I made my first website with a friend when I was in 7th grade....

I made my first website with a friend when I was in 7th grade. It was called Gaming Galaxy Online. It was extremely cheesy— with a giant animated GIF as the title graphic, and pretty much all content harvested straight from other sources. The page never got any traffic, but I remember how exciting it was to build the site. The internet seemed like a place where a 7th grader could participate in the adult world on a level playing field. My friend and I tried one website idea after another. None of them really worked, but we felt very empowered. On the internet, it felt like we were one good idea away from a very adultlike level of success. And like pretty much everyone else in 1996, our free websites were hosted on Geocities.com.

Fast forward almost 20 years—- in my late twenties, after countless attempts, I’ve finally managed to create a popular website. And last night I was out gathering content. I was walking past the Apple Store on 59th and 5th when I spotted a man sitting alone in the plaza. I asked for his photo, he agreed. “What was the happiest moment of your life?” I asked him.

"Probably when my company had its IPO," he answered. "I founded a company called Geocities.com."