At 12: How an Australian Girl Became the World’s Youngest Entrepreneur

 

 

The best-known young entrepreneurs we can name were Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook and Microsoft’s Bill Gates, who became self-made billionaires at ages 23 and 21, respectively. However, this is a trend that is becoming more and more common.

It’s a prevalent fallacy (and perhaps an excuse for some) that successful entrepreneurship takes years of hard work, long hours, and vast experience to develop. However, an increasing number of aspiring young entrepreneurs are demonstrating that neither is necessary in order to launch a lucrative endeavour. Before they have even graduated high school, this burgeoning group of aspiring young entrepreneurs starts firms from their bedrooms. Consider Zoe Sugg, the founder of Summly, who at the age of 17 sold her news app to Yahoo for a cool $30 million. 

The British beauty blogger, who started her own YouTube channel in 2009 and now reportedly makes $100,000 per month, and after Australian entrepreneur, Melanie Perkin’s Journey From A Design Teacher To An Entrepreneur, a wave of the so-called “startup generation” has emerged, which has inspired many Australian small businesses. Rather than partaking in the usual teen activities, these young entrepreneurs are well on their way to earning their first million, demonstrating that there is no better time than the present to realize your entrepreneurial aspirations. 

Being a free-thinking entrepreneur has many fantastic benefits, one of which is the ability to discover inspiration anywhere. Inspiration for a brilliant idea might strike anywhere and at any time, but it only succeeds if you’re paying attention and setting yourself up for success.

Similarly, 12-year-old “Bella Tipping” found out that hotels aren’t really kid-focused and primarily care about their adult guests when on a family vacation in the USA.

“Mum was filling out a TripAdvisor review and she liked a hotel where we had stayed and gave it a great review, but I really didn’t like it at all as it was so adult-focused,” she says.

Bella Tipping’s stay at certain hotels gave her the impression that most hotels didn’t take children into account while providing meals and housing. Bella Tipping launched Kidzcationz.com in 2015 with the help of her mother and web developers after coming to the conclusion that most kids probably go through this whilst on vacation.

Bella’s Kidzcationz

It’s kind of like a kid-friendly TripAdvisor and Expedia combined. Kidzcationz is a vacation review website geared for children, allowing them to assess hotels, restaurants, and attractions based on how well they serve their needs, not their parents. Bella dreams of the day when, no matter who is paying for the vacation, all hotels will treat children’s visitors the same as adults.

Children can visit Kidzcationz, select a location, and evaluate or rate it in addition to reading reviews about the location made by other children. Kidzcationz was designed by Bella Tipping with kids in mind; to ensure the safety of her young users online, the website allows them to browse using avatars that don’t require any personal information or images.

How It Started

In order to turn her entrepreneurial vision into a small business in Australia, Bella needed to locate a financier who would be open to seeing the possibilities in her business plan. Her parents agreed to invest $80,000 Australian dollars after she produced formal business plans that described the functioning of the website, who would be engaged, and an exit strategy in the event that her venture failed. Even though it wasn’t cheap to set Kidzcationz up, Bella wasn’t just given the money. She had to put in a lot of effort to win over her investors with her passion and commitment.

Read Full Article:  At 12: How an Australian Girl Became the World’s Youngest Entrepreneur