You can get away with a lot if you have unshakable self-confidence. Want to get into somewhere you’re not technically supposed to be? Just stroll in like you own the place, smile and wave to the security guards, and generally behave like you’re the king of the castle.
Such was the case of the supremely confident teenager Eric Simons, who in 2011 moved into AOL‘s California headquarters and lived there for two whole months before someone realized something was up.
Simons had ambitions of being a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and signed on to the Imagine K12 programme, focused on fostering young people who want to learn how startups work. The program was hosted on AOL’s Palo Alto campus, so he was given a building badge for access.
After the program ended, the other members went back home. But Simons realized his building badge still worked, so why be in such a rush to leave? He was broke, needed a place to work on his startup, and made a fateful decision: “I couldn’t afford to live anywhere. I started living out of AOL’s headquarters.”
He took stock of what was on offer:
“They had a gym there with showers. I’d take a shower after work. I was like, ‘I could totally work here…They have food upstairs, they have every drink on tap. This would be a sweet place to live.'”
It proved to be so, and with workers entering and leaving the building at all hours, everybody overlooked the 19-year-old “working late” and taking naps on couches:
“There were so many people going in and out each day. They’d say, ‘Oh, he just works, here, he’s working late every night. Wow, what a hard worker.'”
Simons also paid attention to security guard patrol routes, realizing there were several places they never went that he could nap in.
How to live undercover
All too soon, his routine was fixed. He’d work until midnight, fall asleep at around 2 am on a couch, wake at 7 am, head to the gym to work out and shower, get a free breakfast, then work all day while eating the complimentary food. This routine came with unexpected benefits: “I got a really good work ethic and I got in shape, since I had to work out every morning.”
There was even a complimentary laundromat on site, meaning he could keep his small wardrobe clean. But all good things must come to an end:
“One of the guys who manages the building came in at like 5 or 6 in the morning and he scoured the entire place to find me. And he ripped me a new one. He was pissed that I was treating it like a dorm. Which was reasonable.”
Simons was booted out, though no criminal charges were filed. And, with all the work he’d managed to do, he ended up raising $50,000 in venture capital money for his startup! So what did he learn: “Save money whenever possible, and use all the resources you can. And don’t die.” So, how much is this cunning teen worth these days? After over a decade of hard work, somewhere around $100 million.
And what was AOL’s reaction? David Temkin, senior vice president of Mail and Mobile for AOL, said: “It was always our intention to facilitate entrepreneurialism in the Palo Alto office… we just didn’t expect it to work so well.”
