Top 10 Young Entrepreneur Success Stories

Bangalore: Entrepreneurship has no bar on age, but nevertheless you get surprised to see some youngsters making it big as entrepreneurs. In the age where these youngsters could have simply did the usual things like high school, college, hangout joints, video games or bike rides, they went ahead and founded companies, gave seminars, wrote books, and became inspiring figures for all aspiring entrepreneurs irrespective of age. Read on to know top 10 young entrepreneur success stories— their struggles and triumphs, as compiled by JuniorBiz.

10 Syed Balkhi, 21

Syed Balkhi used to get online at three o’clock in the morning to trade stones for a game called Neopets.

When he was 12, his cousin pointed out that he could do the same thing with domain names – all while pulling in a handsome profit. Soon he was developing websites, designing them, and running a paid domain name directory.

Along with a handful of college friends (Amanda Roberts, David Pegg, and Mohammed Karim), Syed has started a successful web service company called Uzzz Productions. His blog for WordPress beginners, WPBeginner, has been up since July 2009 and already attracts an incredible 145,000 unique visitors each month.

9 Farrhad Acidwalla, 18

His first step at entrepreneurship started with his borrowing $10 from his parents to buy his first domain name. He began building a web community devoted to aviation and aero-modeling. The website was a success; he sold it for a lot more money than his initial investment, and moved on with other similar ventures. Each took his achievement to another level and the appreciations left him humble. This motivated him to offer his work under the name of his company.

Farrhad has launched Rockstah Media, a cutting-edge company devoted to web development, marketing, advertisement, and branding. It is just over a year old but it has clients and a full fledged team of developers, designers and market strategists spread across the globe.

As the CEO and founder, Farrhad is behind the wheels of the company taking care of the clients and guiding the creative team to success.

8 King Sidharth, 20

King Sidharth is a multitalented youngster. He is a speaker, author, magazine publisher.

As an 11-year-old growing up in Northern India, King Sidharth and a few friends began organizing events and competitions for other children. They would make tickets and charge an entry fee, then award little prizes to whoever won. Sidharth’s first business was a big success.

Seven years later, King Sidharth got graduated from high school and he has already made a name for himself as one of India’s top young entrepreneurs. His primary work is in website development and design (see websites like MeditationRocks.us).

King is also a speaker on topics of entrepreneurship and spirituality. He calls himself the Outlaw Entrepreneur, because he refuses to follow a given pattern and says he’s going to reinvent the wheel. His vision of the wheel is unique

7 Arjun Rai, 20

Arjun Rai caught the entrepreneurial bug at the age of seven, selling knickknacks that he found around the house. Young Arjun set up shop to sell leftover wildflower necklaces after a wedding. He and a cousin put up a banner at his grandmother’s front gate, asking 25 cents.

TV shows like ‘The Oprah Show’ and ‘The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch’ inspired Arjun to take entrepreneurship to the next level. During the summer of 2009, he got a LinkedIn account (under the name Aaron Ray) and started connecting with other ambitious entrepreneurs, hoping to learn as much as possible about the art of entrepreneurship and business.

In 2010, Arjun became the COO of a quickly growing onlineadvertising company, but he soon set out to follow his own,unique vision. That vision is a brand-new venture called odysseyAds.

6 Sabirul Islam, 21

Sabirul Islam grew up in a crime-ridden borough of London, England. His eyes were opened to entrepreneurship by his cousin, who offered Sabirul a job at the age of 13. But when Sabirul was fired a few weeks later, he decided to take matters into his own hands. At 14, he gathered six of his friends and started Veyron Technology, a website design company. Sabirul made his first $1000 within the first two weeks.

In January of 2008, at age 17, Sabirul self-published his first book “The World at Your Feet”. It offers young people guidance and encouragement to turn their entrepreneurial vision into reality. The book sold 60,000 copies. Sabirul has also launched a board game (‘Teen-Trepreneur’), become a globe-trotting public speaker (over 600 speaking engagements), and started his own publishing company for aspiring teen authors.

5 Adora Svitak, 14

Adora started writing when she was four years old. She hasn’t stopped since. At six, Adora received a laptop computer from her mother, on which she quickly amassed a collection of hundreds of short stories and hundreds of thousands of words – typing at 70 words per minute.

At the age of seven, Adora achieved her dream of becoming a published author with the release of Flying Fingers: Master the Tools of Learning Through the Joy of Writing. The book featured several of Adora’s short stories, along with her writing tips, typing tips, and advice from her mother. At age 11, Adora published a second book, Dancing Fingers, with her older sister, Adrianna.

Adora at the age of 12 has transformed her writing success into speaking and teaching success. She has spoken at over 400 schools and presented at the annual TED conference. She has been featured on Good Morning America and on CNN.

4 Savannah Britt, 17

Savannah Britt was a published poet by the age of eight. By nine, she was hired as a paid reviewer of children’s books for The Kitchen Table News – a New Jersey newspaper with a readership of 70,000. But when that newspaper went under, Savannah was left unemployed at the tender age of 11.

She bootstraps herself and started her own publication – a magazine called Girlpez – making her the youngest magazine publisher in the world. The magazine features coverage of events, like concerts and fashion shows, along with interviews from the likes of Shwayze, Kevin Rudolf, and Dawn from Dannity Kane.

3 Philip Hartman, 17

Philip Hartman became an entrepreneur when he was eight-years-old. That’s when he started building slingshots that shot both BB’s and arrows.

When he was a home-schooled high school senior at the age of fifteen, Philip spent most of his time cultivating two somewhat more advanced entrepreneurial ventures. One was a new system for fusing optical fibers that is cheaper, more efficient, and more dependable – an invention for which Philip won the 2008 Young Inventor of the Year award.

The other was called Steam Viper. It was a device that emits steam onto a windshield and is capable of defrosting a frost-covered windshield in about 15 seconds.

2 Alex Fraiser, 18

In January 2009, at the age of 15, Alex Fraiser used his web design know-how to start Blogussion.com, a blog about blogging. As the year went on, Blogussion thrived – bursting not just with insightful articles but also with an ever-growing, increasingly enthusiastic community of subscribers.

In January 2010, Alex and his business partner, 24-year-old Seth Waite, launched their first product – a web theme modeled after Blogussion’s unique style – to immediate success. With an Alexa ranking under 20,000.

1 Mark Bao, 19

Mark Bao had his first encounter with entrepreneurship in the fifth grade. He used Visual Basic 6.0 to write a simple computer application that managed his homework assignments and helped him write school papers. Then he copied the program onto floppy discs and sold them to his friends.

His first start-up came in his first year of high school. Debateware.com was an event management system for debate organizations. Eventually, Mark and his business partner sold it to the largest debate organization in the United States.

Mark at the age of 17, a high school senior, launched 11 web-based companies (and sold three of them) along with three non-profit foundations.