Born October 29th, 2001, Shubham Banerjee gained national attention after he started a company at the age of 12. Banerjee was like most other kids until he started his entrepreneur adventure. After asking one of his parents about how blind people read, then researching it, his interest for the topic grew. Eventually he decided to do something about it and help blind people.

Blind people read by feeling a language of raised dots, braille, on a surface. The only problem, that Banerjee realized, was getting this language printed out was not cheap or easy. So Banerjee decided to start the company Braigo. Braigo produces small machines, made from lego-like pieces, with added features so that they can print braille on a piece of paper. Then Banerjee sells these products at a significantly reduced price to help make the products accessible to as many people as possible.

Banerjee set a world record becoming the youngest CEO in the world (at the time). He was recognized on CNN, NBC, ABC, PBS, NPR, CBC, BBC, and Discovery for his entrepreneurship.  Surprisingly, Banerjee also received some major funding from Intel (amount is currently unknown).

I think Banerjee represents/is an entrepreneur for two particular reasons. The first reason is because he found something he was strongly passionate about then decided to do something about it. Most people end up just sitting around thinking and dreaming about ideas and ways to help others, but Banerjee got up and actually acted. The second reason is how smartly he handled the situation; Banerjee decided to make a self-sustainable business to help others. He received funding, went public about it, and didn’t quit (though his company launched up unnaturally quickly).

One thing to admire about Banerjee is just how young his started his business. He could’ve pushed it aside and said to himself just to wait until he’s all grown up. Instead he started young and was dedicated.

What started as a three-person team making t-shirts in a garage grew into a huge company of more than 500 employees across the US, Mexico, and Europe. In 2013, when Davis Siksnans was only 22 years old, he co-founded the business “Printful”. Printful is a print-on-demand drop shipping startup that makes it easy for anyone to sell custom print products online. It provides services including printing, packaging, shipping, and warehousing to help make launching your own e-commerce business as easy as possible. Their goal is to help aspiring entrepreneurs to sell their goods online by allowing them to focus on design, marketing, and sales instead of thinking about the “how” part.

Back in 2012, Siksnans and his team began an online store that offered posters with motivational quotes from successful entrepreneurs. They then wanted to expand this business and start selling apparel the same way they sold these posters. However, they realized there were no services that would do apparel print-on-demand with fast fulfillment and good quality. That’s when they realized the need for a service like Printful. Printful would become one of the world’s leading drop shipping companies.

Siksnans is very open about challenges on his road to success saying “The way I overcome my failures is – I learn from my mistakes and accept that failures are inevitable. Success very rarely comes with the first idea.” He also offers great advice to those wanting to start a business like he did. In a more recent interview, he offers this final piece of advice, “A good time to start is anytime, because a better one will never come. So just start now and see what happens.”