Young Hobbyist Turns Passion
Into Highly-Regarded Web Site
ANANDTECH.COM
Eighteen year old Anand Lal Shimpi's heavily trafficked and widely respected Web site for computer hardware reviews has a staff of 25 and annual advertising revenues of $1 million.
RALEIGH, N.C. - Like many companies, AnandTech.com began as a result of its owner's passion. Anand Shimpi had an interest in computer hardware, and in the spring of 1997, he created a small Web site on a free hosting service to publish his product reviews. Today, the site is generating $1 million in annual advertising revenue, and Shimpi, 18, is waiting to start college in the fall.
Shimpi never intended to start a business. He had been custom-building computers as a hobby for two years and saw the site as a way to share what he learned with other hardware enthusiasts. But a few months after it went online, a manufacturer of the products he covered discovered it and wanted to advertise there. At that point, Shimpi wasn't interested in advertisers, so he asked the manufacturer to send a piece of hardware for him to review for the site.
When other manufacturers began sending their products for review, he took them on and expanded the site from covering mostly motherboards to include CPUs, sound and video cards, and processors. Interest - and the number of reviews - continued to grow, and he incorporated in 1999.
Drew Prairie, in the public relations department of AMD, a manufacturer of computer processors, has worked closely with Shimpi for more than a year. He says Shimpi "has become one of the major Internet sources for information on the latest computer hardware, and he has a loyal following of readers. Combine that with the fact that he has only just graduated from high school, and I think Anand is probably far from done in terms of making his mark when it comes to the computer industry."
AnandTech.com has become one of the most heavily trafficked sites for computer hardware reviews, jumping from 8 million page views a month at the end of 1999 to 20 million or more a month by June 2000. Ad rates range from $15 CPM (cost per thousand) to $35 CPM, with discounts for multiple-month contracts.
"We can't compromise the investment that
readers make in the products we review."
Anand Lal Shimpi, AnandTech.com
Because readers trust what they read there, Shimpi, who is editor-in-chief and CEO, is very careful to ensure there is no overlap between the editorial side of the house and advertising. In a time when even some newspapers have some trouble with this distinction, Shimpi says, "We have a strong focus on integrity. We can't compromise the investment that readers make in the products we review."
To ensure the proper separation of editorial and advertising, "no member of the editorial team knows what the banner ads will be before they go up," he explains.
AnandTech.com currently works with a dozen independent contract writers who test products and write the reviews. Another dozen, all based across the country in California, make up the ad sales force. One person handles the Web site development.
The company recently purchased two acres in Morrisville, N.C. and will construct a new building there. Plans are not finalized yet, but it will be bigger than the current facility, which will provide room for additional testing labs and a larger staff.
AnandTech.com was recently named the Number One Business in this year's Young Biz 100 survey from KidsWay and YoungBiz magazines. At this rate, this is only the first of many awards to come for Shimpi.
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