Wesley Zhao and Ajay Mehta represent the new wave of technological evolution, the “scrappy startup.”

This movement focuses on small websites and mobile applications that can be created in a short time. It’s coming from small places, dorm rooms, basements. Or in this case, a makeshift office at Mehta’s parents’ home in north Bellevue, where the team today launched a site that allows users to exchange gift cards.

The room, previously uninhabited, is lined with windows. The eyes first dart to the workspace. What appears to be a large desk is simply two sheets of plywood held off the ground by two sawhorses. This rudimentary, yet stable structure, holds thousands of dollars worth of equipment. This minimalist approach manifests itself within the groups’ projects as well.

“We know we’re not brilliantly trained engineers,” said Mehta, a student at New York University. “We would rather make something that’s very specific and does one thing really well and provides a utility for people.”

Zhao recently finished his freshman year of college at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Wharton School of business. He noticed what his classmates had done with startups. One of them sold a product to eBay for $100 million, while another was able to go into business with Google.

When Mehta and Zhao met up for winter break last year, they decided it was time to learn coding to match up with their lofty ideas and business acumen. They started small.

“A lot of the old venture capital firms focus on home runs,” Zhao said. “We’re focusing on singles and doubles.”

Now on deck for the group is a product they feel will make a significant impact in an intriguing, yet socially awkward arena: gift-giving.

Mehta and Zhao along with their fellow team members, Jesse Beyroutey and Dan Shipper, are launching today the service AvantCard (getavantcard.com), which allows customers to give exchangeable gift cards. Unused gift cards represent a large amount of wasted spending power, they said.

The giver of the card registers it with the site, which gives the recipient the ability to exchange. That person can send AvantCard their unwanted gift card, and choose a different store to replace the card. The team’s ultimate plan is to partner with retailers and issue more flexible “open” gift cards.

“We feel that we can mash up, mix up and change the way gift cards are currently issued, and make them more relevant to the recipient, more personal and flexible,” Beyroutey said.

Mehta’s and Zhao’s exponential rise in the startup business provides a path to those who want to make their way in. Their journey is less than a year old, so their technical knowledge is not the calling card. It’s their passion, zeal and willingness to go into tunnel-vision levels of focus to build a product.

As their skills have progressed, so has their goal. The team works from a master spreadsheet with more than 200 ideas at any one time. As they have gained more contacts and mentors, they have been told that they need to put more stock into an idea, rather than finish one one day, and then move onto another.

“When I first met Wesley, he was always talking about these hobby projects he would do wherein he and the rest of the team would build a cool app or product overnight and release them,” said Kartik Hosanagar, a professor at UPenn who taught Zhao in an introductory technology class. “These apps were used by a few hundred people and forgotten. Now these guys are focused more on having impact.”

The team spent much of the summer in New York and the Silicon Valley making contacts. They lived in California for some time where they made numerous connections, but decided to stay in Bellevue to save money. Mehta is on his way to a year of studying abroad in England. Zhao will likely take a year off to work on the business. Now is the time to take that sort of a risk, said Hosanagar.

“In my personal opinion, given their age, the risks are low and the upside is very high,” he said. “I think even if the startups go nowhere, their entrepreneurial attitude will be favorably perceived by prospective employers.”

Past Projects

Please Match Me – A site similar to the Facemash site seen in the film Social Network. It allows individuals to randomly pair up a boy and a girl from their University.

Where My Friends Be – A combination of Google Maps and Facebook that allows users to see where their network of contacts live.

Tasteplug – A music to-do list. This text messaging service allows users to text the name of a song to a phone number that will add it to a list of songs the user would like to purchase.

Grim Tweeper – A service that allows users to browse through the people they follow on Twitter and vet them one by one to clean up their list.

Readstream – A site that aggregates links from a person’s Twitter account and posts excerpts for the reader.