In 2001, Steve Nielsen started an Internet company to host business applications for small to midsize companies that couldn't afford their own equipment.

Within three years he built the business to 1,000 clients before selling it for a whole lot more money than I've made in the last 20 years.

With that cash, he started a far more creative venture called PartnerUp.com, an online networking website where entrepreneurs and small-business owners can connect with potential partners, advisers, business resources and job-seeking technical and management people.

Two years in the planning and launched last April, the website grossed an estimated $1 million in less than nine months last year. The revenue was generated by an advertiser list that has grown to 40 clients, including the hefty likes of Pitney Bowes, Hewlett-Packard, United Parcel Service, Citrix and VistaPrint.

Here's the kicker: Nielsen, a 2003 graduate in entrepreneurial studies of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, was a sophomore when he started the first company. And now, with a business model that has attracted 10,000 members and 90,000 visitors a month, the gent is just 25.

It's enough to give an envious geezer an acute case of heartburn.

Dick Youngblood, Star Tribune
Steve Nielsen has started two successful companies since his sophomore year in college. He’s now 25.

Think of the Eden Prairie company as the Facebook or MySpace of small businessland, said Nielsen, whose brainstorm has been featured in recent months in the New York Times, the Arizona Republic, the online business and technology news site VentureBeat and the financial website TheStreet.com.

While the company's focus is helping business owners and wannabe entrepreneurs find the expertise and business vendors they need to start or grow an enterprise, the PartnerUp membership also includes potential investors who might wind up providing capital. Aware of the Securities and Exchange Commission's persnickety attitude on such matters, however, Nielsen does not allow anyone to solicit investments on the website.

The experience of San Francisco entrepreneur Andy Wilson, a longtime Web developer with an idea for a travel website, provides an example of what PartnerUp is all about.

"I have absolutely zero selling and marketing experience," wrote Wilson, who spent nine months in a futile search for a partner with the business development skills he lacked. Then he heard about the Minnesota company and "a few weeks after posting on PartnerUp I found someone whose personality and experience matched perfectly with what I was looking for."

In short, it's an ideal way for entrepreneurs to assemble a team to create a business, said James Kahl, assistant director of the Gary S. Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School: "I love the principle behind it," he said.

It was a problem similar to Wilson's that inspired Nielsen's brainstorm. Soon after graduation, he was intent on starting a radio frequency identification (RFID) business, involving a technology used for tracking everything from cattle to travel bags to items at a retail checkout.

With the business plan and marketing strategy in place, he went looking for an engineer to help him get started, with no luck. It wasn't until much later, after abandoning the idea, that he met an RFID engineer who had been seeking a start-up in need of his skills, but didn't know how to find it.

Eureka! The PartnerUp concept was born.

Nielsen hired website designers and spent nearly two years arming PartnerUp.com with cutting-edge technology that would lead users quickly to the most relevant available material while displaying advertising that fits their interests, as demonstrated by their use of the website.

In addition to linking entrepreneurs with potential partners and senior management and technical staff, PartnerUp offers interactive forums for members to discuss business issues and seek advice. There's also a Q-and-A service where members can list their industries and locations and post questions that automatically are directed to members best qualified to answer.

In December, Nielsen added a resource directory listing accounting, legal, marketing and technology services that cater to small business. And later this year he plans to launch a directory of office spaces that might be affordable for small businesses. The specific target: small spaces in major office complexes that often go unfilled, but are not large enough to justify an expensive marketing effort.

The service will be offered free to owners and prospective tenants, but Nielsen sees it as a rich potential advertising source.

Nielsen comes naturally by his entrepreneurial impulses: His family owns a small tooling manufacturing business in Little Canada, and when he was in third grade he began spending his days off with his father at work.

"I'd sit in on meetings, watch people negotiating and just absorb the business process," Nielsen said. "I loved it. I thought it was fascinating."

Dick Youngblood • 612-673-4439 • yblood@startribune.com