[Business Development]
Smart Business: Teen Entrepreneurs
Hed: From Home Room to Board Room
Deck: The new economy has inspired a generation of teen-age entrepreneurs with its promise of
wealth and focus on technology they already understand.
Summary: Thanks to rapid changes in technology, more teens are shunning the soccer team or
cheerleading squad for their own enterprises.
Pull quote: "The media has opened up a lot of great examples and role models for younger
people. A lot of the companies that we look (at) to make money on the stock market have been
created by people in their teens and 20s." -- Jennifer Kushell, president, Young Entrepreneurs
Network
Four years ago, a plaintive letter arrived at the office of the world's richest man. It came from
Shaker Heights, Ohio, where a 13-year-old computer enthusiast was convinced he was Microsoft
material. The answer: write back when you're 15. Aaron Greenspan did. Then he wrote again at
16, before Microsoft finally rejected him outright.
By that time, however, Greenspan already decided not to leave his future to anybody else. At 15,
he had incorporated his own company, Think Computer. It grew rapidly simply by offering a
one-stop shop (Aaron Greenspan's bedroom) for solving computer hardware and software
problems. Today, 17-year-old Greenspan has 136 active clients and employs two other high
school students part time. The business has earned REVENUE OF $160,000 over two years, he
says.
Greenspan's extraordinary story is actually becoming quite common. In an age when the twentysomethings who started Dell Computer, Yahoo and Netscape have captured the nation's
imagination, even the high school set is answering the New Economy's call to glory and riches.
This is most evident in a surge of teen-piloted technology companies, but old-fashioned business
plans are also captivating the young.
Seven out of 10 teenagers want to start a business, and the majority would rather own a small
company than be a corporate manager, according to a 1999 study by the Kauffman Center for
Entrepreneurial Leadership. Although very little research is available, it's clear many of those
hopefuls are doing something about it, primarily in the technology field. "A couple of years ago,
you had a rush of kids into Web development companies," says Jennifer Kushell, author of The
Young Entrepreneur's Edge (Random House, 1999) and president of the Young Entrepreneurs
Network. "Where kids traditionally were running lemonade stands, they moved online."
Kushell, now 27, got her own start at age 13 by making and selling decorative T-shirts. She
dabbled in four other ventures over the next six years, she says, before founding the Young
Entrepreneurs Network in college.
The Idea
The concept for Evan and Elise MacMillan's business came from the intersection of the siblings'
interests: "Elise used to like to blow up things in the microwave, and I liked to play around on the
computer," says Evan, who oversees finance and technology for Chocolate Farm in Denver,
Colo.
Although Chocolate Farm doesn't overtly advertise its founders' youth, the company has
clearly benefited from the wave of publicity that Elise and Evan have attracted. Their story
has appeared in People, Teen and Working Woman magazines, among numerous other
publications.
The brother (15) and sister (12) sell whimsically named chocolates such as Mint Sheep Munch
and Pig in Mud, over the Internet, and have seen revenues grow 100 percent each quarter since
the business's inception two years ago, Evan says. The pair employs 12 part-timers for chocolate
production, and is actively seeking an acquisition or merger deal that will "help leverage the
amount of chocolate we're making." Yes, he really talks like that.
Chocolate Farm got its official start when Evan and Elise sold chocolate at a local bank's holiday
marketplace and caught the entrepreneurial bug. "I love the feeling of selling something and
making money," says Elise, who invents the treats.
Christopher Connor, of Brick, N.J., also found the Internet's promise too alluring to ignore. He's
on track to gross $100,000 from his Web-hosting operation by this spring, the end of its first year.
Rather than engage in time-intensive site design, Connor simply leases space on his servers to
companies that already have sites. "I just wanted to start some kind of Internet business," says
Connor, who just turned 15.
Dreams of grandeur may be the greatest thing the New Economy has given young people. "The
media has opened up a lot of great examples and role models for younger people," Kushell says.
"A lot of the companies that we look (at) to make money on the stock market have been created
by people in their teens and 20s."
Reality Bites
But what about school? It's not as hard as it sounds, insists Connor, whose company is called
Global Acquisitions. He hired his father, a postal employee, as part-time CFO; his older brother
also helps part time. Connor checks his e-mail and voice mail and returns sales and tech-support
calls after school.
Very little work is required after clients sign up through his Web site. Even that process is mostly
automated, Conner says, although he often has to walk customers through technical questions for
the first week after they publish their Web site. "To tell you the truth, it takes up less time than a
lot of my friends spend at their jobs," Connor says. And having a parent act as CFO solves a
problem Connor and other under-18 entrepreneurs encounter: their signatures on contracts aren't
legally binding.
When Brian O'Kelley first started his Eugene, Ore., Web-design business at 17, he had no idea he
couldn't sign his own paperwork. Fortunately, his law-professor father did. "Dad thought that was
hilarious," says O'Kelley, now 23 and VP of the Hoboken, N.J., Internet consultancy LogicSpan.
"He had to do most of the legal stuff, because I wasn't old enough."
Many teens, like Connor and the MacMillans, get help from their parents in handling the money
their enterprises generate. Others choose to learn money management the way they learn the rest
of their executive role: by doing it. Greenspan, of think computer, says he manages all of his
businesses finances, except for the duties he farms out to a professional accountant and a payroll
company.
Handling large sums of money hasn't changed any of his habits, he says. He's as frugal with the
business as he is in his personal life, forgoing extras like a Palm Pilot and keeping his last
computer for six years. "It's just sort of re-enforced how I've been brought up," he says.
Probably the toughest element of teen entrepreneurship, O'Kelley says, was the problem of how
adults treated him. He and partner Pat McCarthy tried to hide their age behind professionalsounding e-mails and phone conversations, he says. "It was extremely hard, in many cases."
Greenspan, of Think Computer, has encountered similar ageism. "There's always a few people
that will claim to have no problem with it to your face, but clearly do, and then there are those
that are flat-out rude about it," he says. It's not an insurmountable obstacle, he insists: "The
majority of my clients have had no problem at all with my age."
When he first started, Greenspan approached the age issue frankly with hesitant clients. "I'd just
say give me a chance, let me try it," he says. "I was able to prove myself." Now, he gets enough
referrals that he doesn't have to spend much time selling himself.
Connor says he's tried to avoid the question, and rarely meets directly with prospective
customers. "My age is not known among about 98 percent of my clients," he says.
Declaration of Independence
With all these teen tech wizards out to reinvent the world, 15-year-old Kassidy Briles seems a bit
out of place. Her business, Dreamwings, raises butterflies. Briles charges customers $65 per
dozen to release them at special occasions and social events. "It's just a new, better way to
celebrate," she says.
It's also very un-techie, and fairly modest. Briles' goal is to expand business beyond her
hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, to serve neighboring states. Still, she shares something critical
with young entrepreneurs like Greenspan, Connor and the MacMillans.
Briles wants to be a teacher, and she'll have summers off. Raising and releasing butterflies is the
perfect summer business; she won't have to hunt up jobs working for somebody else. Like her
entrepreneurial peers, the potential Briles has discovered in small business is independence -something she'll retain long after high school.
The independent streak is certainly well defined in Greenspan, who stopped applying to
Microsoft. Instead, he thinks he's found a better way to build a computer operating system -- one
that's simpler, more reliable and visually enhanced. His new goal is to replace Microsoft
Windows.
Sound funny? A lot of people probably thought a pimply-faced Bill Gates did, too, when he was
tinkering in his bedroom.
Related Links
<a href="http://www.thinkcomputer.com">Think Computer</a>
<a href="http://www.thinkcomputer.org">Think Computer Foundation</a>
<a href="http://www.globalacq.com">Global Acquisitions</a>
<a href=''http://www.logicspan.com">LogicSpan</a>
<a href=''http://www.chocolatefarm.com">Chocolate Farm</a>
<a href=''http://www.youngandsuccessful.com">Young Entrepreneurs Network</a>
SOURCES:
Aaron Greenspan
President and CEO
Think Computer
20560 Shelburne Road
Shaker Heights, OH 44122
(216) 932-8096
aarong@thinkcomputer.com
Jennifer Kushell
President, Young Entrepreneurs Network
Author, The Young Entrepreneur's Edge
4712 Admiralty Way, Ste. 530
Marina Del Ray, CA 90292
(310) 822-0261
kushell@earthlink.net
Kassidy Briles
Owner
Dreamwings
(515) 265-0699
dreamwingsco@aol.com
Christopher Connor
Founder
Global Acquisitions
1424 Metedeconk Avenue
Brick, NJ 08724
(800) 690-7661
info@globalacq.com
Brian O'Kelley
Vice President
LogicSpan
826 Bloomfield St. #2
Hoboken, NJ 07030
(201) 927-6712
bok@logicspan.com
Evan MacMillan
CFO, CTO
Chocolate Farm
(303) 758-0653
evan@chocolatefarm.com
Elise MacMillan
President
Chocolate Farm
(303) 758-0653
elise@chocolatefarm.com