Teenager Sells App For $40 Million And Why You Should Care

Yes, this is the kid who made 40 million bucks with an app that summarized things.

A few months ago an 18 year old kid from England, sold his app for 40 million dollars to Yahoo. Which makes me ask: How many young people do you know that have projects like his? Creating a website? Starting their own blog? Creating an app? (this 12 year old did). Online staffing firm oDesk.com recently surveyed their users on their views of being an employee in the workplace.

• 72 percent of users at “regular jobs” responded with saying they wanted to be entirely independent.
• 58 percent identified themselves as entrepreneurs.

The fact of the matter is, everyone is/wants to be an entrepreneur now. The internet changed everything and it now costs virtually nothing to set up a business.

Want to open an online store? Cool. Snap a few pics on your iPhone, open a shopify account, link your Paypal and you could be making those extra bucks to pay off those pesty college loans within a few hours. The consequences are tiny. In fact these days we’re raised with the notion that failing is a good thing. The scarce job market and uncertain economy encourages our generation to do just that bit extra for themselves.

Cloud based devices are changing the way we work. 63% of millenials have smartphone and as a result, we have the opportunity to work with live, real-time collaborative data everywhere we go. Tools like Google Drive and Dropbox allow you to do just that. We can write documents, post a twitter update and have skype calls… all while sitting butt-naked on the toilet with an iPhone. This generation expects the same freedom with their job in the workplace (although maybe not on the office toilet).

Teenager Sells App For $40 Million And Why You Should Care

Did you think I was joking?

My message as a member of this new breed to you Generation X’ers, Baby boomers and C-level execs that are working with, or will begin working with millenials in the near future, is to recognize the changes that are happening. Understand these changes and take full advantage so you can attract and keep the very best people on your team.

Give them more independence. For crying out loud, we spend more time alone with the internet than we do talking to people. If you want the best out of them, Let them be entrepreneurial. Let them take some initiative and they’ll reward you for it.