51–60 of 82 posts
To be honest, I spent most of my childhood and teenage years building and making stuff, just not for money. Lots of programming, etc, that I make money off now rather than pennies on the dollar as a kid. I guess this squarely puts me in the geek camp rather than entrepreneur though.
Age 9: Created a 'museum' in my bedroom comprised of all the interesting things I could collect (geodes, baseball cards, trophies, shark's teeth, etc.). I charged $.50 for admission.
Age 10: I made and sold various Origami pieces in school. Prices ranged from $.25 - $5. It became so busy and disruptive that at one point, the teacher instituted a classroom-wide ban on Origami.
Age 18: Created and sold hemp jewelry ranging from $15 - $50.
Age 25: Began freelancing graphic design / front end design. Made enough to live off of for about 18 months.
On my 27th birthday, I joined a profitable startup as the 10th employee. We're now very profitable, and have 33 employees.
16 - Started a business selling cheap Chinese MP3s online, but it failed.
18 - Sang on the subway with a friend for $100 a day, 3 days a week.
19 - First SEO consulting job, made $400.
20 - Got job at a sustainable denim start-up as assistant director of marketing.
I'm not sure if any of these count by HN standards, of course.
I've managed to in the last 20 years, apart from my regular grind: clear out schools of old equipment, broker Sun kit on ebay, sell land rover bits, do structured cabling, fix people's laptops, build electronic kits for a fee, dig holes, build sheds, unblock drains, refit DIY stores, distribute fireworks, flatten boxes, skip diving + ebay, selling fruit picked off scrub land, destructive furniture testing, car washing, copper recycling and returning trolleys to a supermarket. Plus probably more things I've forgotten.
I've worked at two successful startups so far and TBH they weren't as fun as most of the above things.
The first startup I worked for was in 1993, and it was an amazing experience. While it's been fun watching the Internet change over the last 2 decades, it's been just as much fun watching how much of it stays the same (like DNS, is DNS configuration ever going to be anything short of magic?).
I'm proud to say that first startup is still going: http://www.yourlink.ca/
Most articles I've read link successful startups to founders aged 30+. In fact, in this data from less than 2 months ago (from Founders Institute) - http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/28/peak-age-entrepreneurship/, the under 20s are less than 1%. This poll looks seriously skewed. Maybe the older, more successful entrepreneurs are busy with their work, and not here reading HN (oops)?