How did you come up with the idea?
I first want to thank you, Tessa for this opportunity.
I can't take any credit for the idea. It was all my business partner, Paul's doing. He had just come back from SXSW (South By South Wes) and told me he learned so much. He thought it was such a great time for entrepreneurs. At the same time, I was thinking of ways to reach more teen entrepreneurs in the world. And then he said "What if we did a global conference for teens, done entirely online. That would be HOT". It was so crazy and ambitious enough that I thought yeah that could work. At the time, it was just me so I had to think about whether I could pull it off.
A few days later, I read this post on Quora on how the tech community can be improved in DC. Someone I knew responded saying organizations need to do something remarkable. I had read Seth Godin's book, Purple Cow a month earlier and I remember his definition of remarkable. It was "something so good that someone had to make a remark about it". I knew that if anyone was going to spearhead the movement of teen entrepreneurship, it was going to be us. To us, we were thinking of how we can change the world through entrepreneurship.
Why are you doing this now? What in the world has inspired you to start something like this?
I wished I had been a teen entrepreneur. I miss out so much now that I been an entrepreneur for a few years. And it's not all about business- there's so much more. All the life skills you learn while being in business for yourself you just can't learn in the corporate world. We were both really inspired to see some of the things the teens in Teen Business Forum were doing. There's one teen, Ryan from the UK who had more eBay feedback than my parents who were full-time eBay sellers. Then there was a teen, Lukas telling us that since he joined the community, he had started reading all kinds of business books. The one he was reading at the time was the 4-Hour Work Week. His dad was so impressed by him that he said, "Son, can I read it after you?" Keep in mind he was only 15 at the time. There are adults who still haven't read that book and don't understand how time and money go together. The same person now is outsourcing things. At 15!
We looked at the community and thought if they are doing these things now, how much more when they are older. And that's where we come in. We have a real opportunity to build up successful and ethical entrepreneurs that will change the world. We also know there are a lot more teens out there who don't know they are entrepreneurs yet. But once they get the bug, they're in.
Why is the summit targeted for teenagers?
Very simply, because teens are going to be the next generation. Our vision was to be able to impact the world through entrepreneurship realizing our dream that successful and ethical entrepreneurs will make the world better. So to be able to influence the people who will make an impact, we want to provide it for the next generation.
However, anyone can benefit from the summit. We just saw some figures on the age demographic of the people attending. We have people as young as 16 and as old as 52. I think these people "get it". They get that a powerhouse lineup of speakers we lined up for the summit just doesn't happen.
Why did you choose your particular speakers?
In the beginning, we started with people we knew. We had been doing interviews for many months prior. And through those interviews, we were able to get to know them. Some of them had the same vision we did- that youth entrepreneurship was the future. And many of them were teen entrepreneurs themselves who are now very successful. One example of that is Matt Mickiewicz who founded Sitepoint, 99Designs, and Flippa. We thought his experience would give a lot of teens excitement to see what they would be like 10 years from now.
The speakers we chose feel into 3 categories- veteran, young, and teen. The veteran entrepreneurs are going to talk about big issue topics like how to win over your customers, job economy, getting media attention. The young entrepreneurs are ones who have previously been entrepreneurs in their teens and are now very successful. And then the teen entrepreneurs have businesses that current teens can start right away. It provides a very very practical answer to "how do I get started?".
What are your hopes for the Teen Business Summit? What impact are you trying to make?
That every teen watching will know what's possible, be inspired, and get a business up and running. Indirectly, I think we will change the way how conferences will be done in the future. We are the first ones to host a conference entirely online, live, and free.
Here is a new video we put together:
The link to the website is: http://www.teenbusinesssummit.com/
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