William O'Shea

By Benjamin Nugent

OCCUPATION Co-founder and CEO of RedFilter, an Internet start-up

GOAL To make browsing the Web more like browsing TV with a remote

QUOTE "Anyone who tells you they're not doing it for the money, anyone who hints the payoff isn't important--they're lying."

The NASDAQ crash may have left New York City's Silicon Alley a boulevard of broken dreams, but William O'Shea, 24, is one dotcom entrepreneur who hasn't been discouraged. O'Shea and two friends came up with the idea for their new company, RedFilter, last year in his Brooklyn apartment. O'Shea calls it "a remote control for the Internet": go to RedFilter's website, enter your age, pick the subjects you're interested in, and RedFilter spits back a series of sites custom-picked for your tastes. RedFilter's survival secret: it sells its filter technology to other websites so they can adapt it for their own users. "Our focus was always on profitability," says O'Shea.

"I think 24 is the best age to be running your own company, when you have the stamina," says O'Shea, who usually works 13 hours a day. "Maybe when I'm 40 I'll get a chance to rest." A native of the New Jersey suburbs who majored in social studies at Wesleyan University, he was inspired by his father, a florist who "worked seven days a week until I was 15." This is O'Shea's first gig as a businessman; he still speaks like the cautious, probing technology journalist he once was. Maybe that's the key to winning investors: talk softly and carry a big idea. Or maybe it's just old-economy work ethic.

--By Benjamin Nugent