Gosling and his entrepreneurial venture, GozBay.com, recently won honors from the National Association for the Self-Employed, which awarded him its top scholarship of $24,000. He'll use the money to attend his dream school, Drexel.
"I want to learn more about the business side of everything. I have the technical side of it," Gosling said.
He got the idea for the website when, at 13, he began to help local antique dealers sell cars on eBay. Luring buyers from around the country and overseas, he secured a greater profit than the dealers could get locally. But he became frustrated with eBay's fees, which he said at the time amounted to as much as 15 percent.
"I figured I can make a site that I can sell my cars on," he recalled.
So instead of spending his time playing video games like other teens, he went to work: "I wanted to do something that I was going to make money on," he said.
It took hundreds of hours - he estimates 40 a week during start-up, then 20 to 30 per week after that.
At its height, the site recorded five million page views for three consecutive quarters. His main strategy was to attract "power sellers" who would bring in thousands of auction items and a strong customer base.
Then Gosling suffered his first business heartbreak.
On Halloween in 2008, hackers infiltrated the website and all but destroyed it. Gosling got the news in a call from the server manager at 2 a.m. He signed on to his three-screen computer station and watched useful data being turned into gibberish. The culprits had killed 78,000 auctions and damaged the hard drives.
"I found out everything I had worked for for the past years had been lost, pretty much just like that," he recalled.
