David Karp is the founder and CEO of Tumblr, a popular micro-blogging platform.

Following in the trend of young, financially successful, tech geniuses such as Mark Zucerkberg, David Karp started Tumblr when he was only 21.

Growing up in New York, he taught himself the programming language HTML at age 11. He started his working career at age 15 at an animation studio, and quickly progressed in the business world. He managed to secure funding to start building a blogging site in 2006, and launched Tumblr in 2007.

Within 5 years, Tumblr hosted more than 70 million blogs and employed about 100 people. Karp’s net worth reached nearly $200 million. He eventually sold his company to Yahoo for $1.1 billion.

They key to success was probably that he created his product right when blogging was first gaining its popularity. Blogging was a much bigger part of online life in the late 2000s and early 2010s than it is now, as people’s interest in text has waned and their interest in visuals has waxed. Karp struck at the perfect time to capitalize on the temporary rise of blogging, and sold his company before it started to lose value in later years. His foresight both in its founding and its sale ensured its success.

What can we learn from his experience? Some sort of silly message such as “have foresight” obviously does not help anyone. However, it is true that any good leader or entrepreneur must have superior foresight. How anyone is supposed to gain foresight I couldn’t say, but that, dear reader, rests on you.

Everyone has heard of Mark Zuckerberg.

At age 19, Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook. Within 4 years, he was the youngest self made billionaire in the world. As of this moment, his net worth is estimated at a low of $120 billion.

How did he do it? You could say he is a genius, and undeniably so. A self-taught computer programmer, he started Facebook from his Harvard dorm with just the equipment he had on hand and a few friends. He then dropped out of Harvard to pursue his business, and this was obviously the right decision. It’s clear Harvard had little to teach the man.

Maybe you could say he was the right man in the right place at the right time, and this is also true. He was well positioned as a tech savvy teenager to take advantage of the technological revolution, which started with the computer and soon reached a new peak with the smartphone. Facebook was the perfect app to take advantage of the rapid spread of computerization.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Mark Zuckerberg might be the poster boy of the 21st century version of the American dream. A young, brilliant, tech-entrepreneur starts a killer app and makes billions in a few years. It’s what everyone should aspire to be, right?

Certainly, Zuckerberg succeeded by the world’s definition of success. And there is no reason not to take inspiration from his self-taught genius, hard work, and striving for excellence. But I would question whether his product, Facebook, was of ultimate good to the world. Social media claims to bring greater connection to the world, but I see a world of great disconnection around me. Maybe this has nothing to do with Facebook, but it’s hard to claim that even if Facebook hasn’t caused greater disconnection that it has caused greater connection.

Of course I could be wrong. If there is one lesson to be learned from Zuckerberg’s youthful success story, it’s that what some people call success might just be failure, or at least mediocrity. Zuckerberg has more money than he could ever use, but I don’t really see how this is an amazingly valuable thing. Money is just money.

A more successful young entrepreneur you could not find, but is Zuckerberg ultimately worth imitating? You decide.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197850

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg#College_years

https://www.marketing91.com/top-young-entrepreneurs/

Tired of everything being turned virtual? Think it’s ridiculous that Zooming someone is apparently mostly the same as “meeting” them in real life?

Catherine Cook is not for you!

When she was just 15, still engaged in the modern American meat grinder known as high school, Catherine decided to start a virtual yearbook advertised to fellow meat grinder victims. Her idea: MyYearbook.com. MyYearbook.com is a social media site specifically for high schoolers that provides a free online year book.

Teaming up with her two older brothers, Catherine Cook secured $250,000 of funding and successfully launched her yearbook company. Running off add-revenue, her success is mainly attributable to her niche market. She successfully competes with other major social media companies by targeting specifically the high school segment of the market.

Within a few years, Cook had secured an additional $4 million in funding from outside investors. Her company has expanded significantly and has received advertising from large companies.

What is the lesson to be learned? You don’t need to target a large audience to make a good bit of money. A niche audience is good enough if your product is. And hers was.

https://www.forbes.com/2008/02/09/teen-millionaires-startups-ent-cook-cx-ml_0211cook.html?sh=ec9ecd47cd22

https://www.investopedia.com/10-successful-young-entrepreneurs-4773310

Fraser Doherty started a SuperJam when he was just fourteen.

He started as just an ordinary teenager with an unusual hobby: jam making. Using a recipe he got from his grandmother, he made jam in his kitchen just for fun. Evidently, many people liked his jam, as he began to sell it. Before long, the demand for his jam outgrew his capacity to make it in a small kitchen. He found a factory willing to produce his jam. Through the increased production capabilities of the factory, Fraser managed to massively expand his product.

At the age of sixteen, he reached the point where he could pitch his product to a major British supermarket: Waitrose. SuperJam has sold millions of jars of jam in thousands of super markets, making Fraser highly successful. He has been able to take his jam making success story and commercialize it through books and motivational speeches, allowing him to make even more money.

SuperJam’s product is jam made from 100% fruit. Not a complicated idea, Fraser actually attributes its success to its inherent simplicity. It’s easy to make and easy to advertise, and given the recent organic food craze, it’s easy to sell too.

Fraser speaks of many challenges he had to overcome in the startup process. He had to find a factory to produce his product, a company to supply him funding, and he had no basic knowledge of the supermarket industry. He mentions that a mentor was key to his eventual understanding of the business world. This is the key takeaway from his story. He would not have succeeded without a business mentor who understood the market he was entering. Everyone who is pursing business success should likewise find a business mentor.

https://www.fraserdoherty.com/pages/biography

https://www.workspace.co.uk/content-hub/entrepreneurs/q-a-fraser-doherty-superjam

https://www.investopedia.com/10-successful-young-entrepreneurs-4773310

What did you do when you were 13? I read books on my couch. Hart Main started a country wide candle business.

In 2010, Hart Main had a dream: get a $1200 bike, and pay for it out of pocket. Rather than go through the usual process of lawn mowing and other equally slow, equally odious tasks, he found a way out. His sister was selling candles for a school fundraiser. Like any good young boy, Hart thought these candles had weird, “girly” scents. He knew no self respecting lad would be caught dead sniffing such effeminate wax cylinders. There was only one way out: Man Can.

Man Can is a candle business, but this time, the candles are cool. Featuring scents like Campfire, Bacon, and Battleship, he created a candle that any man could be proud of. Since he knew glass jars are obviously un-manly, he also put them in cans to increase masculine appeal.

Unique to his business model, he also donates a portion of all his proceeds to Soup Kitchens in three different states. Perhaps because of this social benefit, or because of his age, his business took off. Hart now sells candles in all 50 states.

Hart’s innovation comes specifically because he addressed a gap in the market. Candles are nothing new, but they had come to be associated with female aesthetic pursuits. He showed that anyone can light glorified beehives on fire.

I am inspired by this young entrepreneur. Not because he radicalized his market; it was a small innovation. Not because he built a massive business; candles are no monumental market. But because he was so young, his case is particularly impressive. Once again I say, age is no limiter. As the verse says, do not let anyone look down on you because you are young, even if you’re just making candles.

https://www.timesreporter.com/article/20150720/NEWS/150729951

https://www.investopedia.com/10-successful-young-entrepreneurs-4773310

Cameron Johnson may just be the first millionaire high school graduate the world has ever seen. Starting his first business at age 9, Johnson went on an entrepreneurship spree, making and selling five separate businesses by age 19. “I was 15 years old and receiving checks between $300,000 and $400,000 per month,” says Johnson. By the time he graduated high school, he had a net worth of over $1 million.

His business model focuses on creating new businesses, establishing their value, and selling them off to other investors. As mentioned, he made five separate business ventures by the age of 19. He does not want to keep with an idea to make it something great, but rather to create anew.

Interestingly, Johnson does not make many new products. His main gift lies in taking other people’s products and marketing them. 3 of his 5 ventures were advertising companies, using online adds or even greeting cards.

Although it’s not clear what drives this superhuman entrepreneur, he makes a point of saying, “True prosperity isn’t something you take from the world: it’s something you share with the world.” Perhaps he simply wants to lift himself and the people around him through his spectacular ideas. Maybe he does it just for the thrill of the new idea. But no one can dispute – he is a genius, and he has made the world a better place.

Johnson may be an inspiration to us all, reminding us that you are never too young to build something amazing. He was only 9! But genius though he was, he mostly focused on selling other people’s products. He didn’t expect himself to invent the next lightbulb, airplane, or smartphone. He just did what he was good at, and never asked any permission.

https://www.forbes.com/2008/02/09/teen-millionaires-startups-ent-johnson-cx-ml_0211johnson.html?sh=21c2e8227eef

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