Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2014. Valuations, incomes and statuses are as of 2014, including Miss O & Friends ($15 million), BizChair ($24 million by age 20), myYearbook (“worth $100 million today”) and Captain Sparklez as “one of the highest-earning YouTubers today”.
Sometimes a simple business idea can make you a millionaire in a very short time. These days, the launch pad many of these young people use is apps, websites, blogs, and technology and the internet in general, not forgetting one of the biggest platforms for building a personal brand: YouTube. We are talking about entrepreneurial projects that ended up becoming million-dollar ideas.
Everyone gets their chance, although not everyone will succeed. Even though we are showing some cases of people who managed to get rich as teenagers, the truth is that many others try and fail.
But that’s what it’s all about: at least giving it a try. The full list of millionaires before 20, published on Inc.com, includes a total of 40 people. Here we have picked only these 15 cases so as not to bore you, since the pattern these young people followed is similar, and we have already written about many of the others on the list.
15 young people who had million-dollar ideas
1. Ashley Qualls
The founder of WhateverLife.com came up with her clever idea in 2004, when she was only 14. Her skills were in design. An anonymous buyer offered her $1.5 million and a car of her choice, but she turned it down.
2. Juliath Brindak
She started sketching characters at the age of 10 and then, at 16, developed a companion social media platform, Miss O & Friends, a company worth $15 million. Brindak earns most of her income from advertising.
3. Sean Belnik
With just $600, Belnik started an online store at 16. He founded BizChair.com and showed a surprising talent for business. By the time he turned 20, he was worth $24 million.
4. Adam Horowitz
When he was only 15, Horowitz challenged himself to make his first million by his 21st birthday. He is the creator of Mobile Monopoly, a tutorial for learning mobile marketing. He reached his goal and earns an undisclosed “six-figure income”.
5. John Koon
Koon was only 16 when he founded Extreme Performance Motorsports. He landed a deal with MTV to supply products for its reality shows, and then used his connections to create a fashion line. His company is worth $40 million.
6. Cameron Johnson
At 11 he started making greeting cards, which earned him the money he needed to start his own big business. SurfingPrizes.com is a toolbar service that brings in about $350,000 a month. While still a high school student, his idea was already worth at least $1 million.
7. David and Catherine Cook
These two siblings got rich by creating MyYearbook.com, a digital yearbook that is now worth $100 million.
8. Nick D’Aloisio
At 17, this young man had designed an app that Yahoo ended up buying for $30 million.
9. Tyler Dikman
Dikman was charging $15 an hour to fix computers. His skills caught the attention of Merrill Lynch executives, and he was hired by Malcolm Taaffe at 15. He soon started his own business, Cooltronics, a computer repair company that made him a millionaire in no time.
10. Fraser Doherty
At just 14, this Scottish entrepreneur started making homemade jam from his grandmother’s recipe. His business was very profitable from the start, and by the time he turned 16, one of the UK’s leading supermarkets became interested in his products. He took out a $9,000 loan and became a millionaire. His recipe books can be found on Amazon.
11. Captain Sparklez
This professional gamer started his career by posting how-to videos on YouTube and then expanded into a channel offering detailed gameplay instruction. He is one of the highest-earning YouTubers today. His channel is worth around $8 million.
12. Michael Dunlop
He left high school because of his struggles with dyslexia. His teachers told him he would have a very hard time in life. But he founded IncomeDiary.com, a website that brings in a six-figure income. His blog posts are not grammatically flawless, but his business advice is sound.
13. Andrew Fashion
Not every teenage millionaire story has a happy ending. Andrew’s business idea, clothing design, earned him $2 million in profits by the age of 20. But not every business story ends well: by 22 he had spent it all on women and gambling.
14. Robert Nay
A self-taught coder who, at barely 14 and with 4,000 lines of code, created the game Bubble Ball. He put it up for download on Apple’s App Store, and within two weeks more than a million people had downloaded it. He made $2 million in those two weeks.
15. Justin Bieber
Justin Bieber’s success is worth pointing out because of his humble beginnings on YouTube. Although media coverage suggests otherwise, Bieber has actually proved to be a good businessman, branching out into clothing, perfume and the like.
Read: How to arrive at the million-dollar idea
Featured image: Heisenberg Media, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
