Jeremy Miller was a high school student from Indiana when his entrepreneurship journey started. He started his first company at the age of 16. “It was a skateboard and longboard manufacturing company, and I lost thousands of dollars in that first startup. After the closing of the venture and the last team meeting, I called my mentor and said, ‘Now what?'” Miller is a great example of how failure can drive innovation. He then discovered a different passion, marketing. He founded Inspired Blue Media, an advertising agency based in Indianapolis.

But Miller didn’t want to be just an entrepreneur, he also wanted to give back. So, he partnered with StartEdUp, a now global program designed to support innovators, educators and entrepreneurs in and out of the classroom. StartEdUp has gained a following from some of the top entrepreneurs in the field. A majority of the StartEdUp team are 19-year-old teenagers, and a majority of the team are the founder’s former students. This organization is working to help people in classrooms be entrepreneurs, and innovators. Daniel Pink states this about StartEdUp, “You’ve turned the classroom into an innovation factory.”

His failure is rather interesting because all of his start up capitol is solely generated by himself. His parents did not fund his business, and they did not get him out of his debt. This forced a young entrepreneur to learn a vital lesson on the importance of investing in good business ideas and what to do when things fail. The one thing about Miller that really strikes me is that he has a phrase he uses over and over. Embrace your alien. The idea is that young entrepreneurs might feel like aliens and that we should embrace that alien feeling.

Jeremy posing with the remain of his failed business.

How This Successful High School Entrepreneur Is Impacting Education At StartEdUp (forbes.com)