Age may not at all be a factor if you have a great idea and know how to execute it. Some help from an older brother can also come in handy.
Fifteen year old Catherine Cook and her 16 year old brother David were new to their high school in Skillman, New Jersey. As teenagers, making new friends in a new school was a major undertaking. While looking over their yearbook one night they thought it was not the best way to make new friends.
Then Catherine came up with a great idea, digitalizing yearbooks. This would be an avenue for meeting new friends. It was the start of myYearbook in 2005. While Facebook is more into connecting with old or existing friends, their venture was more into making new friends who were near the area, of the same age bracket or played the same games.
Their older brother Geoff fresh from graduating at Harvard also got into the venture by helping with the start-up capital needed to keep the company going. Six years later, in 2011 the three siblings joined the ranks of young self-made multi-millionaires when Quepasa Corp. bought their company for $100 million in cash and stocks.
One of the strong points of myYearbook is many are using it via the mobile phone. With more mobile phones than personal computers or laptops the market potential is huge.
What started out as a need to make new friends ended up with the siblings creating a great product which has led them to business and financial success.