Teenage Entrepreneurs

Most entrepreneurs wait until after college to start their companies. Others, like Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, simply drop out. The obstacles, uncertainty and gigantic investment of time involved are far easier to contend with in adulthood than beforehand. Still, not everyone has the patience to wait that long. History is filled with teenage entrepreneurs who started with nothing (or close to nothing) and wound up succeeding beyond anyone's wildest dreams. What they lacked in experience or capital, they made up for with passion, resourcefulness and enthusiasm.

Andrey Ternovskiy

(Jewgenij Kondakow)

Some of the best business ideas arise from things that entrepreneurs want to use themselves. Such was the case with Chatroulette, the wildly popular Internet chat service founded by seventeen year old Andrey Ternovskiy. According to the New York Times, the Russian teenager came up with the idea for Chatroulette (which creates one-on-one webcam chats between randomly chosen strangers) while video chatting with his friends on Skype. Today, Chatroulette is said to have over 1.5 million users, with 20,000-35,000 people participating at any given time. And while Ternovskiy took a $10,000 investment from relatives, this relatively modest sum forced him to write code that ran as efficiently as possible. Furthermore, Ternovskiy quickly repaid the $10,000 using little more than four advertising links at the bottom of Chatroulette.com.

Jasmine Lawrence

(colinmlenton)

Jasmine Lawrence got an even earlier entrepreneurial start than Andrey Ternovskiy. According to MSNBC, Lawrence went to a summer camp that taught business skills to youngsters - when she was thirteen. That same year, Eden Body Works was born with a $2,000 investment from Lawrence's mother (who, ironically, now works for her daughter and assists with day to day operations.) Using the $2,000 and some savings from weekly allowances, Lawrence built Eden Body Works into a growing hair and beauty empire. As of 2008, MSNBC reported that the company already had thirty products on store shelves and had inked a lucrative distribution deal with Wal-Mart to take the brand worldwide. Jasmine projected annual profits of $1 million, and claims to already reinvest most of her profits right back into the company (which she still runs out of her mother's basement.) Amidst all this, Jasmine still manages to get straight A's and maintain membership in the National Honors Society.

Warren Buffett

(bunnicula)

Many are unaware that investing titan Warren Buffett got his financial start early in childhood. Before the age of thirteen, Buffett tried his hand at money-making ventures that included door to door sales of magazines, newspapers, Coca-Cola and chewing gum. As the BBC reports, Buffett successfully claimed a $35 tax deduction for his bicycle and wristwatch in connection with his paper route on a 1944 income tax return. Buffett also got his feet wet with investing at the extraordinarily young age of ten, buying shares of Cities Service following a visit to the New York Stock Exchange. On the strength of the aforementioned money-making ventures, Buffett bought forty acres of Nebraska farmland for $1,200 and leased it to a tenant farmer - while he was wrapping up his freshman year of high school, according to Salon. By the time he graduated from Columbia Business School, Buffett is said to have amassed over $90,000 in 2009 dollars.

Danny Ouyang

(Entrepreneur)

At just twelve years old, Danny Ouyang began to teach himself the basics of HTML and web design. And while it began as just a hobby, it became clear just a few years later that there was a market for Ouyang's abilities when he sold his first website. By 2008, Ouyang was making over $6,500 per month as head of Kinkarso Tech, a full-service web firm that profits by consulting for other businesses on search engine optimization techniques and by flipping websites for more than they were originally worth. According to Entrepreneur.com, Ouyang managed to juggle all of this while simultaneously "playing basketball, piano and guitar in high school." Now eighteen, Ouyang continues to run Kinkarso Tech, remains in business and appears to be thriving.

Catherine Cook

(NY Daily News)

While Warren Buffett once vowed to be a millionaire by age 35, Catherine Cook beat him to the punch by accomplishing the hallowed feat by eighteen. As the founder of MyYearbook.com, the New Jersey native is poised to make the website the "largest teen media space on the Web", according to the NY Daily News. As of August 2008, MyYearbook boasted ten million users (most under 18) and "eight-figure ad sales", which propelled the company to a $13 million venture capital infusion. Like Chatroulette, MyYearbook.com emerged out of Cook's personal belief that the traditional high-school yearbook was in dire need of an upgrade. So she pitched the idea to her business-savvy older brother, who promptly invested the first $250,000 (long since repaid) and the company was off to the races.

Kyle Jourdan

(Sroown)

Fifteen year old Kyle Jourdan spotted a market opportunity in the early days of the iPhone, when it was restricted only to AT&T's wireless service. According to USA Today, Jourdan purchased a number of licenses permitting him to use an unlocked (usable on any phone service) iPhone. These licenses were then sold on eBay to buyers around the world who wanted to use the popular phone on their non-AT&T network of choice. In total, Jourdan claims to have sold licenses to people in over 150 countries. Eventually, Jourdan stepped up to selling actual unlocked iPhones on his personal website. And while unlocking software is now freely available, Jourdan (now seventeen) is said to have earned enough money to open a restaurant chain at some point in the future.

Fraser Doherty

(tutor2u)

Fraser Doherty was just fourteen when he created and sold his first bottles of jam. Using only the fruit and sugar he had purchased for $5, Doherty parlayed a family recipe into the basis of a successful international business that won him College Entrepreneur of the Year honors in 2008. As Forbes explains, the Scotland native left school by age sixteen to work full-time on producing SuperJam, as his creation ultimately came to be known. By early 2007, Doherty received an order from high-end U.K. supermarket Waitrose, and by 2008, the company surpassed the million dollar mark in sales.