Barely out of his teens, Darian Shirazi has racked up quite the résumé. He started working at eBay at age 16, he was one of the first employees at Facebook, and his new company already has a hit on its hands: FlickIM, its iPhone instant messaging application, is siphoning text messaging dollars away from AT&T. This month, the application will provide mobile support for Shirazi’s new, potentially revolutionary social networking site, Redux.com. We talked to Shirazi about a career that makes Bill Gates look like a couch potato.

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You’ve already been involved with several multimillion-dollar tech companies. How did you get started so young?

In my freshman year of high school, I wanted money for a car. My dad suggested I buy model helicopter parts from someone in Taiwan to sell for a profit on eBay. So I did. At the time, making 10 grand in a month was a big deal.

It’s one thing to sell on eBay. It’s another thing to work there at 16. How did that happen?

A cousin was working there. I started as an intern, looking for coding errors. After a while, they invited me to meetings, and I eventually asked to get paid.

How did venture capitalists respond when a 20-year-old strolled in, asking for funds?

We walked into the first meeting looking like we were born on Wall Street. But after our pitch, they started asking questions like, “What makes you think you’d be a good CEO?” I wasn’t prepared with an answer, so no money.

But you eventually got funding. So what was the right answer to the question?

I realized being as arrogant as possible is the way to get money. So I answered, “I have nothing to lose, no money, no kids. I’m going to take the risks you need to take to hit the jackpot.”

Obviously, it worked.

Yeah. At the end of our meeting, the venture capitalist who first gave us funding asked me one question: “If I were Google and I came to you with a $50 million check to buy out your idea and all your engineers, would you take it?” I turned to him and said, “If you gave me $2 million now, I’d tell Google to fuck off.”

There are so many social networking sites out there. How is yours different?

Other sites are really good at managing connections you already have, but unless you’re talking about dating sites like Match.com, they’re not designed to help you meet new

people. Our site finds people it thinks you’ll like and allows you to chat with them virtually, then actually plans events with you and the other person, or even a group of people. It also lets you know in real time if one of those people happens to be at the same movie as you or on the next barstool.

But how can a computer know who I’ll like?

We use all of the information you volunteer about yourself, taking into account who your connections are and what other members’ pages you view. Based on that—and information we gather from you and your connections’ photos—we’ve developed an algorithm to predict who you’ll want to meet and even who you’ll be attracted to.

What’s next? Cash out your Facebook stock and retire?

No. I’m not one to sunbathe for hours. I’m always thinking of new ideas. Sometimes cars almost hit me, I’m so deep in thought.