MAKING GOALS.

• Author: Speizer, Irwin
• Position: Brief Article

By 28, Mac Lackey made his first million. Now he's trying to score with something he's always gotten a kick out of.

Mac Lackey strolls into his office in Charlotte's gentrified South End district in faded, gray chinos, a pair of adidas hiking shoes and a turtleneck sweater. Sitting, he crosses his legs, revealing bare ankles above white athletic socks. Despite a couple of attempts at gravitas -- slicked-back hair, steel-rimmed glasses -- Lackey looks his age, 28, but it's tough to guess his occupation. Bookstore clerk? Computer programmer? What gives him away is his ride. A "911 convertible," he says with a smile.

Porsche. The choice of callow Internet entrepreneurs. Having already sold his first company, a consulting business called In Touch Interactive Inc., Lackey now is working on his second, hustling bucks for Internetsoccer.com, a Web site that provides soccer news, information and merchandise. He raised $380,000 from friends and family to launch it in September, then added a half-million dollars in December after hiring an investment banker to sort through options. He says three bigger companies have expressed interest in buying it or taking an equity stake. He's courting other investors.

Lackey is one of a new breed -- an overconfident, young dot-commer with just enough experience to qualify as a veteran in the pubescent field of Internet business. People older and, presumably, wiser are giving him money with the understanding that he will quickly burn up cash building the business. Profits? Maybe in two years, if things work out. As recently as five years ago, the idea that someone this young with so little business experience could raise substantial financing for a soccer Web site would have seemed laughable. Not anymore. In November, Lackey put on his coat and tie and made the rounds of money managers and investment bankers in New York and Atlanta. "Goldman Sachs called up, wanting to talk," he says, sounding at once boastful and surprised. "I'm somewhat amazed at the course of events."

So how exactly does it all work? How do you go from college grad to serial entrepreneur in six years? The brief career of Mac Lackey offers as good an example of the process as any.

He grew up an only child in Charlotte. His mother, Cathy, shuttled him to and from soccer games. His father, Allan, was busy rising through the ranks at Atlanta-based HBO & Co., a large medical-information and -technology company. "When I was young, we had very little money," Lackey says. "My father traveled a lot, worked long days. He worked his way up from third-shift engineer to senior management. As he was more successful, our lifestyle changed and got better. But he probably wasn't the happiest person in the world in his job."

Though a cavalier student, Lackey was passionate about soccer, starting on the East Mecklenburg High School squad as a sophomore. "He was clearly a standout player. He was the leading scorer," says Ross Saldarini, who was two years ahead of Lackey and team captain. He is now Internetsoccer.com's chief financial officer. Lackey landed a soccer scholarship to Wake Forest University but stayed only a year and a half before transferring to Berry College in Rome, Ga., because he liked its coach.

He was a bit of a hot-dogger. Once, at a key moment during a game against the University of Alabama, he executed a bicycle kick, a difficult acrobatic move requiring the player to flip backward...