Greg Sirochinsky

Greg Sirochinsky


Vernon Hills, Illinois, United States
Member since June 07, 2007
  • About
Education
2007 Olivet Nazarine , MBA

Full bio
Like any Silicon Valley entrepreneur looking for funding during the 1990s, he's young, brash and confident. Only this 23-year-old with a hot tech idea is based in Wheeling--not exactly a hub of venture capital. He's Greg Sirochinsky, a graduate of Lincolnshire's Adlai E. Stevenson High School and DePaul University. In January, Sirochinsky and three of his pals--fellow Stevenson grads--started up a company called High 5 Advertising, which launched a Web site called Ylunch.com. Ylunch.com is a restaurant finder. If you're hungry around noon dial up the site, where you can search for a restaurant by neighborhood, food type or name. Sirochinsky, who lives with his parents in Vernon Hills, says there are 22,000 restaurants on the site, all of them in Illinois. Phone numbers and addresses are provided, and restaurants that pay a small advertising fee (about 80 establishments currently pay between $75 and $150 per month) provide menus, coupons and maps. Eventually, an online reservation system will be added and the site will be expanded to include restaurants around the country. But for now, Sirochinsky is looking for money. And he's not shy. "We're going to be the Google of food," he said. "We would love to sit down with anyone interested in backing us." Is it hard to find funding in Wheeling? "It's tough," he said. "We've hit a lot of barriers because investors are [mostly] backing California companies." Don't expect that to stop Sirochinsky, though. "We're in the third-largest market here in Chicago," he explained. "And that's better than being in Nebraska or something." Sirochinsky immigrated to the U.S. from Ukraine when he was 8. During college, he worked at a Verizon Wireless retail store but grew disenfranchised with corporate America. "You work for somebody all your life and there are no guarantees," the 23-year-old said. "You can get fired, or they can outsource your job oversees. "Where are the guarantees for you?" And what guarantees has he found in business? "If we work hard and replicate the success we've had so far, the business will grow." Sirochinsky and his partners are working on a business plan that they hope to use to entice an angel investor to put up money for an Internet start-up. Only in America. "America is pretty much the only country that a person can start from scratch--with $400 and an idea. Something like this would not be possible anywhere else in the world." Sirochinsky points to recent history. "Look at the Google guy, Sergey Brin--he just made [$3.2 billion] off his IPO. Look at Mark Cuban--he made a fortune on the Internet and bought the Dallas Mavericks [professional basketball team]. "If Sergey Brin can do it with Google, why can't Greg Sirochinsky do it with Ylunch.com?"