Generation X may be struggling to move up the corporate ladder with Baby Boomers retiring later than ever, however Generation Y holds the key. Millennials are paving their career paths through innovation and entrepreneurship. 

This list of top 5 entrepreneurs will present to you some of the youngest sucessful entrepreneurs in the world. Take what you can from their stories. Be inspired! We hope you realise that it is never too late, or too early, to pursue your dreams of running your own business. So let's take a look at some of these ambitious youngsters!

---

1. Christian Owens

Age: 20
Company: Paddle
Website: www.paddle.com
Country : United Kingdom

The UK’s Christian Owens is one of the youngest millionaires in the world, having left school and making his first million by 16. The young tech entrepreneur has been the brain behind the start-ups Branchr Advertising and Mac Bundle Box. Owens’ latest initiative, Paddle, an app development platform that consolidates the process from coding to analytics, is poised to be his most successful venture yet.

Branchr Advertising, a pay-per-click advertising network, co-founded with Mark Bao when Owens was 15, made £500,000 pounds in its first year. The company now turns over more than 250 million ads to more than 10,000 sites every month and has now acquired business software developer Atomplan. Owens is inspired by the likes of Apple and MacHeist, attributing his decision to go into business to seeing Steve Jobs’ success, working hard during his spare time after schoolwork. Owens invests most of his earnings back to his businesses, currently employing several individuals who are much older than him. 

He denies any magic formula for business success–only determination and commitment to make something great. He aims now to become a major name in the world of Internet business, and to reach £100 million in revenue.


2. Brandon Evertz


Brandon Evertz launched Big Review TV in Australia with a $500 loan from his father, and just after his 21^st birthday floated BRTV under Big Un Limited on the Australian Stock Exchange in 2014. BRTV takes the concept of review sites to the next level by adding consumer-made video content and offering businesses a new platform on which to promote themselves. 

“Gen Y don’t have the patience to read reviews, and why would you when anyone with a phone can now upload a video to allow you to actually see what a bar or store looks like yourself?” he says, explaining that this was the idea behind BRTV. The service is free for the public, but charges small business owners to use the site. The company raised over $3 million from the IPO, and the company is currently valuated at around $12 million.


3. Nina Devani


DevaniSoft Ltd was founded on a conversation between Nina Devani and her father, who was struggling to remember his new passwords, after having changed them when an account had been compromised. It occurred to her that many people would have a similar experience, and so PromptMeNina and PromptMeNow were born. 

PromptMeNina and PromptMeNow, the consumer and business platforms respectively, make remembering passwords and usernames easier by providing prompts and hints to the user. With products like it on the market, it provides a unique solution to a problem faced by many people.

An entrepreneur she met through a school project agreed to invest in the start-up, giving her the financial backing to develop the first application for the Android operating system on the Google play store. DevaniSoft’s business model is simple; they offer their applications for free to smartphones, tablets and PCs through the App Store and direct from their website, which consumers and businesses can upgrade to a paid service with unlimited password prompts.


4. Boyan Slat


Boyan Slat is a Dutch entrepreneur, and the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup, clean-up technology designed to tackle the global issue of sustainability.

Slat devised a system which reduces theoretical clean-up time by using ocean currents to allow plastic to, effectively, gather itself. In February 2013, he dropped out of his Aerospace Engineering study to start The Ocean Cleanup, which, by June 2014, became a technically feasible and financially viable method of cleaning up half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 10 years. The idea came to him at the age of 16, when diving in Greece. "I saw more plastic bags than fish. Everyone said to me, 'Oh there's nothing you can do about plastic once it gets into the oceans,' and I wondered whether that was true."

Slat's TedX talk went viral in March 2013. He was surprised by the unexpected amount of clicks to the website every day. With an inundation of thousands of clicks and emails, Slat received a resounding response to his call-out for support. He set up a crowd-funding platform that made $80,000 in 15 days. A subsequent crowd funding campaign raised close to $2.2m, enabling the organisation to start the pilot phase. The first 2000 metre system is projected to be deployed in Japanese waters in 2016. Slat hopes the North Atlantic platform will come to fruition in 2020.


5. Jess Wilson


Stashd co-founder Jess Wilson is no stranger to entrepreneurship, having started her first business at just 16. Her application is changing the way we shop online, centralising multiple platforms and shopping carts to streamline the experience.  Wilson is connecting the dots between the fashion and technology worlds, and has been named by Forbes as one of 1,000 entrepreneurs under 30 to change the world in the next 50 years.

The app uses the simple premise of swiping; left to “Trash” an item, or right to “Stash” an item, moving it to a virtual wardrobe for style inspiration, sharing with friends, and potential purchase. Affiliated with giant online retailers like Net-A-Porter, Ssense.com and Farfetch, Stashd has users in over 80 countries and has been featured as one of Apple’s Best New Apps in 11 countries. It clears 8-20% on every product sold, and the company plans to move into selling opinion-generated data back to retailers to allow them to make smarter, more informed business and marketing decisions.


Thanks to these five young entrepreneurs, we can learn an important lesson: age is but a number. All you need is an idea, determination and passion to make it happen. See everything you start through to the end.

If this article has awakened the entrepreneur in you, and you want to be on the list of the young entrepreneurs, here are five essential tips to follow: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254258

When I was growing up, my mother didn't waste time talking about others, nor did my father. It never crossed their minds. They just got on with the job at hand, and life in general.

I am sure that made for a much happier household, and a lot less stress.

I have embarked on helping a community that I grew up in. Charters Towers means a lot to me and during my trips over the past few years, my heart pours out to those who are doing it tough.

Some nights I can't sleep because I can't help but think about just how tough some people are doing it and how few support mechanisms are in place for those who have hit rock bottom. Living in the city and being part of a world that is so "new age", I am fortunate enough to know that when times get tough there are things you can do. 

It is our endeavour to help Charters Towers as much as we humanly can.

I receive phone calls all day and night, seven days per week from locals that want help and wherever possible, we are endeavouring to do our best.

The excitement at Marketing Eye headquarters in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne is contagious. Everyone is onboard and ready to give their all to helping Charters Towers be known as the rural centre for entrepreneurship.

They all realise that this is no easy feat, but not one of them thinks it's impossible.