Junior Zuckerbergs: Meet the kidpreneurs taking the business world by storm

They be little but they be fierce: meet the kidpreneurs who are changing the world with their inventions and business-savvy attitudes.

Forget Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, the next generation of ground-breaking business minds are here and they're very, very young.

In the New South Wales town of Coopernook, population 519, three kids have been making big moves with their crafty idea for fishing lures. 

Ty, Shawn and Kaios were involved in the kidpreneur program at their school last year and formed a company called Cap Lures.

"The problem with the soft rubber lures, if you get a massive bite it would destroy your lure pretty quick. Waste of money," explains Shawn.
Kids
Source: Supplied
Ty adds: "So we’re like 'what’s good and won’t break?' and we’re like 'bottle cap lures'. It was like a light bulb turned on above us.

"We started selling them at Bunnings. We ran out of lures at that store and that was a massive win for us."

Shawn says they had "a lot" of help from the local Coopernook community, who donated the bottle caps to help the boys make the lures. 

Their school principal, Tania, says the boys product has been so popular they've been able to sell them at two different retail locations. 

"They do actually work! The boys gave me two lures to try out as product testing and I caught nine rainbow trout in an hour," she says.

The Club Kidpreneur program was set up by Creel Price, who himself was a kidpreneur and started his first business selling strawberry plants at age 11.

"I had another seven businesses before I left school and another two at university and then founded Blueprint Management Group," he says.
Kids
Source: Supplied
"The goal was to retire by the age of 35 and I managed to do that with one month to spare.

"We managed to exit the business just before the global financial crisis, for beyond a one hundred million dollar valuation."

Another kiddo fast on her way to success is 16-year old Poppy Starr Olsen, who started an art business to fund her skateboarding career (she was world champion by just 15).

"I've been doing art ever since I can remember," she says.  

"So I started making my art into greeting cards, and made a business out of it and that's what helped me fund all my trips overseas."

With a bustling online business, her work is also represented in over a dozen shops in Victoria alone. 

"Poppy would really love to grow the business, and sponsor more girls to skate, to help girls get to events, like she's been able to," says Thomas, Poppy's mum.
Poppy
Source: Supplied
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By Maria Lewis
Presented by Simon Cunich
Source: The Feed


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