Can people under the age of 21 even sign term sheets? I apologize for my ignorance, I'm just unsure of the wisdom of someone seeking VC funding before he can sign the paperwork.(I'm 29, BTW)
Contracts aren't enforceable unless they are over 18. This is where the parents come in as a proxy.
Anyway, most of these uberkids have the same story, mom or dad is a VC or SV entrepreneur. The kid relies on family connections to get their idea out there and raise capital. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not saying it as a bad thing, but stories like this tend to read like the NYTimes lifestyle sections.
Yeah, but did you notice the kid in charge of TechKids(?) finally is repairing is damage to his name for his TC debacle(ipad for article) and is starting again to get press for his efforts.
kid? He's already 20. Anyway, he now has to build his business up the old fashioned way, going out and making contact. Whether people will remember him from his TC days is a different matter.
The idea that one can never again obtain formal education if he drops out of college is absurd, and I hope the quote about "screwing up one's career" was taken out of context. Many universities require that all credits for a degree be earned within N years of each other, but N is usually a very large number compared to the timelines of 20 year-old dropouts. Furthermore, who would want a "career" where those evaluating you looked negatively upon having once done a start-up.
Are there any universities which, in practice, will not take back a student who left on good terms (passing grades, left at the end of a semester vs. in the middle, etc.)? My guess is that the real risk is that scholarships would not be renewed and the returning drop-out would have to pay full fare.
I know my comments questioning the background of parents for young startup successes was roundly criticized here a few days ago, but I can't help but bring up those points whenever I see articles like this which substantiate my assertions.
"I was surrounded by tech everyday for so long that I gained a natural interest for it," said Daniel Brusilovsky, an 18-year-old from San Mateo, California, whose upbringing by a software-manager father and Oracle Corp. veteran mother led him to found two startups before he was old enough to vote.
We tend to forget that most of the successes where the "founder" is very young seem to be attributable to parents with significantly more resources than the average person or who are in the industry and have resources and/or also connections.
I don't intend to dismiss the accomplishments of people like this, but these reports often try to present a case that young people are succeeding left and right in ideas simply because of technological advances and easier access to a computer. They don't often seem to make more than a glancing nod toward the fact that the parents are there to provide financial resources to get them started. Or in some cases, connections to get them started and skip ahead of the hurdles other children that you don't hear stories about would encounter.
I'd be more interested in stories where the kid isn't from a family where dad is a wealthy lawyer and the kid has a sure thing at a prominent university ahead of him and where the kid's mom and dad aren't professionals in the industry that are available to encourage, advise, support, and assist on behalf of their child. I'd be more interested in the seeming lack of stories where the kid with an absentee dad and a mom on welfare or toiling in a minimum wage job to provide for them and their siblings while attending a mediocre public school who has no mentor or support or resources creates the next Facebook or Windows or Angry Birds.
The problem is publications like Forbes and Businessweek know that their readers gobble-up linkbait stories about teen entrepreneurs who may or may not be the real deal and even know what they're doing.
There are quite a few successful and talented teen founders who never get mentioned in these publications, precisely because they don't have the papa at AAPL or ORCL or GOOG, and they don't go to all the nice parties to hang with the adults and network. Some I know of personally come from quite humble backgrounds, yet don't advertise their own age as a selling point while developing their product as it tends to distract from the actual product and value of the company/startup at hand, and instead devolves into popularity contest with little actual value.
I tried to type more in but it only let me use 80 characters so it ended up with just the child soldiers part. Honestly not sure what you mean by linkbait in this context, unless you mean from the original source's perspective.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 47.3 ms ] threadAnyway, most of these uberkids have the same story, mom or dad is a VC or SV entrepreneur. The kid relies on family connections to get their idea out there and raise capital. Rinse and repeat.
I'm not saying it as a bad thing, but stories like this tend to read like the NYTimes lifestyle sections.
http://www.aolnews.com/2010/02/05/tech-site-apologizes-for-c...
Are there any universities which, in practice, will not take back a student who left on good terms (passing grades, left at the end of a semester vs. in the middle, etc.)? My guess is that the real risk is that scholarships would not be renewed and the returning drop-out would have to pay full fare.
In general, though, you're right. The credits at my university are good for 11 years (after you stop going.)
"I was surrounded by tech everyday for so long that I gained a natural interest for it," said Daniel Brusilovsky, an 18-year-old from San Mateo, California, whose upbringing by a software-manager father and Oracle Corp. veteran mother led him to found two startups before he was old enough to vote.
We tend to forget that most of the successes where the "founder" is very young seem to be attributable to parents with significantly more resources than the average person or who are in the industry and have resources and/or also connections.
I don't intend to dismiss the accomplishments of people like this, but these reports often try to present a case that young people are succeeding left and right in ideas simply because of technological advances and easier access to a computer. They don't often seem to make more than a glancing nod toward the fact that the parents are there to provide financial resources to get them started. Or in some cases, connections to get them started and skip ahead of the hurdles other children that you don't hear stories about would encounter.
I'd be more interested in stories where the kid isn't from a family where dad is a wealthy lawyer and the kid has a sure thing at a prominent university ahead of him and where the kid's mom and dad aren't professionals in the industry that are available to encourage, advise, support, and assist on behalf of their child. I'd be more interested in the seeming lack of stories where the kid with an absentee dad and a mom on welfare or toiling in a minimum wage job to provide for them and their siblings while attending a mediocre public school who has no mentor or support or resources creates the next Facebook or Windows or Angry Birds.
There are quite a few successful and talented teen founders who never get mentioned in these publications, precisely because they don't have the papa at AAPL or ORCL or GOOG, and they don't go to all the nice parties to hang with the adults and network. Some I know of personally come from quite humble backgrounds, yet don't advertise their own age as a selling point while developing their product as it tends to distract from the actual product and value of the company/startup at hand, and instead devolves into popularity contest with little actual value.