Teenagers are mainly known for their ability to waste time, avoid schoolwork, listen to loud and rock music, go out with friends and get tired without doing any work, but don’t underestimate that teenage brain, if given water and nourishment it can bear billions and millions (fruits you know, very tasty fruits). From cute ideas to intelligent ones, from web designing to clothes, teenagers have always rocked the world and taken the adult entrepreneurs by surprise. But don’t you think that they were mature and that they stopped being teens, not at all. In fact, they managed to pull off these businesses ideas keeping in touch with their teen-hood.
1. Fred DeLuca:
In 1965 Fred DeLuca borrowed $1,000 from a family friend Dr. Peter Buck, to start the famous fast food joint, the Subway restaurant. He was just 17 years old when he began this million dollar baby. Starting as a money maker for college, this idea is now world- renowned. He wanted to create a fast food joint that delivered fresh food all the time and since its inception, it has lived up to that aim. The first shop was situated in Boston, but now this venture has over 30,000 locations and makes more than $5 billion in sales yearly. Fred and his co-founder Dr. Peter Buck were also the founders of Franchise Brands, which helped franchisors and entrepreneurs to grow their brands. He died in 2015 at the age of 67.
2. Mark Zuckerberg:
Mark Zuckerberg, any further introduction needed? The creator of the software that would eventually take over all the favorite social networking sites Facebook. Created by a teenager, in his dorm room at Harvard, who thought it was going to be a billion dollar idea? He has become the youngest self-made entrepreneur whose worth is more than a billion dollars now. Zuckerberg dropped out of college and is now the CEO of the most popular, influential and fastest growing site on the Internet.
3. Matt Mullenweg:
Matt Mullenweg is a software developer who found success during his teens. At 19, he said that he would be making an open source initiative for better blogging and voilà, WordPress was born. After that, he started Automattic, which has two products ‘Akismet’, a trap for spam comment, and WordPress.com, the hosted version of the software. The company has raised over $30 million dollars after the inception of Automattic, which was used by several sites.
4. Romero Bryan:
Romero Bryan is a famous designer who started designing clothes at the age of 13 and started his clothing line which went on to become a huge success. He has designed for some of the most famous people including Beyonce, Victoria Beckham, Cameron Diaz, Usher and many more. He came into the limelight after designing a dress for actress Samantha Mumba for the Brit Awards. The red carpet head-turner landed his design on magazines like Vogue and Elle, making him famous. Romero’s growing empire is not just limited to U.K but has landed him fashion jobs in U.S.A too, and he is expected to reach great heights in the fashion world.
5. Fraser Doherty:
This Scottish entrepreneur started his business with something new and weird too. While the world was losing its head over teen web designers, Fraser went old-school. Fraser Doherty built his business empire by making jams at a tender age of 14 and by the time he dropped out of school i.e. when he was 16 he was working full time on his jam business “SuperJam”, which is beginning to be a household name in the West. A mouth-wateringly delicious jam made with the help of Granny’s recipe is on the verge of becoming an empire in the nourishment business.
6. Christian Owens:
Owens made his first million when he was 16. He had his PC, and he had taught himself web designing at a young age. At the age of 14, he had already started his designing company. Motivated by Jobs, founder of Mac, Owens has become the founder of Mac Bundle Box. Christian is now the founder and director of Branchr Advertising.
7. Sanjay Kumaran and Shravan Kumaran:
Sanjay and his brother Shravan Kumaran are the CEO and president respectively of their gaming corporation, GoDimensions. Shavran was 12 and his brother, 10 when they developed four apps for the Apple Store, which have been downloaded several times. Still studying they are already on the verge of becoming teenage millionaires.
These teenagers have made the world think, “how in God’s name did they pull it off?” and now are revelling in their awesomeness. So get off your bed and put that idea you had in your mind for so long to good use no matter how stupid. Come on, a guy made an empire out of his grandmother’s jam recipes, you can do it too. There are 24 hours in a day, if they can manage, so can you. Good luck.