Teenager Startups - Curated News

Teen named Trailblazer at GirlBoss Awards

The GirlBoss Awards, honour girls and women aged 11-18 and work towards empowering women in New Zealand. This year Gina Dao-McLay’s won the Trailblazer award at the 2020 GirlBoss Awards for her "Make it 16" campaign. She was one of the eight winners.

Young people nowadays are surrounded by media and are aware of the many issues their generation would face in future. That's why Gina believes that voting rights should be given to students aged 16 as the decisions made today are going to affect them the most.

While campaigning Gina always had a doubt about entering politics, she answered it with "If not me, then who?"

14-Year-Old, Lydia Novak started a course called Pinning Magic

Lydia's mom taught her how to keywords pins and later she began making pins for her mom's business. Her mom recognized her talent and made her make pins for her friends which received a great response. She posted about her daughter's services on Facebook groups and since then Lydia has been creating pins for her customers.

Once her mom posted a photo of Lydia on a zoom call with a customer and it went viral with thousands of likes and comments. Many of those comments suggested Lydia to make a course and share her knowledge with everyone and that's what she did.

Lydia dreams of becoming an actor and a singer and believes that her venture will help her achieve her dream. She tells people that you do not need to know what your life will be like when you “grow up” to do something important now.

PointGenie a student led startup provide visitor analytics to business owners

Eric Azcona is a passionate entrepreneur. In 2003 he founded his first company which focused on selling mobile phone and satellite internet services. It was acquired before he moved to the united states. This first startup set the ground for his entrepreneurial career.

Azcona came up with the idea of PointGenie when he was on a trip to New York City with his brother. On returning he started PointGenie using his own funding. It is a software tool that uses machine learning to provide visitor analytics to business owners of all industries, including retail.

The PointGenie tea is currently planning its expansion as a mobile application giving them the ability to drive even more meaningful insights to business owners.

Eric Azcona is pursuing undergraduate in Information technology at FIU’s School of Computing and Information Sciences (SCIS). He is proving that you can pursue your career and study at the same time.

Boost Innovation Company connects entrepreneurs and small businesses with advisers in various industries

Wisnosky along with his school friend Matthew Linehan co-founded Boost Innovation Company when Wisnosky’s summer internship got cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It connects industry experts with budding entrepreneurs and businessmen.

Users can schedule their appointment with their advisors every two weeks who are matched based on their skills, timelines and stages. Advisors are paid directly by the users according to the duration of the meeting and advisors can choose their own rates.

They want to partner with colleges and universities and connect student entrepreneur with teachers in the future and reduce the fees. Currently, the average rate for an hour is $200.

Brittanny Belanger is setting up collection routes and drop-off locations around town to collect hard-to-recycle items

Brittany founded her non-profit environmental organization Earthub in January 2019. She has set up drop-off locations and collection routes across Ottawa for a number of hard-to-recycle items. Many of these things can be recycled and used again. There are certain things which people can't avoid but they add to the landfills. The only solution to this problem is to divert them elsewhere

She ships those items to those in need but it too adds to the emission of greenhouse gases. "Every new solution comes with a new problem" is what she says. But organisations like Earthhub are a great start towards something good."

Living near a carp dump and witnessing it regularly makes her realise that what we throw out goes somewhere and is still present on this planet. For Belanger, even small changes feel like a victory.

EZ Fade Haircut Guard, a pandemic product

When the pandemic hit, the common problem which men felt was to get their hairs trimmed. While most of them used basic trimmers to trim all of them they couldn't get the desired results. The same problem inspired Hunter Perock to design the product.

He designed the model of EZ Fade Haircut Guard using 360 CAD software — which he learned in high school and printed it using a 3d printer. He printed over 50 models till he got the perfect one. it is made up of two pieces the guard and the attach.

He is now planning to retail the product to barbers shop and to at-home haircuts. He is planning to launch a website once he gets sufficient funds. The guard will be available for $35 online.

Before designing this product his first venture was teaching students how to wake surf.

Viral tiktok video sold out the entire inventory of Cedarville University student

Wikrent, a senior professional writing and information design student at Cedarville University from an hour outside of Chicago started Beloved Priceless at the end of 2019. It started first as a hobby, but when her friends were interested in buying her handmade earrings and necklaces, it turned into a business. One video she posted in July got more than 50,000 views. The one that got millions of views and sold out her entire inventory was posted in September. For that video, she followed a TikTok trend for creators where she contrasted photos of what people think of when it comes to polymer clay jewellery, versus what she makes.

She was not expecting that at all. It was very unexpected, So she didn’t have everything in stock, it was all more like made to order stuff. Because she was able to make it super quick and then send it out. Wikrent said she got more than 300 orders and sold more than 500 earrings in about a month. She also said that her friends helped her a lot in the time when she had a crazy order line and she enjoyed it. Wikrent said since she is a student and there is a pandemic going on, the best way for her to sell her jewellery is online. Wikrent said she primarily markets her business on Instagram but uses Pinterest, TikTok and Facebook too. Sarah Gump also helped Wikrent in the process. Sarah Gump, manager of digital and social media at Cedarville University, said anyone starting a business in 2020 should know how to market their product on social media. Wikrent said she’s been able to donate around $1,000 to Mission of Hope this year.

She is currently working on a collaboration collection of earrings with Mission of Hope’s Women’s Empowerment Program. The program helps equip victims of abuse with business skills or educational skills, Wikrent said. “My tagline is celebrating the beauty and value of every individual,” Wikrent said. “Everyone is loved and valued because they’re made in the image of God.”

Future brew battles against food waste by making beer from leftover bread bear

While reading some articles Dimitris understood how massive is the problem of food waste, more research showed that more than half of it was bread waste. While looking for solutions Dimitri found that he could make beer from leftover bread.

So Dimitri the company, Future brew and pitched the idea to investors at the University of Southampton. Chris Broad, former Apple Director of Sales Contracting and Andrew Doe, founder of confetti.co.uk, offered £20,000 towards development.

Future Brew uses surplus bread collected from local supermarkets to make the beer. With every canned beer you save more than 100g of CO2 emission from being emitted to the atmosphere. They started with a pale ale called The Stag and now sale a pale ale called ‘Dough Dough’. The stag sold out within a day and a half in their university.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the company also stepped up to help some of those most in need. They sold mystery bags of food that would be thrown away by local supermarkets.

St Albert teen starts Baking Business during pandemic.

What are you doing when you were 16? Probably having fun with friends, playing games and chatting with friends!! If you are so concerned then you could continue doing good in class and get good grades. This teen who is just 16-year-old girl made her hobby into the passion of business. St. Albert teenager is turning her passion for baking from a pandemic pastime to small business success. Fonseca is the teen we are talking about till now. A Valeria Fonseca,16, began baking last spring after COVID-19 closed the door on everyday life and making good profits. She started her entrepreneurship page in the giant business world during a pandemic.

She grew her passion into a business. She also works with her mother crafting and helps her mother in delivering their tasty treats. What's Valeria's role in the business? What does she do? She takes the "She takes the orders, she's on Facebook, her mother is always with her helping for writing, to tell the customer she has to take, to sell. Catherine, Valeria's mother helps her a lot in the whole process. She was the one who promoted the business by posting her daughter's works on a St. Albert chat group, and the "Val Cakes" have been selling strong ever since. Valeria was born with Down syndrome, has found her passion. Her mother also said that "I know in the future she can continue with her dream." Valeria is saving her earnings and says she plans to spend some of it on new dresses.

Online book reading startup, BookBuds won the business pitch competition

Emlyn Goulding is passionate about books and loves reading. She decided to share this love with younger children by establishing BooksBuds. It is a peer-to-peer guided reading service and is hosted on zoom. Children from grade Kindergarten to 6 can avail of this facility.

Owner of BooksBuds Bill Goulding took part in a pitch-off which was a part of the Bridges to Better Business event, an annual learning and networking forum hosted by the Millworks - Centre for Entrepreneurship. They won the contest’s grand prize valued at $17,000. They made their way to the finals following a competitive process involving multiple submissions from across the Algoma District.