The Face of Entrepreneurship Gets Younger and Younger
Requirement To Start Company: Laptop and Good Idea
In the old days, the entrepreneurial avenues that were open to minors could have been a paper route, mowing the lawns in your neighborhood, or a lemonade stand. But thanks to cheap bandwidth, online advertising, broadband access, and the ability to spread ideas through blogs or social networks, younger and younger people with little funding and few connections have been starting Internet-related companies in recent years.
In ninth grade, Zaid Farooqui cofounded Web design company Cyquester Technologies and hired an employee in India for $400 a month. In tenth grade, Steven Bao sold a Facebook program to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and started the Facebook Developers Meetups in Boston this summer. Entrepreneurs who launch companies in puberty are anomalies, but the Web has lowered the bar for people with skills and ideas. People don’t need a development team or a big budget - they just need a good idea and a laptop.
Y Combinator, started by entrepreneurs in 2005, introduces founders to investors, and doles out funds to the budding moguls who participate in its weekly dinners, giving striving entrepreneurs a community. Typically, the firm provides startups $5,000, plus $5,000 per founder, in exchange for a 6% stake in each company. The average entrepreneur in a Y Combinator session is 25, and he or she does not need an advanced degree, connections, or work experience. Jessica Livingston, a cofounder, said that there’s a trend of younger people launching startups. “It was cheaper to start one, and you don’t need to ask permission” from investors, she said.
