After our victory over AT&T, IDT was ready for a new challenge. Little did I suspect that the challenge would almost bankrupt us a year later.

In the early spring of 1993, I had never heard of the Internet. I certainly could never have imagined that less than three years after that we would be the fastest-growing Internet provider in the world and one of Wall Street’s most eagerly anticipated Initial Public Offerings.

The Internet story began with a letter that was sent to my home. This letter did not come from a businessman. The return address was a dormitory at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. This piqued my interest, and I opened the envelope.

The student, it turned out, had read an article in Forbes about my fight with AT&T and had some technological suggestions about how I might circumvent their objections. The letter mentioned that the sender owned his own student business installing computer networks. It was signed Maximillian Robbins. Frankly, the suggestions in the letter didn’t really interest me, but meeting a young man with a technical background who was ambitious enough to send it did. So I invited the author to New York for dinner.

I liked Max right away, and so did my kids. Max was a six-foot-two weightlifter who loved kids, and seemed to be joking all the time. This made him an excellent wrestling companion for my three oldest sons. He was good-looking and red-haired, like a Ken doll. My then four-year-old daughter developed her first crush.

Instead of taking Max to a restaurant alone so we could talk, we had a family barbecue in the backyard. Midway through dinner, I offered Max a job. Over hamburgers, he told me he still needed another year to finish college. As we were putting up more hot dogs on the grill, I told him what a waste college had been for me and what a great opportunity it would be for him to work in a real high-tech start-up company like ours. He said he would think it over. Apparently the hot dogs helped the thinking process. Over watermelon he told me he had decided to take a year’s leave from school and join IDT at the end of the spring semester. We shook hands, opened the marshmallows, and Max was hired. Little did I know it then, but IDT would never be the same.

As you know by now, I have become something of a fanatic on the subject of youth. Perhaps because I started young in business myself, I’ve always believed that young people have much more intelligence and management ability than they are generally given credit for. They also tend to be much more energetic, hardworking, and motivated than people who have been around long enough to have developed a “thank G-d it’s Friday so we can get home to our gardening” attitude. Come in to IDT any night after ten o’clock, or on a Sunday afternoon, and these eager beavers are busy working. Sure, the place is covered with soda cans and potato chip bags, and an occasional stray Nerf football may bop you on the head, but that’s just the point. For these people, working and having responsibility is fun, just like the football team or the college newspaper. When night comes, the fun is just beginning. IDT’s young staff is not big on gardening or mowing the lawn, but they’re big on winning.