Vince Busam, Jason Droege, Dan Rodrigues, Kevin Smilak and Michael Todd

Co-Founders

Scour.Net

Beverly Hills

When Michael Ovitz and Yucaipa Cos. became majority shareholders in Scour.Net two months ago, most of the company’s senior managers were barely old enough to legally celebrate with a glass of champagne.

Not that there has been much time to celebrate. Scour.Net, a search engine that finds multimedia entertainment, such as movies, music, audio, video, photos and animation, on the Web, is the world’s biggest broadband entertainment portal and includes content featuring bands, movies and news.

The company was founded by five UCLA computer science students in December 1997. Michael Todd, now 21 and vice president of technology and infrastructure, wrote the computer code for the original Web site, and Vince Busam, now 21 and working under the title “systems guru,” created the original search software.

For a year and a half, the crew operated out of the apartment of now-23-year-old Chief Executive Dan Rodrigues. When they used the microwave in the kitchen, they were never sure if the computer system would get overloaded and crash.

“In the beginning it was more like, ‘Hey this is a cool project, this is something that we think is interesting and fun to do,’ ” says Kevin Smilak, 23, who heads up the engineering and software department. “We didn’t necessarily have this great vision, ‘Oh, this is a broadband revolution.’ ”

But that’s what they hope to be a part of. The site has grown from 10 hits a day (mostly from friends) to 1.5 million page views a day. The company that started with five undergraduates now has a staff of 25.

In June, Ovitz and Yucaipa purchased a 51 percent interest after which Scour.Net moved into a 4,500-square-foot office in Beverly Hills. The founders still work 12 hours a day, though now much of the time is spent managing the teams that are creating new programs and products for the site.

By fall of last year, all but Smilak had dropped out of school.

Despite their young age, Scour.Net’s founders and employees bring some heavy industry experience with them. They have worked or interned for Microsoft, Intel Corp., Viant, Cisco Systems, Novell Network, RealNetworks and AltaVista.

What about going public? Travis Kalanick, vice president of strategy, looks at his watch when asked the question implying it’s an imminent possibility.

“I would say the probability window is six months, six months plus,” Kalanick said.

Jolie Gorchov