Just picked this up from Valleywag: 17 year-old Ashley Qualls dropped out in the second year of high school to run her $1m-turnover business designing MySpace pages for other teenagers.
She's been running the business for two years, promoting the designs on her site at whateverlife.com and has already turned down $5m offers for the business. The site gets 7m unique users a month - that's nearly half that of Guardian Unlimited - and her business consultant Robb Lippitt said she hasn't even scratched the surface in potential advertising revenue.
He described her as "utterly fearless": "I've been fortunate enough to meet with some of the entrepreneurs of our day, and she has that same fearlessness that they have. It's not thinking about the downside, but thinking of, "How fast can I grow this?' and "What can I accomplish?' "
Take a look at her site and it's clear why her business has been so successful; unlike some of the wince-inducing "get down with kids" efforts launched by some businesses in the MySpace ecosystem, it speaks the right language, but without going over the top. As Crain's puts it, her advantage is that she is the demographic she is aiming for.
From her latest blog post: "Umm, let's see- I'll be doing some big ad sales in NYC while I'm there- and I'm sponsoring the Ypulse Tween Mashup! So exciting- we ordered out snazzy pink pens/notepads, etc. yesterday to give out. I hope to have some free time there! How crazy huh? Never expected this! I'm taking a week off when I get back- But incase you didn't know- WhateverLife.com is launching it's very own cell phone background one stop shop. ALL of our layouts- you can have on your phone as backgrounds. Ya dig? XOXO SINCERELY, AshBo<333"
There's a long-established tradition of very young entrepreneurs in the web industry. Our own Jamie Murray-Wells founded Glasses Direct when he was just 21, Martin Rosinski founded Wireless Dynamics when he was 22 and at 23, Cyclepods' managing director Natalie Connell is looking like more of a veteran. And Matt Mullenweg founded the Wordpress empire when he was 21.
Anyone else under 20 we can think of?
Source: Crain's Detroit Business
Technorati Tags: MySpace, whateverlife
