10 Inspiring Young Online Entrepreneurs

One really awesome thing about the Internet is that there’s no such thing as age discrimination when it comes to being successful.  It doesn’t matter if you’re 12 or 72 – you have just as much chance as anyone of becoming rich and famous through an online business.  To illustrate the point, here, in no particular order, are 10 young entrepreneurs who are making their dreams a reality through internet businesses.

	Jonathan Mead, 23 of IlluminatedMind.net – Full-time blogger and life coach Jonathan Mead delivers a steady dose of inspiration and how-to content on his blog, and through his popular e-books, Reclaim Your Dreams, and The Zero Hour Workweek – How I Liberated Myself From the 9 to 5 by Getting Paid to Be Me. At just 23, Jonathan has figured out the “secret formula” for becoming a successful entrepreneur by sharing his story and expertise through blogging. Twitter: @jonathanmead
	Michael Dunlop, 21 of IncomeDiary.com – Michael Dunlop started his first profitable website when he was just 16 years old.  Now, at the ripe old age of 21, Michael is truly living what he calls the Internet Lifestyle.  Michael’s blog is all about helping others achieve this same dream.  Through interviews with some of the true thought-leaders in online marketing, as well as instructional content, Michael brings great information to anyone looking to become a pro blogger. Twitter: @michaeldunlop
	Pete Cashmore, 24 of Mashable.com – From the Mashable site: “Pete Cashmore is the 24 year-old CEO and founder of Mashable.com, a Technorati Top 10 blog worldwide. He founded Mashable in a small Scottish town in 2005 at age 19. In 2009, Cashmore was chosen as one of Inc Magazine’s 30 Under 30, Forbes’ Top 25 Web Celebs and the Huffington Posts’ Top 10 Game Changers 2009.” Twitter: @petecashmore and @mashable
	Adam Horwitz, 18 of AdamHorwitz.tv – 18-year-old Adam Horwitz says on his site that he has a goal to make a million dollars a year by the time he’s 21.  All signs point to that becoming a reality.  Adam started out in Internet marketing at the age of 15 and has become an expert in the areas of affiliate marketing and PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.  Now he makes money teaching others to make a living in these areas.  His blog is full of informational videos, tips, and lots of goofy stuff that might not make you a better entrepreneur, but just might make you laugh. Twitter: @AdamHorwitz
	Kevin Sproles, 25 of Volusion.com – Kevin Sproles started designing web sites at the age of 16.  After receiving lots of requests for a shopping cart solution, Kevin, with very little money and a great deal of perseverance, started coding shopping cart software.  Now, at the age of 25, his company supplies the most award-winning e-commerce solution to over online 100,000 entrepreneurs as well as major companies. Twitter: @volusion
	Gurbaksh Chahal, 27 of gWallet.com – Gurbaksh Chahal has an amazing entrepreneurial story.  After dropping out of high school in San Diego at age 16 to start ClickAgents, a performance-based ad network, he grew the company for two years, at which point it was acquired by ValueClick in a $40 million all-stock deal. His next venture, another ad network called BlueLithium, was acquired in 2007 by Yahoo! for $300 million cash.  Gurbaksh started gWallet, a virtual currency platform for social media, in September of 2009.  In 2008, Gurbaksh published his memoir in a book called The Dream. Twitter: @gchahal
	Catherine Cook, 20 of myYearbook.com – Since co-founding myYearbook with her brother in 2005, at the age of 15, Catherine Cook and her team have raised over $20 million in capital and have grown the site into one of the largest US social media sites with over 20 million members.  The site makes meeting new people easy by introducing members to innovative social games that are all tied together by a single virtual currency called “Lunch Money.” Twitter: @myYearbook
	Sam Lessin, 26 of Drop.io – After graduating from Harvard, Magna Cum Laude in 2005, Sam Lessin started Drop.io.  Drop.io is a simple, private, real-time, sharing, collaboration, and presentation site where users can upload files of any kind and have the ability to access, share, and edit those files from any Internet-connected computer.  Sam is also the co-founder of SocialGreat.com, a location-based social media site with a growing user-base. Twitter: @lessin
	Ryan Allis, 26 of iContact.com – Ryan Allis is the co-founder and CEO of iContact, a leading provider of email marketing tools for small businesses.  Ryan has built North Carolina-based iContact from its start in 2003 to its current size with more than 175 employees, 50,000 customers, and $28 million in annual sales, while raising $10.8 million to grow the firm.  Ryan is also the author of the book Zero to One Million, which reached the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list in 2008. Twitter: @ryanallis
	Derek Johnson, 25 of Tatango.com – Derek Johnson was bit by the entrepreneur bug early in life, starting his first business of selling candy bars to fellow students at recess by the age of eight. Derek, a self proclaimed workaholic, puts in 100+ hour workweeks to help fulfill the vision of Tatango.com.  Originally launched as networkText.com in 2007, Tatango has since facilitated the sending of tens of millions of text messages to groups of varying sizes, through their simple-to-use group texting platform. Twitter: @TheDerekJohnson

Once you’ve seen these success stories, you might want to ask yourself: What can they do that you can’t? Chances are you won’t find that they have anything special, beyond a drive to succeed, the belief that it’s possible, and a willingness to work as hard and as long as it takes.  So whatever your age, whether you’re younger or older than those above, know that you too can make your dreams of business success a reality, if you’ll just go for it and keep at it through whatever may come.