These days, when an entrepreneur says he has a revolutionary business plan that will forever change commerce using the Internet, it's wise to raise an eyebrow, if not hit the mute button.
But when the entrepreneurs in question are the brothers Jay and Paul Shen, it may be worth listening in.The latest venture from the siblings Shen, each of whom already has a hundred-million-dollar dot-com success to his credit, is called myCustoms.com.
The business, which is in a market test and set for a summer rollout, is designed to enable e-commerce companies to expand their overseas business by automating the import-export function.
The Shens say they are seeking to solve what they describe as a major kink in the international e-commerce pipeline. Most e-commerce companies, they say, do not even entertain the idea of overseas customers because they do not want to take the time and energy to navigate myriad customs laws or calculate the duties and value-added taxes of countless nations.
Enter myCustoms.com, which the brothers say will calculate taxes and inform buyers and sellers on import-export laws. "Now the entire process is very manual, very labor intensive, not applicable to online," said Jay Shen, 27, the company's co-founder and president. MyCustoms.com will enable people to "trade globally as they do locally," he said.
The brothers say the site could also enable themselves to get even richer -- even if the Shens could afford to retire already. In 1998, Jay founded Billpoint, a service that allows person-to-person credit card transactions online, and sold it last year to eBay for $125 million.
His older brother Paul, 37, who is myCustoms.com's chief executive, co-founded the iMedia Corp. in 1994. He sold iMedia, which makes digital video software, to Terayon Communication Systems last year for $100 million.
The third co-founder of the new venture is Manoj Karamchandani, formerly vice president for international operations at eBay.
Given their previous successes, why don't the brothers do what so many other wealthy technology executives are doing these days -- sit back and invest their money in other people's entrepreneurial efforts?
"We're not just looking for a financial gain," Jay Shen said. "This product will really help society as a whole."