Aodhan Cullen

AODHAN CULLEN

http://www.statcounter.com/

Net Worth : $26+ Million

It was at the age of 16 that Aodhan Cullen founded Statcounter.com, a web analytics provider. Now 27, he is the CEO of the company. He has taken home the prize of Europe’s top Entrepreneur under the age of 25. The young StatCounter CEO edged out other leaders from companies such as JT International and Amsterdam’s Wakoopa. Statcounter made its free version better by increasing account log sizes to 500 from 100 (previously).

That turned out to be a smart move for the young Irishman, now 24. Web analytics, a field which grew rapidly doing the dot-com boom and then fell out of favor, is “exploding again,” says Bill Gassman, a research director specializing in Web analytics at tech consultancy Gartner (IT). It’s already a $400 million market, and analysts expect it to more than double in size by next year. Big players in the field, such as Omniture.com (OMTR), in Orem, Utah, are growing at more than 50% year over year.

As mentioned above, it was in 1999, at the “tender” age of 16, that Cullen launched the Dublin-based StatCounter, an online service that lets clients measure the number of hits they get on their Web sites, plus the geographical location of visitors, the pages people view, and the keywords they use to find a site. Still, Cullen’s company stood out for its strong growth. StatCounter currently has more than 1.5 million users and tracks more than 9 billion page views per month across its network of 2.2 million Web sites. Cullen won’t discuss revenues for the privately held company, but says he’s signing up 1,500 new members per day.

The StatCounter service is mostly free, supported by ads, and works remotely over the Internet rather than by being installed on client PCs. (High-volume customers with more than 250,000 monthly pageloads pay anywhere from $9 to $29 a month for StatCounter.) He has many awards like 2008 Internet Hero at the eircom Golden Spider, Businessweek- Young European Entrepreneur of the Year. It is no surprise that he continues to rake in one Entrepreneur award after the other. His mindset is that of an Entrepreneur, and as such, he talks eats, sleeps and walks like an Entrepreneur. He himself says in his words that he believe he was born an Entrepreneur!!

“An entrepreneur assumes the risk and is dedicated and committed to the success of whatever he or she undertakes.”
Victor Kiam

“The link between my experience as an entrepreneur and that of a politician is all in one word: freedom.”
Silvio Berlusconi

“Going into business for yourself, becoming an entrepreneur, is the modern-day equivalent of pioneering on the old frontier.”
Paula Nelson

“Cullen’s company stood out for its strong growth. StatCounter currently has more than 1.5 million users and tracks more than 9 billion page views per month across its network of 2.2 million Web sites. Cullen won’t discuss revenues for the privately held company, but says he’s signing up 1,500 new members per day.”

With the growth of Internet based companies today, companies like statcounter are extremely well positioned. One of the key lessons every Internet Entrepreneur will have to learn is how to understand who and what their visitors are. You need to know where they are coming from, what keyword brought them to your site, what are they looking at on your site, and how much time did they spend etc. These are all ESSENTIAL details to help tweak your product or service in order guarantee the most targeted visitors. This is why I say Aodhan and his company are set to excel beyond their own expectations.

Check out this interview of Aodhan by the silicon republic