"I spent far more time down there than on schoolwork," he says. "It was much more of my Harvard experience than anything else. The teachers were very gifted. That exposure and the chance to work with so many people on such a great project was more valuable than any classes I took."

Another experience that classwork could not substitute for was his summer in Beijing.

Silberstein, who is fluent in Mandarin, was the only non-Chinese person in the Microsoft office.

"It was really a great experience. I was communicating with my colleagues about complex computer things in Chinese and we were working on developing the Chinese version of Microsoft Word," he says.

Silberstein hopes to translate his interest in languages into the work his company will perform next year, making the Web multilingual in a way it has never been before.

"The world is going to have to be multilingualized. It's arrogant of a lot of Americans to assume that other people should have to work in English," he says.

Silberstein says he sees his future work as the perfect way to pursue many of his passions. "I love traveling and foreign languages, and this is a great way to combine all of those interests," he says.

Silberstein credits his family with nurturing his interests in computers and traveling at an early age. He learned programming in second grade and has traveled extensively with his family.

"I think people's interests definitely come from their families. My family generally had a lot of practical discussions," he says. "I like to focus on the concrete."

Silberstein says the most valuable component of his experiences at Harvard was meeting people over the last four years.

"For each person there is a different aspect of Harvard that is most meaningful and for me it was definitely my peers," Silberstein says. "Everyone is talented somehow. The environment is amazing. There are so many people from so many different cultures brought together in one place."