When Derek Johnson was interviewing candidates for a marketing job at his tech company, one applicant arrived in a business suit. "It put us on edge," says Mr. Johnson, founder and CEO of Tatango.com. Mr. Johnson believed the job candidate was presenting a false image of himself. The suit, he felt, was tantamount to a lie.

Mr. Johnson is 22 -- an entrepreneur who dropped out of college when it got in the way of running Tatango, which enables groups to blast text and voice messages to their members. Like many of his generation,...