Gadgetory

hey everyone I'm Kara Tsuboi cnet.com joined by senior writer daniel Terdiman and just a few months ago Daniel wrote a fascinating story about this kid who was squatting yes squatting at AOL let's start from the beginning Daniel how did you find out about this kid I was in a meeting with a VC down in Silicon Valley and the CEO that the pc was meeting with knew the kid and had put him up as an it for an internship at the VC firm and he just was like you know I do you remember that kid that i told you about who was living at a well then they went on in their conversation and i was like hey that sounds interesting and so i contacted the CEO after that meeting and like hey do you think you'd be willing to introduce me to the to the kid and I didn't really think it would go far because it seemed like something that they wouldn't want to talk about sure but the kid was actually kind of trying to raise money and he was interested in publicity so he talked to me and told me his story and it was you know it was a lot of fun no briefly I give us his story how many months was he's living at AOL and it was two months that he was there and this wasn't a wells Palo Alto headquarter not headquarters but their offices in palo alto and he had he had been part of an incubator that was in the building so he had a basically a badge that you know let him in and out of the building in here he just decided would be sort of like a personal challenge to to stay there and get by as little money as he could and so he found some couches that he could hide on at night so he basically work all day was really doing real work building his his company and he'd just worked these long hours and then when everybody else would leave the building he'd like go to his couch and spend the night and he was eating the food in their kitchens and showering at the gym i think i read and it kept his stuff in the lockers in the gym and so I mean he got away with it for a couple months until finally they caught him that's pretty incredible and when we say kid he's really what in his 20s it was I think he was I think it was 19 or 21 what had happened and what's he doing now I mean he obviously was found out so he's no longer able to squat there yeah I mean he was trying to build this startup as an education business I think he raised a little bit of money enough money to get an actual house to live in and so you know last time I talked to him he was trying to raise maybe like a half million dollars to you know keep the business going and that hasn't happened yet as far as I know but you know he's a he's a you know an entrepreneur with moxie so he's you know I think a lot of people were you know watching him and seeing what he was up to absolutely that kind of tenacity has got to be rewarded at some point all right fascinating we look forward to the update when you hear more from Eric great thank you senior writer Daniel tournament I'm Kara Tsuboi cnet.com thanks for watching