Scott Lynn started designing Web pages when he was a lad of sixteen at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School. Genius struck only a couple of years later when he came up with Punch the Monkey, an incredibly successful Internet ad with an oscillating monkey, linking to Lynn's Web page at
treeloot.com. Now a grizzled Web veteran of 22, Lynn owns and runs his company, Virtumundo, out of Kansas City. And a lot of people have punched his monkey -- more than 40 million at last count. Treeloot is a simple, goofy game wherein computer users search for money in the "money tree." It's not a lot of money, except for the one guy from Cornwall, England, who won $25,000 in January. Yes, just one winner since 1997. Each month, though, lots of players earn "banana bucks" that they can trade for discounts on Internet products if -- and it's a big if -- players agree to be included in Virtumundo's database. That database, now with 60 million people, has become Lynn's money tree.
