Kids these days. It seems like they’re writing HTML before they learn how to talk. And a lot of them are starting companies before they graduate from high school.
Here’s a list of some of our favorite teen entrepreneurs. And please keep in mind that there are lots of startups we’ve yet to hear about. So if you are a young entrepreneur, make sure to leave a comment below and add your bio and startup information to CrunchBase.
Jessica Mah
Jessica Mah, 19, is currently the CEO and Co-Founder behind Indinero, a Mint.com for small businesses. Mah started her first startup at 13. Last year, she founded internshipIN.com, a site to help high school and college kids find internships in their area. Now, at 19, Mah is finishing up her Computer Science degree from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as being the CEO of Indinero.
Ashley Qualls
Ashley Qualls, 19, started WhateverLife when she was 14, a site designed to give MySpace users free Myspace layouts and HTML tutorials. She employs both her mom, and her friends who do graphics for her. Qualls started WhateverLife in 2004 as a hobby, and now has turned into a business, with her site getting anywhere from 150,000 to 360,000 daily page views.
Donny Ouyang
Donny Ouyang, 17, started his first business in 2006 called Kinkarso Network. Kinkarso Network operates a number of web properties including; BattleForums.com, HostBright.net, ChristianAvenue.org, etc. Ouyang has been featured in Entrepreneur, PC Magazine, Retire At 21, Internet Entrepreneurs, and many other sites.
Sam Purtill
Sam Purtill is one of the founding team members of YouNoodle, a service that lets users follow start-ups that they are interested in and predict success of start-up teams based on analysis of historical data about qualities of the team’s founders and other information. Purtill originally built the site with one other engineer, and has been with the company since September 2007. He is also the managing partner of Okapi Studio, a design studio based in Bucharest, Romania. Purtill is now attending Stanford University.
Grant Bell & Robert Day
Grant Bell is a teenage entrepreneur who is the co-founder of Tomorrow’s Web, an online network dedicated to supporting and engaging with young people with an internet in the web, technology and entrepreneurship. Bell is also the Founder of Pitchie, a stealth startup.
Robert Day is the co-founder of Tomorrow’s Web as well. Day has worked for various web companies such as ChannelFlip and Be Broadband’s OpenHub.
Mark Bao
Mark Bao, 17, is an internet entrepreneur based in Boston, MA. Bao is the founder of Avecora and Ramamia. In August 2009, Bao sold his product, Avecora OnDemand, to Branchr Advertising, and renamed the product Atomplan, which he is still the acting CEO of. In the past, Mark has been involved with the Facebook Platform, launching numerous applications, selling three applications, and organising the Facebook developer meetings in Boston, as well as the main event Facebook Developer Garage Boston.
Zachary Collins & Dustin Snider
Zachary Collins and Dustin Snider are the co-founders of Yazzem, a site which allows anyone to share their thoughts about anything that interests them by starting and joining topics. In July 2009, Collins sold Twtbase.com, a database of Twitter apps, and is also home to the very first Twitter applications search engine.
Patrick DeVivo
Patrick DeVivo is a blogger and entrepreneur in New York City. He founded Youth Bloggers Network in May 2007, and then sold the site to Teens in Tech Networks in March of 2009.
Of course, there are entrepreneurs that started their companies at a young age, and since then have grown their businesses. myYearbook co-founders Catherine Cook and Dave Cook started the company in 2005. Catherine is currently a student at Georgetown University, while also working on myYearbook’s growth and features. myYearbook is one of the largest teen oriented social networks, getting about 3 million unique page views per month according to Compete.
Disclosure: I am the Founder and CEO of Teens in Tech Networks. Teens in Tech Networks acquired Youth Bloggers Network in March 2009. Youth Bloggers Network was founded by Patrick DeVivo, who is mentioned above.
I may not be an “entrepreneur” to be exact, but I still work my ass off online. It would be interesting to see if you could compile a list of upcoming YouTube users who will be the most-subscribed of tomorrow. If you want to make such a list, let me know, and I’ll tell you who to look at.
As always, another great post Daniel.
Ben, I’d be interested in interviewing you for my site. Contact me.
I am 13 years old and I am an entrepreneur. I started my own fragrance line called Azuré “The Scent of Flawless”. My website is http://www.dreamazure.com I would like to go around to schools to talk to other teens about how to reach their goals of entrepreneurship as well.
I am an entrepreneur who has begun an entire media project, doing one step at a time. I have begun with a computer tech support website, The Ultimate Geek TaskForce located @ http://www.helpmyos.com
Users of the site can get free computer tech support, and can learn about how to solve their own computer problems.
So you have a tech forum with total of 2000 forum posts and 7 users online as of now and comment on a news item like this… rright.
Not to mention it looks like the forum dates back to April 1st so if the 2k posts is correct.. he only averages 10 posts per day.
So what ? Its a start and he is trying. Great success doesn’t happen overnight and he even said in his comment that it is the beginning. Way to support entrepreneurship with your encouraging comments.
Well, the deal about it is…would be the project behind it. The company is a developing global media industry, targeted at media projects.
..what?
Don’t listen to the haters Jason, chase the dream. The negative comments are comming from middle aged failures. You wouldn’t take their advice if they paid you, so you’re on the right track.
I too was a teen entrepreneur. Now I’ve crossed 23 and have not succeeded yet. :’(
Same here dude
I was also somewhat of a teen Entrepreneur. I started with TeenWants.com. Never really got to get it off the ground, but it is still around. I am also working on iWants.com.
Just because you didn’t make it as a teen, doesn’t mean you should give up. Keep kickin. I am!
Yeah I feel you on that. It’s sad to say that I peaked @ 15 years old when I cashed in $3g’s a month on AIM Icons…
Still in attempts to repeat that success @ 23 I havent quite reached my goal… I decided the next best thing would be med school. Sigh.. Back to the books!
Early success might ruin teenagers….
“Duniya Badi Harami Hai”
ROFL!
i agree… totally
I have no idea why those comments were sent in 5 times! Seriously!
Original comment: ” *faces inferiority complex*
”
I wish I started this early too. I’m giving my son the environment to grow and follow this path.
Hello Milo,
I also have a son that I would like to pursue an entrepreneurial career.
Unfortunately, in this part of the world (Romania, to be more precise) the environment is not exposing kids to models and way of thinking that would result in early entrepreneurial endeavours.
Would you be so kind and share more about the way you are encouraging your son to build up the entrepreneurial mindset and knowledges?
Thanks a lot and success!
Thanks for the insight !
I have an 8-year-old son with great math skills but I’d rather let him enjoy his youth and think about creating companies late in his pre-graduate studies or even as a post-grad, perhaps working for somebody in between for experience.
Starting very early is overrated, there should be some balance in life and maturity. It’s good to check out successful long-term entrepreneurs like Larry Ellison, who founded Oracle when he was 33 years old http://en.wikip...i/Larry_Ellison
Thank you! Sometimes I really wonder what environment these kids are being raised in that they are even thinking about business and companies in their teens. What ever happened to just being a kid?
Growing up in Hollywood, I knew plenty of people who were worth millions by the time they were in their late teens, and I don’t think I need to spell out for anyone what a really stable and sane life being a child actor sets you up for! I really wonder if a lot of these child entrepreneurs aren’t going to end up the same way.
I agree with you, Lee, on this one. I believe these young entrepreneurs are driven by external influences. We see the explosion of technology and also there are so many reality shows today that celebrate wealth and luxury, that it really affects the way kids think about what money and successes can give them.
You’re saying that the reason I read TechCrunch (and am still in high school) is because I want wealth and luxury? Really?
I’m glad I’ve started early, because I’m making (and have made) many mistakes that I can now avoid in college. I know how to develop an idea into a product, and bring it to the marketplace.
College is a time where you’re surrounded with people who want to succeed, and it is where many good ideas originate. Wasting time with the mistakes that I’ve made in high school during college would only take away from the valuable experiences I will have.
@Tomas: In order to be taken seriously while working with startups, you must be mature enough to interact with your adult peers. That’s how I’ve learned maturity and professionalism.
I love to see entrepreneurial young people like myself, as long as they don’t bask in their youth to the adults around them. When they do, it just becomes obnoxious. Anyway, chances are, once they become adults they will be struck with failure and be weeded out like the majority of start up entrepreneurs. That weeding out process never takes place in the youth because we are not yet forced to support ourselves.
Yeah, sorry for that largely unnecessary spiel.
To Brandon: Where do you see yourself when you are 30? You don’t realize it now, but it will be here a lot sooner than you think. You get out of High School, go to college, and work a few years, and 30 is upon you.
Right now you have the wonderful opportunity to explore what makes life enjoyable BESIDES money and business success. Chances are, once you leave school, you won’t have that opportunity, because you are going to be too busy putting food on the table.
You will of course ignore me, but I’ll tell you right now, the most financially successful people, are NOT the happiest people in the world, despite what they would have you believe. Yeah, sure, plenty of my friends drive the big $80,000 cars, have the nice houses, and a reputation for being very good at what they do. They are what anyone would consider a success, and they have enough money that the never have to worry about money again. You know what they do for “fun?” They drink themselves into a stupor, and pine for their lost youth. You know who the happiest man I know is? A guy who runs a simple bicycle shop. Why? Because he loves bicycles, and gets to play with them every day. Sure, his shop does well enough, and he makes a decent living, but it isn’t the kind of money that would impress anyone on Tech Crunch. What makes him happy isn’t money, it is that he spends every day doing something he loves. And guess what? He didn’t find out what he loved in a business class, or “bringing a product to the marketplace.” He found it out traveling the world when he was young and unfettered, living in Asia, and not being able to afford anything but a bicycle, and what he could carry on the back of it.
Take it for what it is worth, but there is a lot to life more interesting and rewarding than the business treadmill. You have a chance now to sample all that life has to offer. Why get caught up in the rat race at this age, when chances are you aren’t going to have any choice but to get involved in it later?
Well, as much as I have to agree with Lee Lloyd.
If you love to write software, or website, then the chances that you can make a living out of it is slim. Unless, you had learn a lot at a young age.
Software is moving at a very quick pace. Those who are doing it just because they love it could not really make a decent living out of it, if they don’t understand the business, etc.
The “real world” way of making money gives you more decent living most of the time. But, if someone loves to write software, that someone will find difficulties, due to tight competition.
Brandon might not be able to do what he loves if he gave up what he’s doing right now.
I’m 19 and I’m going to start a startup at the end of next month in Australia. Everyone wish me luck
Best of luck man!
Thanks for the follow
What I would love to see is Malcom Gladwell do a short expose investigation of these teenagers and see if his outlier concept is applicable to these kids. Were they given extraordinary opportunities at an exceptionally early age? or what other factors could have contributed to their success.
I’m 17 and have developed, bought and sold a few sites ($xx,xxx range). More on that on my resume if you go to my site.
I wouldn’t say anything about my opportunities were extraordinary at an early age. The only extraordinary things might of been my curiosity and self-motivation.
I don’t come from a rich family, all money I used on internet projects was money I earned. My parents limited the time I could spend on the computer (until I was 15), just like many other kids.
For me, I was just interested in things that not everybody was doing. School never really challenged me, so I eventually found a way to challenge myself (and I also love doing it)
How about some ‘ex’ young internet entrepreneurs who were doing amazing things in their teens and still are, such as Ben Way etc…
I’m 19 – I had made about 60 sites and they span quite a few unique hits per a month – but at current I’m still improving my skills set so I just sell the sites once I’ve finished coding them. I’m making a living doing that — but got an idea I hope to expand on soon! My latest site is http://pulseni.com!
Nice concept dude, but weird name!
hi Daniel. Interesting site and something I actually was looking for. (I’m not interested in Twittering but in a search engine that is useful for News (Google isn’t in my opinion). One issue though: When using it I constantly tried to click on the green URL’s until I found out, that one has to click on the bold, black headings to get somewhere. Quite unintuitive behaviour and I suggest to correct that.
Yes, very interesting. But, I would suggest better copy for the intro, at the very least some proof reading, many errors. And, the results were sloppy, but I was using an iPhone. You should shop it before the idea is snatched.
60 websites? That’s ambition right there. Keep up the hard work, it’ll pay off. Your life is what you make out of it. Good luck!
I’m 17, and I’m mentioned in this article (indirectly) as the company ‘Branchr Advertising’ (My Startup) who acquired Mark Bao’s startup Avecora OnDemand earlier this year.
My CrunchBase Profile:
http://www.crun...christian-owens
spelling: Berkley= Berkeley
Thanks
I am 16 and make over $2,000 a month. Please contact me for more info, because I am interested in being posted up there.
This list is Daniel’s Friends, not actual entrepreneurs.
Rob Day from what I Can see has helped to do some stuff, but NOT actually created or built anything that provided or generated any money.
Hey TechCrunch
I’d like to consider myself a teen entrepreneur. I’m 15, sold one of my businesses (online) for mid $xx,xxx, have started a new one with two on the way.
Hate to sound a brag – but how do we get on these lists!? It’d be nice to have a community of like-minded young entrepreneurs to help each other out. As to the circumstances question – I never really got any help from my parents, except access to a PayPal account.
Cheers,
Lachy
Bru, your name should be on that list!
That wouldn’t be too fair, wouldn’t it
Hello Mr.Crunch
Myself is an aspiring Entrepreneur running a venture,now associating into a similar venture,a vision and dream of a Talented entrepreneur.We believe Our Success can be realized in the coming years!
Cheers & Regards!
At the age of 16 I started doing music promotions privately for friends. At 18 I went public with it in every aspect. I now do free music promoting for bands, solo acts, businesses, and anything to do with music. I now have 958 friends, and 3000+ views for the myspace. Which is quite a bit for someone who does all this for free, at his own expense, in his spare time, and on his own. Along with sites across facebook. ning.com, myspace, twitter, and weebly.com
For free? You have the market cornered. Step back, take a good look, and you will see that you’re just some guy who uses the Internet. I made my first million before I was 15 years old. Get your ass in gear!
I don’t use the free market aspect to exploit it for monetary gain. I do this all for free for bands. But I do make money off of it. Whenever a show that I booked happens. It all offsets everything and most the time helps me break even. I could really care less about the money. Nice, but I have other sources for that. And I use more then just he internet to my advantage.
“Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”-Franklin D. Roosevelt
Oh! Nice post.. That really gives me encouragement. I have been working on 3 local startups since 2 years ago. And i am now working on building a huge idea to implement a worldwide social network with no boundaries beyond facebook, myspace or other social networks.I guess it will be the next big thing. just give me some time
and ya techcrunch..we need such posts!
Wait, although im not suprised, all these link to your crunchbase site, and not theirs? What a joke….
I am a Young Entrepreneur. I am CEO of “Kavandeo Network & Kavandeo Coporation”. I have lot of sites & i coded the sites from A-Z . I started to code when i was 10 years old & using computer from 4 years old.
My Main sites are http://kavandeo.com
http://imagebowl.net
http://wapdost.com
http://diggalert.com & more .. Most of these sites i am still working on…..
NOW I AM “13 Years OLD”…. Studying in 9th std & i am proud to say i am from India.
Well, yes. Nowaday lots of young people are taking interest in Web including me. I am 13 and i am going to have my own Online Marketing startup by next year. I run blogs, and i have developed quite a few web services too.
Well, Teens are going to rule the world.
Now all you have to do is hope you don’t age.
Being 16 has it’s benifits, 1 more year to go!
Hi,
My name is Eric, I’m 17 and recently relocated to the UK from Australia. I have developed and sold countless amounts of websites over the years, the most recent being, part ownership in my skateboard community.
I am currently in the process of writing my second book which will hopefully be published. I also just began work on another relatively big web project which I assume will aid a lot of other internet entrepreneurs in their profit generating businesses.
All the best,
Eric
Hey I am 18 and would like to consider my self as Serial Entrepreneur. I started a venture called ‘the FRiEnDz’ when I was 16 , we publish a bimonthly eMagazine, Make films and do workshops all over the country now want to go international) http://thefriendz.biz
Also I started a web design company with an elder partner (from US) she invested money and now we have long list of clients. We are called ‘The Royal Raspberry, LLC’ http://www.ther...alraspberry.com
Now I am about to launch a blog on meditation with a group of teens. http://meditationrocks.us
What more can I add? I play my school fee, bills and bought my own laptop. So let’s see if you consider me.
Why are you guys always linking URLS directly to Crunchbase, and never to the URL itself? It’s getting extremely annoying. I know you want to make money and want to generate as many pageviews as possible, but as both an advertiser on blogs like TC and a reader of this blog, its not very user friendly. You can link people to Crunchbase, but don’t do it with URLS please.
Thanks for the mention!
You should probably add this to the very top of the list! I mean, Like seriously =p
http://www.face...v=1214941447797
It’s great to see other teens like us online! Soon or later I’ll have my own start ups come out i just need time. If anyone interested in any new projects tweet me…
You may want to check out Jonathan Bayme at theory11.com for inspiration. He started out young and is now very successful. I think he’s 22 or 23 now.
Hey Danny,
I am 17 years old and have worked with three web startups, Cork’d, GamerNode and Defhog.
I have also founded four “successful” companies by the age of 17:
Haptic Pixels (Game Development Studio)
PixelBlast-Media (for Web Development)
DewPixel-Hosting (hosting company)
WPNow (Wordpress Theme Design site)
Hope next time you make a list of teen entrepreneurs I’ll be considered.
Thanks,
Greg
Impressive! Actually there are lots of them and we should expect more to come.
Yes allot more are out there like us..
Good to see them making their way in the world — and good to see some positive news about teenagers for once!
Oi where’s James Proud from GigLocator?
Can I get in on this for starting my own Web Development Business at the Age of 13.
Also for running http://www.teenageforums.com, by myself, and http://www.kazle.com with Nick Babenko.
Hi:
Disclosure – written by a proud father.
My daughter 10 and my son 12 came up with the idea for http://www.readinglogs.com and helped their techy parents implement the site.
They watched a video of the presentations given by Marissa Meyer (google) and Guy Kawasaki (garage) to MBA students at Stanford and based on those articulated a business model to us, the
parents. I ordered the book “Free” for myself, my 10 year daughter read it ahead of me.
The resources on the web are amazing. It is a wonderful time to be a teen (or even tween) entreprenuer. I hope there is a venue like TC 50
(does TC stand for teen crush….) for teens, an
opportunity to celebrate their success.
My wife and I grew up in India. We had never filled out a reading log or created a vocabulary card in our lives. Our kids bugged us for two years to help
them create the site. It was launched the begining of this academic year (Sep 5, 2009). WIthin a month, it is # 3 in google search results. They saw a need and came up with a solution!
Great site – but please, please, please no Comic Sans! Thanks!
Interesting site iyer. How many users do you have?
12,000 users in one month. It is growing fast, and there appears to be a need.
It costs 75 a month for AWS. The way things are going, I feel confidant this site will pay for my kids college!
Thanks for the post. I’m a stusrt up entrepreneur and I hope I will be listed one day too
I will retweet your post
Young people tend to start businesses to generate money and not because – and that’s the only reason to start a business – they have a great idea and want to fill a market niche (of course, there are exceptions!). That’s why there are so many teens in online marketing and SEO business. Hopefully their attitude will change to the better.
Hi Danny..
I am a young entrepreneur and will be launching my first startup http://www.bidbugs.com on the 15th of this month. We are currently in Private Beta. Our website is along with applications on Facebook & Myspace.
Bidbugs is a place where people can come and actually get cool products like iPods, Tvs, Laptops, Xboxs, Ps3s, Phones, etc. for FREE within a week. At any given point of time there will be atleast 10 products available.
Wish me luck !
The site was formally launched on the 14th of October! Great response till now.
Loads of items on offer!
i am 21..i am a wannabe enterpreneur… with my company Desinle..
working on lot of platforms..but its hard to find people concentration on companies then girls..
Started a site for Tweet in different languages…
Started as an Entrepreneur two years ago and still yet to find success basically because of no proper advice?
i am a teen entrepreneur, i started a image hosting site and an wrote and image board to go with it, since i am 19 this would be my last year as a teen, but i can’t wait to see what the new teens do.
Great find! This continues to prove that there are very little barriers to starting a company online, and then “making it big”.
I am a teen entrepreneur myself, I mostly do internet marketing. Checkout my blog for more information.
Keep up the good work guys!
We launched in 2005 when I was still 16, and after changing our strategy the year after from a national service to a local Los Angeles service we we’re profitable. With no loans or venture capital the business continues to grow and is my full-time job. As much as I tell my peers to aim to be the next Facebook or Google it’s not such a bad thing to have a very nice lifestyle business.
Check out: http://www.crun...imaginememories
By profitable you mean it pays for that shared bhost and buys a beer?
At first profitable was paying back our parents for the servers, equipment, advertising money, phone number, and business cable monthly fee. Now we’re on track to make six figures this year. We’re not going to ever be able to sell for millions and millions of dollars, but it’s a pretty nice salary doing what we love.
Well I may not be a teenager anymore (just turned 21), but I started my company when I was 14 (GoldFire Studios, http://goldfirestudios.com). I have developed in excess of 20 different start-ups, but my main focus now is gaming. My big project right now is http://bcwars.com, which is currently in beta testing and slated to go gold by the end of the year.
I don’t have any employees as of yet, and I pretty much work out of the library at The University of Oklahoma, but I’m hoping my newest projects can get me the funding needed to move into a small office and get some employees.
Sixteen right now, created and sold ProgrammerMeetDesigner.com three years ago and now working on Classtell.com, a service for teachers to create websites for their classes (among some other small projects).
Hey Kasra, Please get in touch with me when you have the chance.
Donny
Sorry, you can email me at heydonny[at]kinkarso.com
I’ve been following Mark Bao for almost three years now. He’s definitely someone to watch and a must have in your Rolodex contact. He’s possibly the next Bill Gates.
Looks like we old farts are only left to watch.
Life can’t give us a pause to thing of something great. Kudos to the teens though, keeps them out of the streets.
These arent anything great. Seriously, the one where “people can discuss topics by creating them and joining groups”? Come on…
I wonder what indinero makes.
Though I’m getting sick of all those “getting real by 37signals” to the letter web apps.
And it seems their design was “inspired” by http://www.camp...ignmonitor.com/. Not that it’s bad looking.
And super lame that Indinero does not have a free plan. No wonder traffic is stalled at 2,000 uniques per month.
Well, they haven’t launched yet — still private alpha.
Wow… There has to be some copyright infrignment going on right there.
+1. Blatant rip off.
wow.. this post sure brought the kids here
Was thinking the exact same thing. Seems there is a helluva lot of 15 yearolds with 20 successful startups and aquisitions behind them
That’s because the terms “startup” and “acquisition” are thrown around way too easily. To me, an “acquisition” is much more than selling a $100 template on Sitepoint.com.