8 kid entrepreneurs to watch

8 kid entrepreneurs to watch
Leanna Archer
Company: Leanna’s Inc.
Age: 15
Website: leannashair. com
Running a successful small business is hard. But these eight kid entrepreneurs are showing that it’s just child’s play.
Leanna Archer decided she wanted to become a hair care mogul at the ripe old age of 11.
”The idea came to me when I received tons of compliments about my hair and I knew it was thanks to my homemade products,” said Archer. ”I had nothing to lose, because I figured that if it didn’t work out I still had my whole life ahead of me.”
Archer’s company, Leanna’s Inc., makes eight organic, hair products, which include hair dressings, hair butters and shampoos. Her secret formulas have been passed down through her family for generations and are free of sodium lauryl sulfate and parabens, chemicals which are considered health risks. `’Our products contains no oil filters, no synthetic ingredients, no chemically-engineered ingredients,” she said.
Last year, the company had revenues of more than $100,000. The Long Island entrepreneur expects that number to increase to more than $300,000 by year-end. She is in the process of building an army of sales representatives across the United States.
Her advice to small business owners: ”All new entrepreneurs should know that mistakes are a big part of success.”
Robert Nay
Company: Nay Games
Age: 14
Website: naygames. com
At age 14, Robert Nay’s first game, Bubble Ball, was downloaded more than two million times within two weeks of its launch.
Not bad considering that the average mobile game receives a few hundred downloads. In January, the game knocked the monster hit ”Angry Birds” out of the number 1 most downloaded free game spot in the Apple app store.
”My friends suggested I try making an iPhone app, and

I thought it would be really cool and decided to give it a try,” said Nay. Without any previous coding experience, Nay went to the public library to research how he could go about building his game.
”I came up with the idea for the game by myself, but it was influenced by other games I liked and suggestions from people.”
One month later, after reading a few books and producing over 4,000 individual lines of code, Bubble Ball was complete. The total cost to produce the app: $1,200 – a sum given to Nay by his parents to purchase a new Macbook and the proper software licenses.
Available on Apple and Android devices, the puzzle game has been downloaded more than seven million times to date.
The eighth grader’s new mobile game development company, Utah-based Nay Games, is now working on ”some awesome new stuff for Bubble Ball,” as well as other gaming projects.
His advice to young people: ”You can do amazing things if you just try.”
Mark Bao
Company: Supportbreeze
Age: 18
Website: supportbreeze. com

At 18 years old, New Yorker Mark Bao is a successful serial technology entrepreneur and philanthropist. The teen prodigy has sold three web companies, two of which Bao states were ”highly profitable.”

One garnered a quarter of a million subscribed users within three weeks of its launch. Bao has also started two nonprofit foundations.
His past ventures, all self-funded, included the viral hit, threewords. me, a social media site where visitors describe their friends’ personalities in three words, Atomplan, a small business management tool, and Facebook Idol, an ”American Idol”-like competition app.
”I’ve always been interested in technology and how it can make a difference,” said Bao. ”Entrepreneurial action creates change.