Are you feeling to young to start (a business)? Then, you shall think again. Jake Fisher and Weina Scott, both age 17, started Switchpod in 2005. The company provide basic podcasting package that covers hosted space on their servers, costs as much as $30 a month. And by the time Switchpod's product had generated 800,000 downloads, a company named Wizzard Software came in.

Wizzard Software makes speech-recognition and text-to-speech technology and was looking to add podcasting to its product mix. Wizzard Software's CEO, Chris Spencer, recalls that it took a while to realize that the students he was negotiating with were in high school rather than college. What funny was Scott and Fisher met face-to-face for their first time that time! Both live 1,440 miles apart--she's in Miami, and he's in Rochester, Minnesota.

Later, they signed paperwork transferring ownership of Switchpod to Wizzard in an all-stock transaction worth $200,000. The sale includes agreement of annual salaries of $40,000 for a 20-hour workweek. Good thing is the contract acknowledges that Jake and Scott's schoolwork comes before business.

But Jake and Scott are not only young entrepreneurs who launched their ventures after school-hours. Laima Tazmin, 17, is finishing her last college semester while overseeing her web design business continues to expand. Omar Faruk, 18, earned Youth Entrepreneur of the Year award from Ernst & Young for helping nonprofits with limited resources through his Web management company, Blue Stream. Read more of their stories on "A Portfolio of Young Business Owners"

Let's have enough of US young entrepreneurs. Who are young successful entrepreneurs in Singapore that you can think of?
YES! Startups was launched on 18 November 2008 by SPRING Singapore, provides funding support for youths to set up their innovative start up with S$4 for every S$1 raised by the applicant through self-funding, schools or any other third-party sources (maximum S$50,000). Do you think this fund will increase number of youths who are willing to take risk and start their business? I do hope so.

Young Entrepreneurs' Stories