Teen entrepreneurs the new stars of tech world
Using
Free Tools, They Are Developing Apps & Games
Ryan Orbuch,
16 years old, rolled a suitcase to the front door of his family’s house in
Boulder, Colorado, on a Friday morning a year ago. He was headed for the bus
stop, then the airport, then Texas. “I’m going,” he told his mother. “You can’t
stop me.” Stacey Stern, his mother, wondered if he was right. “I briefly
thought: Do I have him arrested at the gate?”
But the truth was, she felt conflicted. Should she stop her son from going on his first business trip? Ryan was headed to South by Southwest Interactive, the technology conference in Austin. There, he planned to talk up an app that he and a friend had built. Called Finish, it aimed to help people stop procrastinating, and was just off its high in the No. 1 spot in the productivity category in the Apple App store. Ryan was eager to go because, as he put it: “There were really dope people, and I really like smart-people density.”
Ryan is now 17. He is among the many entrepreneurially minded, technologically skilled teenagers striving to do serious business. Their work is enabled by low-cost or free tools to make apps or to design games, and they are encouraged by tech companies and grown-ups in the field who urge them, sometimes with financial support, to accelerate their transition into “the real world”. This surge in youthful innovation and entrepreneurship looks “unprecedented”, said Gary Becker, a University of Chicago economist and a Nobel laureate.
Becker is assessing this subject from a particularly intimate vantage point. His grandson, Louis Harboe, 18, is a friend of Ryan’s, a technological teenager who makes Ryan look like a late bloomer. Louis got his first freelance gig at the age of 12, designing the interface for an iPhone game. At 16, Louis, who lives with his parents in Chicago, took a summer design internship at Square, an online and mobile payment company in San Francisco, earning $1,000 a week plus a $1,000 housing stipend.
Ryan and Louis, who met online in the informal network of young developers, are hanging out this weekend in Austin at South by Southwest. They are also waiting to hear from the colleges to which they applied last fall — part of the parallel universe they also live in, the traditional one with grades and SATs and teenage responsibilities. But unlike their peers for whom college is the singular focus, they have pondered whether to go at all. It’s a good kind of problem, the kind faced by great highschool athletes or child actors who can try going pro, along with all the risk that entails.
“College is not a prerequisite,” said Jess Teutonico, who runs TEDxTeen, a version of the TED talks for youth. “These kids are motivated to take over the world,” she said. “They need it fast. They need it now.”
But the truth was, she felt conflicted. Should she stop her son from going on his first business trip? Ryan was headed to South by Southwest Interactive, the technology conference in Austin. There, he planned to talk up an app that he and a friend had built. Called Finish, it aimed to help people stop procrastinating, and was just off its high in the No. 1 spot in the productivity category in the Apple App store. Ryan was eager to go because, as he put it: “There were really dope people, and I really like smart-people density.”
Ryan is now 17. He is among the many entrepreneurially minded, technologically skilled teenagers striving to do serious business. Their work is enabled by low-cost or free tools to make apps or to design games, and they are encouraged by tech companies and grown-ups in the field who urge them, sometimes with financial support, to accelerate their transition into “the real world”. This surge in youthful innovation and entrepreneurship looks “unprecedented”, said Gary Becker, a University of Chicago economist and a Nobel laureate.
Becker is assessing this subject from a particularly intimate vantage point. His grandson, Louis Harboe, 18, is a friend of Ryan’s, a technological teenager who makes Ryan look like a late bloomer. Louis got his first freelance gig at the age of 12, designing the interface for an iPhone game. At 16, Louis, who lives with his parents in Chicago, took a summer design internship at Square, an online and mobile payment company in San Francisco, earning $1,000 a week plus a $1,000 housing stipend.
Ryan and Louis, who met online in the informal network of young developers, are hanging out this weekend in Austin at South by Southwest. They are also waiting to hear from the colleges to which they applied last fall — part of the parallel universe they also live in, the traditional one with grades and SATs and teenage responsibilities. But unlike their peers for whom college is the singular focus, they have pondered whether to go at all. It’s a good kind of problem, the kind faced by great highschool athletes or child actors who can try going pro, along with all the risk that entails.
“College is not a prerequisite,” said Jess Teutonico, who runs TEDxTeen, a version of the TED talks for youth. “These kids are motivated to take over the world,” she said. “They need it fast. They need it now.”
Matt
Richtel NYT NEWS SERVICE
No comments:
Post a Comment