Extracurricular Entrepreneur

Scholar by day, and businessman extraordinaire by night, Scott Cooley hopes to be a part of Japan’s I.T. future.

For most people, a college education is a launching pad for bigger and better things. For 20-year-old Scott Cooley, whose Web technology company, Indevtech Inc., grossed $50,000 in annual sales last year, it was more of an afterthought. “School right now is just kind of something so I can keep my options open,” says Cooley, president and co-founder of Indevtech. “I take it very seriously, but I also have a business to run.”

A 2000 graduate of Punahou High School, Cooley started his first business fixing computers when he was 13. Upon graduation, he spent a year studying Japanese language at Nanzan University in Nagoya before returning to Hawaii and founding Indevtech, which specializes in Web application development, in January of last year. Cooley says his first big triumph began with a phone call from Tommy Silva, owner of MyEventsOnline Inc. “We built the HawaiiEventsOnline Web site for Tommy, but his business plan is actually to sell the model to other investors nationwide,” says Cooley. “He knows that to pull something like this off is going to be a huge investment, so we’re giving him a deal on redesigning one of these Web sites, so say, instead of $25,000, it’ll cost $10,000 to get one of these off the ground, and, in exchange, he’s given us an equity stake in his company.”

A budding scholar by day, and businessman extraordinaire by night, Cooley hopes to eventually merge his entrepreneurial savvy with the bachelor’s degree he is currently seeking at the University of Hawaii (a double major in Japanese and business administration). He says, “The I.T. boom hasn’t happened yet in Japan, and I think there’s going to be a lot of room for companies like ours to bring that revolution there.”

The obvious path for Cooley, who used his time abroad to study the nascent Japanese Internet market, would seemingly be to expand the business and attempt market entry into Japan. However, the student-come-entrepreneur says he’s more likely to tackle law school upon graduation. “My parents are both in business, and I’ve learned it’s important to have a varied background,” says Cooley, who will consider relocating to Japan, but not to the Mainland. “Anyone can do what I do on the Mainland. I don’t want to be just another face in the crowd.”

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