For most 14-year-olds, starting a business is not on the forefront of your mind. They are normally thinking about freshman year of high school and sports. Not even Fraser Doherty realized how his culinary hobby could turn into a real business. Fraser had grown up in his Grandmother’s Scottish kitchen making a variety of dishes but his specialty became jams. Eventually, he created a recipe of making jam with only fruit. This unique method of making all-natural jam led him to seeing the potential of such a product in the food marketplace. What started out as a small in-home jam selling business to a few friends grew to the point where Doherty dropped out of school to take on this venture. He rented out a small factory a few days every month to fulfill orders. The differentiation potential of pure fruit jam attracted quite a lot of attention. Not only was this a unique recipe, but the narrative surrounding this young culinary entrepreneur assisted him in his journey of scaling his company.

One of Fraser Doherty’s main struggles was the lack of capital that was necessary for branding and manufacturing the jam. He was just a young kid who dropped out of school to make jams. In the end, he was able to convince a design firm to create a the SuperJam brand fairly inexpensive. At the same time, he traveled around the country visiting factories before one finally saw the potential and agreed to produce the jam. This first major step allowed for rapid scaling as the orders continued to pour in. He continued to pursue SuperJam with his entrepreneurial spirit and in 2007, his jam had a major breakthrough.

In 2007, Doherty presented his jam brand to Waitrose & Partners, a supermarket in England. Impressed with his brand, they accepted his jams into their stores and Fraser Doherty became the youngest supplier of goods to supermarkets in the UK. From here, SuperJam spread to over 184 stores and continues to spread across Europe. Fraser Doherty’s story shows that a hobby like making jams in your grandmother’s kitchen can turn into a successful entrepreneurial venture with enough effort and strategy.

The music industry used to be an extremely difficult industry to enter. Any artist  who wanted to be anything used to need a level of exposure before even getting a record deal or being on the radio which were the main methods of people listening to music. However, as the technology as advanced throughout the years, it has become simpler to publish songs. Through the introduction of Sound Cloud and Spotify, anyone who has a computer can record and publish any song.  This entry barrier has largely been negated, but it is still a saturated industry. Arch Ward once said, “The toughest part of getting to the top of the ladder, is getting through the crowd at the bottom.” It is this very problem that is the greatest barrier when becoming a known artist. This is where Cole Bennett comes in.

In 2013, A highschool kid named Cole Bennett started a blog named Lyrical Lemonade. The contents of this blog were based around music, specifically connecting and promoting rappers within the Chicago region. As it gained traction he began creating smaller music videos feature these same lesser known artists. As his blog and videos continued to grow in popularity, he continued working with same lesser known rappers in and around Chicago as well as other cities. This was one of the major steps of the entrepreneurial spirit that Cole exhibited. Most people would continue to move up the ladder of artists until they reached the most well known. Cole, however, saw the need for exposure in this entry level and knew he could not only make a difference in these rappers’ lives but also find a market for his skills.

Lyrical Lemonade continued to grow and Cole Bennett became the main source through which now dubbed “Sound Cloud Rappers” have an opportunity to be noticed. Lyrical Lemonade, specifically its music videos became a major source of recognition for artists who had very little of it. Cole Bennett had the entrepreneurial prowess to identify the need of the lack of recognition for smaller rappers in and around Chicago. However, his genius was recognizing when to stay in that sector of the industry. While his platform did allow him to create videos for some very famous rappers, he stayed within his niche and continued to perfect his craft of rapper recognition.

Some people are simply born with a desire and knack for entrepreneurship. Timothy Armoo was one of those people. He was the chief editor writer for his school newspaper in middle school. At 17 he set up a public speaking competition and also developed an index that used adult site viewing numbers to predict economic factors. During this same time, Timothy owned his first company, EntrepreneurExpress.

This company was his first taste of the entrepreneurial world and marketing. After selling this company 11 months later, Timothy Armoo earned a Computer Programming degree at the University of Warwick. This quickly led to being in the startup phases of two additional app creating companies. This was crucial to Armoo’s development of entrepreneurial skills in the beginning stages of companies. All of this early experience led to one major company: Fanbytes. When cofounding Fanbytes, Timothy Armoo combined his entrepreneurial spirit, experience in marketing, and his knowledge of the his own generation. This company is essential a marketing company specializing in creating a marketing strategy to connect with Generation Z.

With his knowledge of these areas and the help of his team, Armoo was able to create rapid growth. In 18 months, Fanbytes was able to utilize a Snapchat influencer strategy that attracted customers like Apple Music, Universal, and Warner Bros. Now at 24, Timothy Armoo is the CEO of Fanbytes which has provided its marketing skills and techniques to Paramount Network, McDonald’s, and the UK Goverment among many others. From a young age, Timothy was able to hone his skills as an entrepreneur and experience this fascinating field much earlier than most. And Fanbytes success can be largely attributed to this early involvment.