Paula Fry is a business woman who believes that hard work is the key to success. After 15 years working as a currency trader in an investment bank, she decided to use her savings to start a vintage and “pre-loved” fashion boutique where others could come and sell old items or exchange them for something else, like a high end thrift store. After two years of non-stop work she realized that all of her efforts were still falling short to bring in the amount of clientele she desired. One night, while surfing the web, she found a vintage boutique online store that she had never heard of before! It was in that moment that she realized there needed to be a site for people to find stores and stylists near them. She knew this market was huge, but connecting people to it was the problem. This is where the idea for Fashionseeker was born.

Fashionseeker is a fashion portal for independent fashion businesses in the UK. It aims to be the definitive site for fashion shoppers who want to support independent fashion businesses and find unusual and up and coming brands. Through use of Social Media and networking, Paula was able to make this a success through taking the interests of small business owners into account and not charging commission for the use of this site. She connected customers to stylists and stores that best suited them and in doing so entered a space that had never been on the market.

Paula’s motto is that problems are always opportunities in disguise. She took the challenge of connecting customers to fashion stores because she knew the challenges on both sides. When she was working in an investment bank she felt the pang of spending way too much on designer handbags, and when she managed her own botique she felt the hardship of not being able to always reach or connect to her target market. Fashionseeker connected these two gaps and made a way for the independent fashion businesses to succeed simply by giving them an outlet to market their business to the right clientele.

Louis Braille invented braille and published the first braille book for the blind when he was only 12 years old!

Born in 1809, Louis Braille became blind when he was 3 years old. Playing in his fathers harness workshop, he slid a sharp tool across his eye and, after infection spread, became blind in both eyes. Louis was a determined young boy and continued to go to school for a while, listening to the teacher and doing his best to learn. However, this was not enough. He received a scholarship to the Royal Institution for Blind Youth in Paris when he was 10, but still he struggled, along with the other students, because the teacher would only talk at them and the interactive learning was minimal.

In 1821 a former soldier visited the school and shared his invention of “night writing” which was a 12 dot code that let soldiers share top secret information on the battlefield without speaking. This code was difficult for many of the soldiers to understand, but Louis instantly picked it up. Louis slimmed out the system by the time he was 15, making it into 6 dots arranged in different ways. He published the first braille book in 1829 and continued working on the system to add symbols for numbers and music as well!

Braille was not taught until after Louis death, even though he taught at the Royal Institute for many years. He died in 1852, and braille was not fully discovered until 1868 by a group of British men now known as the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Now, practically every country uses braille as a universal written language for the blind.

Even at the age of 12, Louis proved that with the right motivation, you can do incredible things no matter what obstacles you face.

Kiip’s founder Brian Wong started experimenting with graphic design in his early middle school years. He skipped 4 years at his school in Vancouver and graduated from the University of British Columbia at the age of 18. He soon moved to California, where he went to work as a business development associate for Digg.

In 2010, Wong was laid off when Digg cut its staff by 10%. In his time off, he decided to take a trip to explore Southeast Asia. This is where his entrepreneurial idea began. On his journey there, he noticed the satisfaction people felt when reaching new highs in mobile games. Noticing and contemplating this sparked his idea for Kiip.

Wong shared his observations with an investor from True Ventures who, sharing it with his partners, helped him create a way for brands to reward app users for “achievement moments”.

Today, Kiip has $15 million in funding and more than 40 people working in San Francisco.

“Kiip has partnerships with 900 apps and reaches about 55 million devices monthly in the United States,” says Wong.

I apreciated Kiips outlook on his idea because he looked at how people responded to a common feature of apps, and made it into a brand for millions of user to benefit from. His study of and love for design helped him to work his app features into a desirable style that would attract more users.

Wong’s advice for young entrepreneurs: “There’s always going to be gobbles of cash available for great products with great potential, so keep in mind the short term and long term considerations.”

http://smallbusiness.foxbusiness.com/entrepreneurs/2013/03/27/teenager-turned-millionaire-success-stories/

Leanna Archer was 9 years old when she began bottling and selling her great-grandmother’s secret recipe of hair pomade to friends and family. The hair pomade expanded into a line of all-natural hair products including a variety of hair cleansers, conditioners and treatments. Leanna is now 17 and serves as the CEO of her company. She has 6 locations, one of which is in France. Along with working to improve her products and make new ones, she designs the website and filters online orders. She has been recognized by prominent business publications like Forbes and Success Magazine and was selected as a youth Honoree recipient of the 2013 McDonald’s 365 Black Award in New Orleans.

With a proceed of the profits she started the Leanna Archer Education Foundation to help build schools and safe learning environments for underprivileged children in Haiti. One of the things that’s so unique about Leanna is her success at such a young age. She combined her passion for health and beauty to make a product that would help thousands. Leanna is a true Entrepreneur that has defied the odds of many young entrepreneurs today. Her entrepreneurial spirit and business inclined mind has allowed her to take initiative in new opportunities, while her youth grants her the ability to inspire and motivate the next generation of entrepreneurs. Leanna has shown that running a business at such a young age is not only possible, but profitable. In doing so, she has inspired may teens to do the same and keep working at their ideas even when they fail.

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5051-young-entrepreneurs.html#sthash.pqPqAfFq.dpuf

Philip Hartman, a 15 year old entrepreneur from Colorado has loved building things since he was 8 years old experimenting with slingshots and arrows. He won the 2008 Young Inventor of the Year award with a new system for fusing optical fibers that is cheap, more efficient, and more dependable. He also created the Steam Viper which is a device that emits steam onto a windshield and is capable of defrosting a frost-covered windshield in about 15 seconds. With all his success you’d think Philip spent all his time studying and experimenting but he says that he has many different sections of his life, inventing is just one of them. He plays tennis and banjo, in those groups his friends don’t even know of his entrepreneurial success. Inventing to him is a passion and its something he’s tested and failed at many times. A quote from one of his interviews says that “If you’re just doing it for the money, then it doesn’t really work. You won’t end up being successful… Do what you love.” This demonstrates how being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle more than a career.

It’s always great to hear about kids that try to be healthy at a young age, but it’s even better to hear of kids wanting to help others be healthy. Carter Kostler, a 15-year-old entrepreneur takes his idea to shark tank. Carter designed a water bottle that infuses fresh fruit into drinking water to add natural flavor. The Define Bottle was created with the purpose “to get an entire generation of children off of soda one school district at a time”. The amazing thing about Carter is not just his great idea of a new type of water bottle, but his identification of a problem and his specified solution to help solve it. He cares about health not only for himself but for his friends and kids across America. This is the type of idea that is successful, the one that’s focus is on the people whose needs are being met and how best that can be accomplished.