、太愚蠢。钱花花地来了,却又如流水般走了,一大笔钱就这么消失殆尽。”
Fashion, whose real surname is Thompson, built his business through months of shrewd marketing which saw his sites topping Google's search rankings. But a radical 2007 overhaul of the website meant Google believed it was a brand new page. It lost its Google 'reputation' overnight and plummeted to the engine's eighth page.
费申(真姓为汤普森)通过精明的市场营销策略建立起自己的事业,让他的网站在Google搜索排行榜上独占鳌头。但是2007年全面改版后,Google将其视为一个全新的网页,一夜之间失去了“信誉度”而迅速下滑至第8页。
Now not so visible, visitors dwindled and the income stopped. But Fashion still had overheads to pay, and a $400,000 tax bill he had not counted on.
由于网站不再那么显眼,访问量也就越来越少,最终连收入都没有了。但是费申还要支付网站的管理费用,这还没有算上40万美元的纳税额。
He told Business Insider how it all went wrong: 'I bought my first car, in cash. I bought my house and had $80,000 dollars of renovations done to it. I ended up buying seven cars total, a few for my friends. One of my friends wrecked a car; I wrecked a car. I paid for that out of my pocket. A lot of my money just disappeared.'
他向Business Insider诉说了钱是如何败光的:“我用现金买了第一辆车,然后又买了房子,花了8万美元来翻修。到最后我一共买了7辆车,有几辆是送给朋友的。朋友和我各撞坏了一辆车,而费用都是我出的。就这样我失去了很大笔钱。”
Now, after what he described as a roller-coaster few years, he is firmly back on track and living in Littleton, Colorado.
如今,在经历了“过山车”般的几年生活后,费申坚决要让自己回到正轨,他目前居住在科罗拉多州的利特尔顿。
He managed to raise $150,000 without any money in the bank, made a cool $250,000 from internet advertising and is now launching a model social networking website.
在银行账户里没有任何资金的情况下,他设法筹集到15万美元,通过网站广告挣得一笔25万美元的可观收入。现在他又开始设计一家新的社交网站。
He oversees a photography company called 'Fashion N Glamour Studios' and a book called 'Young and Stupid: How I Made And Lost $2.5million' is also in the pipeline, with a release date scheduled for the end of this year.
他注册了一家名为'Fashion N Glamour Studios'的摄影公司。还准备写本书,名叫《年少轻狂:我如何赚到和花掉250万美元》,计划在今年年底发售。
And this time, he insists, he will not be so quick to waste his hard-earned cash. He added: 'Instead of blowing money on toys and cars, I am going to invest it back into the company or another company.'
费申称,这一回他不会再浪费自己的辛苦所得。他还说:“我会将挣来的钱投资到自己公司或者其他公司,而不会乱花钱去买玩具、跑车之类的了。”