Seven British Teenage Technology Entrepreneurs Inspiring A Generation.


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You might call it Generation Entrepreneur.  At 16.2%, Britain’s youth unemployment rate remains stubbornly high, despite consistent falls in joblessness across the working population as a whole, but a select group of young businessmen and businesswomen have not been phased by such difficulties. New figures show that some 26,400 people under the age of 21 are now listed as directors of UK limited companies.

Many of those talented young entrepreneurs are to be found in the technology sector, where high-profile success stories and low barriers to entry are attracting increasing numbers of young people who see no reason not to give their own business a go.
Not only are schoolchildren and teenagers learning more about technology while still in education, courtesy of the increasing focus on IT in the educational curriculum, but also, the falling cost of technology infrastructure, including cloud-based development, has made it much more affordable get companies up and running. Technology businesses also tend to have much lower staffing requirements, which also keeps costs down.
Wiktor Podgorski, contracts and HR manager at Procorre, a business consultancy service, says many of these young entrepreneurs feel they have nothing to lose when launching their own ventures.
“Young entrepreneurs now aspire to set up a business and sell it for millions before even starting university; the success of a few pioneers made people realise that they can start setting up a business much earlier than in the past,” says Podgorski.
“High-tech industries, where the size of a business is much less important than its ability to create innovative products are proving particularly popular amongst young entrepreneurs – if the business itself does not make them millions, it can open doors to future employment and other projects.”
As Podgorski points out, there is no shortage of role models in the technology sector, whose success with their own businesses at a young age is encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. Take these seven thriving businesses founded by business leaders who were younger than 21 when they started out:
Mashable
Though Scottish businessman Pete Cashmore turns 30 this year, he remains the inspiration for a generation of teenage technology entrepreneurs. Cashmore founded Mashable, the social media news website, at the age of 19 from his bedroom in his mum and dad’s house. The site now has a monthly worldwide readership of 23 million and could be worth more than £100m.
Summly
Teenage entrepreneur Nick D’Aloisio launched Summly, the news digest app, at the tender age of 15 in 2011 – just two years later Yahoo paid £20m for the company, much to the shock of his parents. Aloisio is now combining a high-profile role at Yahoo with a computer science degree at Oxford University.
Appear Here
When 20 year-old Ross Bailey launched his pop-up shop in London’s Carnaby Street three years ago, he’d already been running businesses for years, starting with a youthful DJ-ing enterprise he’d launched at age 10. Bailey’s venture, timed to coincide with the Queen’s Jubilee, made him realise there was a huge market for such pop-up ventures – Appear Here serves that market, enabling people to rent short-term space for shops, restaurants and other concepts. It now works with 200 landlords around the UK and has found space for everyone from Google to Jamie Oliver. It has raised investment of £6m so far.
SB.TV
Now 24, Jamal Edwards launched SB.TV, the youth broadcasting channel, nine years ago as a YouTube channel dedicated to his interest in the UK’s grime music scene. Today the channel has more than 215,000 subscribers and has expanded into a number of other genres. Edwards is now estimated to be worth around £8m and was awarded an MBE by the Queen earlier this year for his services to music.
Gojimo
Five years ago, George Burgess, now 22, was so unimpressed with the mobile phone apps available when he wanted help revising for a geography exam that he launched his own. A string of apps for different subjects followed and Gojimo was born. Deals with publishers such as the BBC and Pearson followed and the business’s upwards trajectory has got ever steeper – a $1m funding round lead last year by Index Ventures has accelerated Burgess’s progress.
Deliciously Ella
When Ella Woodward published her first cookery book earlier this year, it became the fastest-ever-selling debut in the genre. That shouldn’t have been surprising given that Woodward, just 23, has 400,000 followers on Instagram, 2.5 million readers of her monthly blogs, and 60,000 downloads of her recipe app.
Edge Mobile
Still only 18, Ed Hardy and Kit Logan launched the skiing app Edge two years ago, inspired by their love of the winter sport. The app is designed to track performance stats and allows users to challenge their friends as well as to find and review their favourite mountainside restaurants and bars. It has already attracted substantial investment, including support from Frank Meehan, one of the best-known backers of Nick D’Aloisio’s Summly.

FORBES.

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