David Steinberg knows how to make the most of a situation. At 22, he turned the basement of his Bethesda, Maryland, home into an office for his first startup, Sterling Cellular, using every dime of his savings and maxing out all his credit cards to fund the company.

That was back in 1992. Unlike many of the startup founders of today, Steinberg hadn't dreamed of running his own company when he was in college. "I became an entrepreneur because I had no choice," says Steinberg. "I had no job."