Catherine, Dave, and Geoff Cook

Previous Lives:
High school students

Big Break:
Teenagers at the dawn of the social media era

Bottom Line:
MyYearbook.com has, at times, grown faster than Facebook or MySpace
 
Frustrated by a lack of social media sites strictly for teens, these three siblings from suburban New Jersey hatched a plan around the family dinner table three years ago to put high school yearbooks online. Catherine, the youngest, was only 16 years old at the time. Yet she convinced her older brother Geoff, a 26-year-old Harvard grad, to put up $250,000 from his own fledgling online business -- and myYearbook.com was born.   

Starting with their local high school, the Cooks have since expanded the site by more than 7 million members. And with more than 20 million unique visitors a month, it's had growth spurts that have outpaced both Facebook and MySpace. Its market share is up nearly 500 percent from last year, according to Hitwise. Not surprisingly, Nielsen NetRatings has ranked myYearbook among the Web's top social media sites for 12 to 17-year-olds.

"MyYearbook has charted phenomenal growth since the day my brother and I launched the site in the hallways of our high school," Catherine Cook, who's now 18, said about the most recent traffic figures.

Despite her phenomenal success, Catherine leads a fairly ordinary teenage life, calling herself a "nerd and proud of it." She's a member of a varsity gym team and has a boyfriend with a 4.0 GPA. Dave, a high school senior, says he gets decent enough grades and managed a good SAT score, despite the preoccupation of overseeing a professional staff of Web 2.0 software developers.    

"You have to understand each other, and you have to be able to work together," Geoff Cook has said about launching a business with his siblings and dealing with investors.