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Jason Philbrook, like many other Maine natives, has five jobs. He hauls lobsters with his dad just off Owls Head near our summer home. He sells and services PCs with his mom, a town selectwoman. He's a nature photographer. He's a sysop for a one-line bulletin board system with 200 midcoast callers. And this summer, after computer classes let out at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, just like every other college sophomore I know, Philbrook is planning to start his own Internet service company.
Philbrook's business plan is confidential, but I can tell you it does have a spreadsheet with positive cash in the first year, and a list of potential customers collected during a year of selling his BBS.
Philbrook's current BBS is a 286 running Wildcat, from Mustang Software Inc. at (805) 873-2500 in Bakersfield, Calif. He swears by Wildcat, and so, apparently, do many other sysops--this month Mustang was the first BBS company to take its stock public. I wonder what their first business plan looked like.
About 100...