William Zhou is cofounder and CEO of Chalk.com. Before the age of 23, Zhou had started and sold a business, and created an education software company—Chalk.com. Chalk.com is a “Microsoft Office for teachers.” Once when Zhou went to visit some of his old high school teachers, he learned of the struggles that the teachers deal with each day– having to organize lesson plans, deal with attendance, and grade papers, tests, and homework, not to mention deal with their superiors and parents of the students. Therefore, Zhou promised to help them out with this issue. Chalk.com is a source that allows teachers to store all of their work. They can organize lesson plans, tests, quizzes, homework, attendance, etc. Today, Chalk.com is used in over 20,000 schools. It helps both teachers and students handle the stress of school.

Blake Ross is the co-creator of Mozilla Firefox. When Blake Ross was only 15 years old, he moved to California for an internship with Netscape, a web browser. This company was an open source for Blake, providing a community that encouraged the creation of software. However, Blake disliked the unfriendliness of the Netscape Browser. Only a few years later, Blake and some of his colleagues started working on a new and improved version of Netscape. They strived for simplicity, stability, and speed. This version, “Phoenix”, was launched in November of 2004, and then they soon partnered up with Dave Hyatt who had his own program. The named changed to “Mozilla Firefox.” Firefox was soon downloaded by millions of users. This was partially due to the fall of Netscape and the lack of innovation from Microsoft.

Blake is a great role model for fellow millennial entrepreneurs because his life demonstrates that one does not become an entrepreneur overnight with an instantly famous innovation. After Netscape and the model of Phoenix hadn’t worked out, Blake had to pivot his idea several times until he finally came up with Firefox, and even then he continued to pivot. Blake also shows that children are capable of a lot. At 10 years old, he programmed web pages. At 15, he had an internship with a web browser. At 17, he co-created Firefox. No one should underestimate youth. Mozilla Firefox is certainly not as popular as Google Chrome, but Blake was still able to become a millionaire, with the net worth of about $150 million as of 2016. Clearly some people still prefer Firefox over other browsers.

When Catherine Cook was fifteen and her brother, David Cook, was sixteen, they came up with myYearbook. After being new students to Montgomery High School, David and Catherine realized the intimidating challenge for students to make new friends. They found the current yearbook to be no help in finding new people. Therefore, they invented a digital yearbook. This is a social media website where students can get together and connect. There are ice-breaker games and quiz games. myYearbook has grown to be one of the most used teen website in the world, with over 70 million users. Catherine eventually sold the business for $100 million. Today there are over eighty employees working for myYearbook. However, Catherine continues to be very active on the site. She is the first friend of every member.

The Cooks were very insightful. They saw a problem, and came up with a solution that seemed so simple, yet no one had thought of. Many parents don’t want their children on Facebook or Twitter, so this provides a family-friendly way for youth to connect online and make friends. Technology and social medias have grown to have such influence over youth, and this website provides an efficient way for middle and high school students to connect and have healthy influences.

At the age of 12, Kavita Shukla visited her grandmother in India. After mistakenly drinking some tap water, Kavita’s grandmother gave her some homebrewed spice tea, which helped prevent the effects of the unsanitary water. Kavita was fascinated with this practice and wanted to recreate the benefits. After years of playing around with several ideas, Kavita came up with the idea of infusing the spices into paper. Fenugreen was created—a company that creates spice infused FreshPaper. FreshPaper is paper that keeps food fresh by preventing bacterial and fungal growth, like a natural preservative.

Fenugreen is a social enterprise. With the bold mission of “Fresh for All,” Fenugreen not only seeks to provide the paper to groups like food banks and farmers, but those who need it most. On the Fenugreen website, it explains that there are 1.6 billion people in the world living without refrigeration. Kavita strives to provide fresh, healthy food. But they don’t stop there: “We’re devoted to not only bringing FreshPaper to many, but also to demonstrating through our actions and our reach that it is possible to build a sustainable social enterprise around a simple, powerful idea. ”

Kavita is truly a millennial entrepreneur. At the remarkably young age of twelve, Kavita had an idea and pursued it. Although it took many tries to come up with the final solution, Kavita sought to innovate a product that not only helped her succeed, but made a serious difference in the lives of people across the world.

For Morgan Newman, Jeff Avallon, and John Goshen, there was a problem in the world of business and corporations. There was no way for coworkers to work together and come up with creations through drawings and visuals. Many groups have dry erase boards, but not all offices have them. They fixed this problem in 2008 with IdeaPaint. IdeaPaint is a company that takes transforms regular office walls into interactive surfaces. They created a premium dry erase paint that converts any smooth surface into an erasable surface. This paint leads workers to greater collaboration and therefore, higher productivity. For many organizations, like PayPal, the workers would have many innovative ideas to share with each other, but no easy way to share. Then they were exposed to IdeaPaint which transformed the way they developed their products. Each individual worker has a testimony of how IdeaPaint has changed their work experience. Being able to visualize an idea is crucial to understanding and guiding a plan. IdeaPaint is one of the elements that allow the process of PayPal to continue.

Each kit of IdeaPaint comes with a THIS can to mix into THAT can, recommended roller, stir stick, can opener, HELP guide, and a Wet Paint sign. There have been over 150,000 installations of IdeaPaint in over 45 countries, with 100-250 employees and with a revenue between $25 million and $50 million. This innovation has spread all over world and is continuing to thrive today. It is evident that Newman, Avallon, and Goshen all saw a problem and strived to fix it. However, corporations are not the only appropriate audiences for IdeaPaint. Schools that may not have the funds to buy all of their classrooms dry erase boards could simply buy IdeaPaint and have the same results. The opportunities for the three young men are endless.

Check out their website: http://www.ideapaint.com/lp/ngmkra/

There are few jobs available for fourteen and fifteen year olds today, so many girls become babysitters.  For Noa Mintz, she took this a bit further.  When she was in only 7^th grade, Noa Mintz began “Nannies by Noa,” a full-service child care agency that matches up nannies and babysitters with the families of New York and the Hamptons.  Mintz began the organization when her mother was tired of all their babysitters, not being able to find the right one.  This inspired Mintz to explore the possibility of finding the perfect nanny for every family.  She sought to find committed, “New York savvy” nannies.  After she helped out a few friends, word started to spread, and with the help of her father on the financial side, Mintz’s business soon became a hit, now serving almost 200 clients today.  One of the reasons this group thrives is its thorough process of finding that “perfect” nanny, which includes an application, a resume, an in-person and phone interview with a trained nanny, a reference, and a background check.  This has raised the expectations for the nannies, something that comforts prospective clients. Right before entering high school, Mintz hired Allison Johnson as CEO to overseer the day to day operations. Johnson, 26, works in an office building in Midtown Manhattan while Mintz attends school like any other 16-year-old.

The success that came from this young entrepreneur was due to her determination to fix a simple problem. From her own personal experience, she saw the problem, established a solution, and went from there. Her interest in finding a specific type of nanny for every family was an imaginative plan to take the pressure and stress off the families and instead, give them the perfect caregivers. Today, the importance of customer service is key to success in the business world. Mintz understands this and continues to thrive under the guidance of entrepreneurial principles.

For her website, check out http://www.nanniesbynoa.com/

For an interview with her, check out https://youtu.be/YDZsbAnPZU4