Once upon a time, when the word Amazon brought to mind a rain forest in Brazil, a computer programmer named Rebecca Allen accepted a job with a start-up company that sold books on the Internet.
Some 2 1/2 years later, she retired with enough money to never have to work again. In a few months, she’ll turn 30.
Now Allen naps at will, flosses twice a day and invents characters for her fantasy novel.
“A lot of people who are our parents’ age think we must have made a mistake,” Allen says. “They think we can’t possibly be retired yet.”
Cyber-fueled success stories are hardly uncommon in this technology-rich corner of the country, where the world’s wealthiest man makes his home and new Internet companies sprout like mushrooms in a soggy forest. But as local start-ups go public and stocks soar to unthinkable heights, the winners in the high-tech lottery aren’t just hotshots in their 30s and 40s.
A growing number of people in their 20s are joining the technology winners’ circle, watching in amazement as their portfolios swell with such local stocks as Amazon.com, RealNetworks, Infospace.com and Go2Net.
Still decades away from standard retirement age, these fresh-faced workers have earned the kind of economic freedom most people only dream about. Some still too young to rent a car, they are reinventing traditional notions about work and retirement. Many will switch companies or fields, go back to school or take time off, all before 30.
“You are socially programmed to go to work and save for retirement,” said Michael Hanlon, 27, a software developer at Amazon.com. “Suddenly, these things weren’t reality for us. We didn’t have to worry about our 401(k)s.”
While some of the young tycoons have cashed in shares to buy cars or homes, others live off their salaries and never touch their swelling piles of stock. Others, such as Hanlon and his wife, are figuring out how to give their money away.
To some, the frenzy surrounding companies with a “dot-com” in the name makes the wealth seem a little unreal.
Some people don’t want to sell their stock yet or move it into diverse investments to guarantee the fortune will last a lifetime. Others find retiring so young a paralyzing thought, so they push away the daily calculations and keep working 12-hour days.
A few have started new companies, pouring their earnings into a new dream.
“The Internet is a lot like Vegas right now,” said Matt Hulett, 28, who recently left RealNetworks to start a company called Atom Films. “If every bet you are placing is a winner, you don’t want to leave the casino.”
While some people have taken cues from lottery commercials and left the region to hopscotch the globe or lounge on a beach, most realize that your 20s is simply too young to start doing nothing all day.
“Just hanging out is ultimately unsatisfying for just about everyone,” said one Microsoft retiree who left the company at 28.
When Claudia Anfuso, 25, left Georgetown University with a degree in psychology, she had no idea that she’d be eligible for retirement in just a few years. Her first job out of school was working for a call-in show on cable-access television called “No Dogs or Philosophers Allowed.” The talk show had nothing to do with computers, but the host wanted a Web site and asked Anfuso to set one up.
She had taken only one programming course, so she searched for books until she found one that could guide her through the process. It took her three weeks just to set up the Internet connection.
A year later, after she had switched jobs and helped design Web sites for Kellogg, Mercedes and Federal Express, Go2Net flew her to Seattle and offered her a job. In the beginning, Anfuso worked 12-hour days every day of the week. She and her co-workers frequently slept on office couches.
In a week that saw the Dow Jones industrial average cross the 10,000 mark for the first time, Go2Net soared. Anfuso is enjoying the company’s meteoric success and has no immediate plans to leave. But her financial success has bought her freedom. She now works regular hours, takes tae kwon do lessons, studies Chinese medicine and recently bought a new snowboard. Next summer she hopes to take up sailing.
“I feel like I’m at the beginning of a transformation right now,” she says. “I don’t know what I want to do. I can choose anything I want.”
Had Michael Hanlon responded to a different help-wanted ad on a fall day four years ago, he might still be pressing his nose to the grindstone rather than sniffing out opportunities to give his money away.
But Hanlon, then a $35,000-a-year Taco Bell manager, was looking to move from Portland to Seattle to join his girlfriend, who later became his wife. He applied to the first job he came across, an administrative position at Amazon.com. He was the seventh employee hired.
It didn’t take long after Amazon.com went public for Michael and Molly Hanlon, 25, to realize they would be rich. The couple grew up in solid middle-class households in Anchorage and Boise. They figured, like most people, they’d have to work their whole lives.
Dressed in sweat shirts, sitting in the living room of their tidy home, the two still look like ordinary people in their 20s. They both work full time and have no immediate plans to retire. They live off their salaries and still contribute the maximum allowed to their 401(k) plans.
But in the few years since Michael has been working for Amazon.com, the stock has jumped to $135 a share. (The company went public in May 1997 at $3 a share, adjusted for stock splits.)
The Hanlons acknowledge they could easily retire. But that’s not their goal. Ever since they came across a newspaper story about an organization called Social Venture Partners (SVP), the Hanlons have been exploring ways to give away their money and their time. Started by Aldus founder Paul Brainerd and a group of high-tech philanthropists, SVP encourages the newly wealthy to not just donate money but to get involved in the programs they are helping.
As part of their involvement with SVP, the Hanlons have been tutoring children at an elementary school once a week. Earlier this year, they attended an inspirational talk on starting a foundation.
“That night I couldn’t sleep,” Molly Hanlon recalls. “I tossed and turned all night thinking about how incredibly exciting it would be to do that.”
After working with financial planners and deciding how much they felt comfortable giving away, the Hanlons decided to start a foundation of their own. They plan to launch the foundation this spring with $500,000.
“We do not have enough money, time or skills to change the world,” Michael Hanlon says. “But if you can energize a lot of people, the net effect is huge.”
