Youth is oftentimes seen as a barrier to business. Lack of school knowledge and just general life experience will lead many to think that someone as young as eighth grade Brendan Cox just would not be able to run a truly successful business. However, Brendan was here to prove them all wrong. Now a 19-year-old Entrepreneur with over 10 businesses and a net worth in the six figures Brendan stands as one of the leading minds in young entrepreneurship. He believes that a successful business doesn’t have to be necessarily groundbreaking.

One of his first ventures involved watching videos online to teach himself how to operate Adobe Photoshop. He then took this skill and applied it to designing phone cases and brought himself over 50k in revenue. And in the midst of all this phone case design, many larger companies reached out to him to do their graphic design work for them. Simply a skill Brendan picked up watching online videos gave him his own company and made him the graphic designer for three others.

And while many might say Brendan was an unlikely statistic, and that he got “lucky”, luck was truly the furthest thing from his success. He experienced many failures from which he learned, and while many 19-year-olds are just beginning to contemplate their first business idea Brendan already has the experience of ten of them under his belt.  To put it simply age and experience are rarely a factor in success. Brendan had neither and has been picking his up along the way, and in his new book “Strictly Business” he encourages you to do the same in your entrepreneurship journey. There is no perfect time and there is no perfect place, regardless of the situation you have to work to bring yourself success.

Read more at:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisoncoleman/2020/03/20/how-this-teenage-serial-entrepreneur-became-hopelessly-addicted-to-entrepreneurship-in-seventh-grade/?sh=6c3a1d4a6684

“Social connection is a core human need.” That was and still is the central belief that Kavin Mittal used to guide his business decisions. While still in college Kavin took notice of the launch of the iPhone. Yes, this was indeed a groundbreaking piece of hardware, but what Kavin took special notice of was the software. While still at an early stage of development, iPhone was forming a giant interconnected web of applications (apps) for its phone. As people discovered newer, quicker, and easier ways to get in touch with one another the core foundation of Kavin’s belief, the need for social connection, was only strengthened.

Kavin responded to this leap in software by launching the app “Movies Now” which became apple’s very first ticketing app. And with his newfound success, Kavin did something that every entrepreneur has to do multiple (if not many times) in their life – make a hard decision. Kavin decided to abandon the family business that was being run by his father and twin brother and instead focused on a much more risky endeavor of creating his own software for these new devices.

This leap of faith led to monumental success as Kavin’s current valuation of his company sits at approximately 1.4 billion dollars. While many may have looked at Kavin’s decision to launch a software company during a time when phones were just barely catching on, and scoffed. Kavin took it all in stride and rose to be one of the most successful young entrepreneurs India has ever seen.

Alright, so let us be honest, most of us at some point in our lives have thought how cool it would be to make money online simply filming videos, posting them, and getting views. I would even dare to say many of us have probably tried our hand at doing just this and have found, much to our dismay, there is a whole lot more to video success than simply pulling out a camera and filming. Mr. Beast, a 22-year-old professional Youtuber, found this out very early on, in his YouTube career.  Originally when he started his channel Mr. Beast was like so many of the already hundreds of established YouTubers: someone with a good personality, but no originality. He posted videos of himself reacting to funny clips, did some simple reviews, even tried to spice his reaction videos up by adding funny characters to the backgrounds of his videos. And because of his funny personality and video editing skills, these videos gained him a following. However, he quickly capped. There were hundreds of Youtubers just like Mr. Beast posting the same videos, same style of videos, and same content and this simply kept Mr. beast from being able to grow past a certain point.  Once Mr. Beast’s channel had really reached its peak growth with the style of videos he was posting, he realized something needed to change. He could not simply sit there reacting to clips and expect to get a following any larger than that of his competitors. In addition to that, the YouTube video algorithm is a vile creature, and regardless of the following would simply mix Mr. Beast’s videos in with the hundreds of other posted reaction videos. And that is when Mr. Beast had to pivot, he tried something entirely different, something entirely new to the YouTube platform. Spending money. Each video brings in a certain amount of Advertisement revenue, and rather than keep that entirely for himself, Mr. Beast would reinvest it into the next video to do something entirely ridiculous. Over the years Mr. Beast has raced Lamborghinis simply for a giveaway, bought an entire house just with pennies, bought entire private islands simply to play hide and seek, and that is barely tipping the iceberg. And not only does he do these absurd videos, but many times also he does them for a good cause tapping into his customer’s (aka viewers) sense of emotion as they watch. The house he bought with pennies went to one of his employee’s fathers in need of a home, the Lamborghini went to the man who needed a car, and in fact, it is estimated during his time on YouTube Mr. Beast has simply given away over 10mil dollars to charitable causes. Mr. Beast, a Youtuber Philanthropist who put a new spin on a simple YouTube video and made it a 20 min clip of pure entertainment.

“285 million people worldwide are blind or visually impaired. Nearly 5% of the world’s population – or 466 million people have disabling hearing loss.”

By stating this staggering statistic, a 17-year-old entrepreneur, Richard Black, begins introducing us to his groundbreaking technology known as “Halfcode.” Halfcode combines the functionality of glasses and the latest discoveries in A.I. technology to create what Black likes to call “A.I. for good.” Halfcode is essentially a wearable cellphone, however, not just an ordinary cellphone that is designed to place calls and look at the latest Instagram posts. Instead, Halfcode uses bone conduction, an HD camera, and hepatic vibration within the glasses to help bring both vision and auditory impaired individuals back to a normal, independent lifestyle.

Halfcode states a simple mission of “utilizing artificial intelligence as a means to augment our own intelligence.” Black does this by combining the power of human-like AI with the sleek, 55 gram, Halfcode glasses to provide users the ability to watch and take videos, correct hearing loss or single-sided deafness, connect with actual live assist individuals through the glasses by using the built-in microphones and noise-canceling technology; all while still being able to access all your Halfcode data on any Android or Apple device.

While Halfcode has already released its current glasses to the consumer market, Black says due to the nature of A.I. research, his company is constantly evolving and users can expect to see many editions to the product in the near future. Black refuses to let the massive hurdles of creating technology that possesses human-like learning stop him. He says, “when we combine machine learning and memory with human problem solving – together, we can create real change.” And real change he is creating, while Halfcode sits at just over a million in worth, Black reinvests almost all his total profit back into the company to continue its growth and produce new products. In fact, Black announced that during Q2 of 2020 he expects his company to release an AI-powered app to help teach kids and teens the elements of gun safety through creating an individually custom-made teaching plan on their cell phones.

To say the least, it is extremely exciting to see this new technology hitting the field, and taking a close look at Richard Black reveals an avid entrepreneur who is taking his passion for technology and turning it into an impact on the world. This 17-year-old businessman is a true example of how one single individual can take his God-given gifts and make an impact for good.

Richard Black can be found by following his website here:

https://halfcode.com/