I’m 15, I’ll start a business

Picture an elegant residence in the heart of the historical Dutch city of Leiden; this is the new, soon to be inaugurated head office of Merijn Straathof. Merijn is almost 25 years old and has been building websites since he was fifteen years of age.

He started out building them for friends. At sixteen, he officially became a freelancer and met his first big client. “What should I have charged? I hadn't the faintest idea. The guy asked me: ‘How does fifty euros per hour sound to you?’ I was completely flabbergasted.”

Merijn's parents, also entrepreneurs, fully supported him. However, after starting a large web design agency at the age of twenty with four friends, things didn't exactly run smoothly right away. In fact, two of his partners were eventually bought out.

Now they are managing several projects, including the website for the "Yes or No" campaign by the Dutch Organ Donor Register in association with the advertising agency KesselsKramer, and their hourly rates have doubled.

Merijn is a classic example of a successful teenage entrepreneur, who has been able to consolidate a good product and overcome the troubles that come with starting a business. Currently, a group of young, sometimes exceptionally young, entrepreneurs is already following in his footsteps.

Let me introduce Puck Meerburg, only half Merijn's age. This first-year secondary school student is a successful iPhone app developer from Delft. At primary school, Puck was already creating his so-called “TafelTrainer” apps for practicing math tables. According to Puck, the app was downloaded approximately seventy thousand times, of which practically each download was a free version.

He also provides apps that can be downloaded for a fee, but those have not yet taken off. Recently he has launched the Quizzer app, which costs 79 cents. “Seventy per cent of that is mine, which comes down to 48 cents”, Puck quickly adds.

Technasia and entreprenasia

Puck has attracted so much attention that he was asked to speak at TEDx Youth Amsterdam, a sibling of TEDx, mid-November. Puck's presentation is not one bit pretentious. His high-pitched voice, small glasses and somewhat messy hairdo instantly cause the teenage public to melt.

He has just returned from Stockholm, where he was asked to tell his story at an international conference for digital possibilities, SIME. He also won an award for best networker: approximately twenty thousand euros worth of advertising space in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet. “All of that advertising space goes to the non-profit organisation One Laptop per Child”, Puck notes.

Young entrepreneurship is receiving increasingly more attention. In addition to so-called “technasia”, in which secondary education is supplemented with projects aimed towards the practical application of the sciences, there now even are proper “entrepenasia”; for the moment still a select number of secondary schools where entrepreneurship plays an important role in the curriculum.

The Young Entrepreneurs Foundation [Stichting Jong Ondernemen], which in the past twenty years has inspired intermediate and higher vocational schools and universities to offer courses on entrepreneurship, enjoys an annual growth of ten percent. The foundation offers, for instance, education material with which students can set up their own company over the course of one year. If a business suffers losses, the foundation covers this. The foundation is currently operational at four hundred out of the seven thousand schools in the Netherlands.

Delivering organic products per carrier bicycle

A survey conducted by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce (KVK) in 2009 indicates, however, that young entrepreneurs encounter problems with their school's inflexible attitude towards their business. Thijl Klerkx is seventeen years of age and still in the 5th grade of pre-university secondary education.

This previous school year, he was forced to repeat the grade for the second time, due to time spent on his own company. However, in this case the school did allow him some space for operating his business. For two years Thijl has been selling organic products to individuals and companies, ranging from cartons of juice to toilet paper, which he himself or an employee then delivers by bicycle. It should be noted that he is not yet making very much profit.

Midas Kwant, however, is making a profit. The successful app developer is fourteen years of age. “I consider myself more an entrepreneur than a technician,” he declares boldly. He has developed three apps: appwall, photowall and - by far the most successful - Inside iOS5. Midas charges EUR 0.79 for this popular application. “The app was purchased so many times, that it was even registered as on of the top 25 most downloaded apps, one time even higher than Angry Birds.”

Midas manages his business Kwant Developing together with Yakim van Zuijlen, who is fifteen years of age and responsible for the visual design. Earlier, Midas, who lives in the Dutch village of Heemstede, employed two peers of his own age, but had to “let them go” because of insufficient production rate. His schoolwork has not yet suffered from his successes, thanks to intensive homework tutoring.

Customers are hugely enthusiastic about young entrepreneurs

That is something that Alex Tess Rutten, seventeen years of age and currently in the 6th grade of pre-university secondary education, does not need. In fact, she herself assists highly gifted pupils, helping them draw up homework schedules. Additionally, she provides psychological tips, assisted by hired psychology students.

The assistance she offers is based on her own experience, with her IQ of 148. “In the beginning I was very surprised at how serious parents were taking me, a much younger person, after all.” Once a week she meets for one hour with a highly gifted child in her office.

There are more than five hundred entrepreneurs under eighteen registered at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. There are probably many more young entrepreneurs that are unregistered because of the high thresholds currently in place.

After all, according to the law, a minor is not considered legally competent, which is why minors can only run a business if their parents provide authorisation for every single business activity. A young entrepreneur is able to appeal to a cantonal judge to obtain legal competence, but that involves a procedure that takes a number of weeks.

Not exactly all that stimulating. Banks don't make it much easier for young entrepreneurs. They rarely open an account for a beginner under eighteen. Meanwhile, customers are hugely enthusiastic about young entrepreneurs with a convincing pitch. Martine van Schaik from the Young Entrepreneurs Foundation: "This is exactly the right age to be exploring."